AKA. 4317
RAVLIVED IN STRY NO. 51
- 8 SEP 1977
DESK OFER
ALYSTAY
(35
Your reference
Our reference SG 15/5 (118)
Date
31 Aurat 1677.
INDEX
NO
JA B Stewart OBE
Hong Kong & General Department Foreign and Commonwealth Office LONDON SW 1
Dear John,
Action Take:
GOVERNOR'S OFFICE
P.O. Box 61
TARAWA
GILBERT ISLANDS
Mur. Queen
Mar. Quem
plu premis
Cintributing.
Dim
214.
JUDICIAL AND LEGAL STAFFING OF THE DEPENDENT TERRITORITS IN THE 1980s
26
Thank you for your letter of 8 August. If you are confining your responsibility for judicial and legal staffing after 1980 to dependencies, I have nothing to say; but some present dependencies which will have become independent by then will novertheless still require expatriates to fill the roots of Chief Justice and Attorney General. In the Pacific both Fiji and Nauru still have expatriate Chief Justices several years after independence and this has been the position in many other former dependencies elsewhere.
2.
It seems, therefore, that it would be useful to consider the wider problem and likely calls on ODM for OSAS contract staff in former dependencies with legal systems which have grown out of the British as well as the needs of the remaining dependencies.
•
3. In the Gilbert Islands we do not yet have a qualified Gilbortese lawyer. We hope to be able to appoint the first in 1978 and two others are in trainin“, Even if we avoid the usual constitutional requirements of a ten year call to the bar for senior legal and judicial appointments, local cultural restraints would still require the appointment of an older man as Chief Justice.
I would say, therefore, that the Gilbert Islands will need an expatriate Chief Justice throughout the eighties and an expatriate Attorney General. until perhaps 1985.
4.
I know how difficult recruitment to fill these posts has proved in recent years.
It will presumably become no easier. May I suggest that we take a more imaginative approach? It is in K's long term interest to see the rule of law and an effective system of courts maintained in ex-dependencies. Being plugged into internationally accepted and respected legal and judicial systems has been one of the benefits in the colonial record. It is worth spending some money on after our direct responsibility for law and order has gone. Economists administering aid are unlikely to be moved on grounds of reputation. But they might accept that there are direct advantages
for British
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