CO129-334 - Governor Nathan - 1906 [5-7] — Page 140

COPY.

No. 7.

Sir,

Enclosure 1.

Rec

C

23462

IR. 29 JUN 06

Chambers, Supreme Court,

Hongkong, 20th. March, 1906.

136

Excellency

1.

I have the honour to invite Your Excel-

-lency's attention to the necessity of increasing the number of

Judges of the Supreme Court. The question is I believe not a new

one, though I am not sure that it has as yet been put into

concrete form. At the end of the summer term last year I was

much concerned at the difficulty in which I constantly found

myself in making satisfactory arrangements for the conduct of the

business of the Supreme Court. I thought it advisable however to

delay making any report to Your Excellency on the subject until

I had further experience of the working of the present system,

and I have now come to the conclusion that the appointment of a

Third Judge is unavoidable.

2.

the

it is generally assumed that there are at

present two Judges of the Supreme Court. This however is a most

misleading way of stating the case. The Court, as a Court of

First Instance, is divided into two distinct jurisdictions

'Summary' and what is termed the 'Original'. There is no small

Debts Court independent of the Supreme Court, such as the County

Courts in England or the District Courts in some of the Colonies.

The jurisdiction of the Summary Court goes up to $1,000 and is

entrusted to the Puisne Judge. This has, it is true, the result

of taking from the Original Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court a

considerable number of important cases which would otherwise

come before it, but it includes also the mass of small cases which

Sir Matthew Nathan, K.C.M.C.,

Governor and Commander-in-Chief.