CO129-527-18 University of Hong Kong- proposal to establish Department 28-5-1930 - 19-9-1930 — Page 46

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Whatever material resources the Continent of North America may enjoy, her present prosperity must be ascribed to the power of the Common Law jurisprudence. Her commercial and industrial enterprises have been organised, financed, developed and maintained by the legal devices and procedure instituted by the knowledge and experience of Common Law jurisprudence. Even those countries which used to worship codes framed after the fashion of the Byzantine legislation, have begun to see the real capabilities of Common Law jurisprudence as founded on the judicial precedents hammered out in the course of its contentious procedure.

The outstanding monument of British rule in India is the Indian law courts presided over by judges appointed from among experienced English and Indian barristers. These caste-trodden Indians have been in the enjoyment of the blessings of justice and liberty afforded to them by these judges. The work of the judges has been so successful because they brought to their task that sense of justice and fairness inspired by their study and practice under the aegis of Common Law jurisprudence.

It is well known that a vast amount of Chinese wealth is held by foreign individuals and banking institutions under the English system of trusts and trustees, and also that many Chinese citizens are conducting their business under the protection of the Common Law. Are not these facts significant to demonstrate the virtue and capacity of the principles of the Common Law alien indeed to their own country, but welcome and beneficent to the Chinese citizens to whom they afford protection?

The power and influence of the Common Law Judicature being such as we have explained, who could object to the Republic of China modelling her Law Courts upon the institutions of the Common Law? What Chinese statesmen would decline the proposed scheme, and deprive their fellow-citizens of the blessings sure to follow its adoption? What subjects of treaty powers would object to the proposed reception of Common Law jurisprudence, trading and residing practically under that system as they have always been in the different settlements, which has unavoidably been the case in these extraterritorial days?

Should these proposals be worked out, the intelligent Chinese will be quite equal to rapidly embarking on the study of the Common Law and its practice, and will readily grasp the spirit and principles of that jurisprudence in a way which will augment the prestige of the Republic of China, and lead it to attain in a few years an international reputation as a state in which legal rights are better protected than in those countries whose laws still appear in the garb of Byzantine Codes.

R.Masujima

of the Middle Temple, Barrister at Law.