TNAG-2694-FCO40-3900-Hong-Kong-Judiciary-and-judicial-appointments-1993 — Page 42

all those wishes all the time.

Compliance might just produce a

sufficient amount of work for that judge but only at the expense of the flow of cases and of cther less forceful brother judges.

5.

One of the functions of a presiding judge is to meet as many personal wishes as he reasonably can without unfairness or inefficiency. For this reason the presiding judge must preside over a class of judges rather than a class of business. Some judges are uneasy about this and prefer a presider to have charge of no more then a list. This would not solve the problem. None of the responsibility of assessing priorities and allocating resources would lie within a Court. The essence of efficiency is to match the available resources to the workload. If responsibility for disposing of the work is with

ons person and for rescurce allocation with another the task of

matching the two must always go to higher authority. The effect in the Hong Kong Judiciary is to

to cause all decision-making to ascend to the Chief Justice. He needs help with that and the efficient running of the system requires that he have such help. To have a presiding judge in charge of the civil lists and another in charge of the criminal lists each. reporting directly to the Chief Justice will not significantly relieve the Chief Justice of any of his real burdens nor make judges more aware of the need for good housekeeping nor promote better use of judicial time. What is needed is a judge to preside over and be responsible for co-ordinating the work of all the judges in one court or one class. He will need good advice from those judges about the various states of work. Already in place to give advice in the High Court are the Admiralty Judge, the Commercial Judge, the Companies and Bankruptcy Judge and the Construction Judge. To them I would add a judge in charge of the crdinary civil lists and another in charge of the criminal. Similarly, the President of the District Court should invite one judge to advise him about crime and another about civil. It will be the presiding judge's job to share out the available judge power among the different lists, to watch over backlogs and disposal and to heed any representations made by judges in charge of lists and the advice of the court administrator or listing officer.

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