ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE BILL [Lords].

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at on 19 May 1924.

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Photo of Mr Edward Harney Mr Edward Harney , South Shields

I speak in the hearing of some lawyers, and, therefore, I think it advisable to point this out. The Lord Chancellor starts off by saying that the object of the Bill was to restore the right to trial by jury as we possessed it before the War. He goes on to say: The only alteration is that almost of necessity a power is given to the Judge to say that the case is one which is of a nature quite unfitted to allow trial by jury; just such a case, for example, as one depending on intricate accounts being taken. That was the law before the War. The Lord Chancellor therefore says, "The object of the Bill is to restore the pre-War condition with an alteration that makes it, when you look at it, precisely the same as the pre-War condition." The first invasion made upon the general right to trial by jury was by the Common Law Procedure Act of 50 years ago, and all that did was to stereotype the practice which had grown up of excluding from trial by jury questions of account in Chancery actions, Admiralty actions, and actions involving prolonged examination of documents, which the convenience of parties had long made it a practice not to have tried by jury. But all common law actions were to be tried by jury. Then you had the Judicature Act passed 20 years afterwards. The only difference that made was that it provided for a Rules Committee, which had to do with all questions of procedure, including such matters as the mode of trial, and these were statutory rules to be laid on the Table of the House. But though there have been three, four or five sets of these rules made, in none of them was any attempt made really to curtail the right of trial by jury further than it had been by the Common Law Procedure Act. These rules made one curious distinction. They said that actions involving personal character, actions of defamation, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, seduction and breach of promise were, as matters of course, put into the jury list. All other Common Law actions could be put into the jury list upon application. The only difference was that in the one class of action you got a jury without the asking, and in the other class you got a jury for the asking, so there was really no distinction. That was absolutely the law before the Juries Act of 1918. Every Common Law litigant was entitled as a right to have his case tried by a jury. The shortage brought about by the war in 1918 induced Parliament to make what it regarded as a very drastic change, and a change which ought not to endure, because it took care to express in the Act of Parliament itself what its intention was: This Act shall have effect during the continuance- of the present War and for a period of six months afterwards. The War came to an end, and the period of six months came to an end, and the ordinary course would have been to allow this emergency Measure to lapse and automatically bring back pre-War conditions. Instead of that there was introduced into the House of Lords a Bill called the Administration of Justice Bill, which purported affirmatively to do what would have been better done, as it happens, negatively. They dealt with this question of juries and the Lord Chancellor when introducing it said, "It is merely a formal matter, and it restores pre-War conditions." There was a column and a half or two columns given to the Debate in the OFFICIAL REPORT, and I think only a few inches to his question of juries. It came to this House, and there was no Debate at all here. It was introduced at an early hour of the morning and passed through. It was thought then by the lay public that juries had been restored, but they found out their mistake in the practice of the Courts, and ultimately the whole matter came up for consideration at the trial of an action in 1922. I had better read the Judge's exact words. Lord Justice Bankes said: What was once an undoubted right, and in the opinion of many persons a most valuable right, has been eaten into until at last, by the recently issued provisional rules proposed to be made permanent, it has been entirely taken away. It is in the hope that on further consideration of the matter the right may be restored and the necessary limitations of the right clearly defined that I am calling attention to this. He put it more plainly later on: The Juries Act of 1918 and the rules consequent thereon were a purely temporary war Measure and need not be referred to. The Administration of Justice Act, 1920, contains a provision as to trial by jury which came into operation on the date when the Juries Act of 1918 expired, namely, on 1st March of the present year. Trial by jury is now abolished. It was on account of that case that the Administration of Justice Act was introduced. We want to know, now that it is clearly conceded that this Bill does not restore the pre-War conditions, whether they are to be restored. If not, we want to know why not. The Attorney-General tells us that he is in favour of the view-that I am putting forward, that it should be restored, but he has not told us that he will undertake to restore it if we agree to pass the Bill. I press this Motion, and I think we ought to persist in it unless we get an undertaking that here and now the pre-War right to trial by jury will be restored.