Page:Select Essays in Anglo-American Legal History, Volume 1.djvu/850

 836 V. BENCH AND BAR as hold or have held high judicial office, the Lords Justices of Appeal and a limited number of Privy Councillors ap- pointed by the Crown. In recent years several colonial judges have been added to the tribunal, thus bringing it in closer touch with the vast empire for which it administers justice. Its jurisdiction includes colonial, Indian and eccle- siastical appeals, petitions for the prolongation of letters patent, and matters specially referred to it by the Crown. The tribunal was dominated for many years by the vast learning and powerful intellect of Lord Watson, who sat in this court for a longer period than any permanent member, except Lord Kingsdown, by whom alone Watson's substantial contributions to imperial law are equalled. The variety, novelty and importance of the questions com- ing before this tribunal lend to it an interest which tran- scends the merits of individual controversies. The cases specially referred to it by the Crown often involve questions of fundamental importance; and, apart from the recognized right of appeal from the colonies, the Privy Council may give special leave to appeal in cases of general or constitu- tional importance, or in criminal cases where grave injustice may have been done.^ Moreover, there is hardly any system of civilized law which does not prevail in some parts of the vast empire subject to the jurisdiction of this court, — in the West Indies the civil law of Spain, in Canada the civil law of France, in Africa the Roman law as modified by the Dutch, in India the laws of the Hindoo and the Mohammedan. Therefore, whether ultimately incorporated with the House of Lords to form a single court of appeal for the whole empire, or exercised as heretofore in an independent tribunal, this great imperial jurisdiction, sustaining diverse customs and principles of conduct which have been stamped with the ap- proval of generations, is a matter of vast moral as well as legal significance. It is an effort to heed the cry of human- ity for justice and peace among men. »R« Skinner, 3 P. C. 451; Prince v. Gagnon, 8 App. Cas. 102; Be Dillet, 12 App. Cas. 459; Levien v. Reg., 1 P. C. 536.