Page:The Irish Constitution Explained.djvu/57

 nor of the purest, the expectation of impartial and indifferent justice would be a fool's dream. And where a Court exists from which a people presumes injustice in advance, the wells of security and good order are at once poisoned.

Yet, even supposing that these questions of justice are neglected, how is the system likely to work? How has it, in fact, worked elsewhere? Assume that a case has been decided in a certain way by the Supreme Court in Ireland. It is carried to the Judicial Committee, which decides in favour of the opposite party. How is such a decision of the Judicial Committee to be put into effect? Such cases have occurred in Australia; and the Australian High Court has refused to recognise the decisions of the Judicial Committee, or to give them effect. Special legislation therefore at once became necessary; but the obvious fact which emerged was that the Judicial Committee had no machinery to put decisions into effect which were contrary to local feeling. Of the last of these cases the Australian Premier said at the "'Imperial Conference,' 1917," that the "decision was one which must have caused great embarrassment and confusion if it were not for the fortunate fact that the reasons for the Judicial Commitee [sic]'s decision are stated in such a way that no Court and no Council in Australia has yet been able to find out what they were."

It is little wonder that Mr. Hughes, in the same speech should have said that "Australia's experience of the Privy Council in constitutional cases has been, to say the least of it, unfortunate." He also read an extract from a resolution of the Final Court of Appeal of New Zealand, which declared of the Judicial Committee that "by its imputations in the present case, by the ignorance it has shown in this and in other cases of our history, of our legislation, and of our practice, and by its long delayed judgments, it has displayed every characteristic of an alien tribunal."

The spokesmen for the other States present were equally emphatic. "I think," said Sir Robert Borden for Canada, "we have had just about enough Appeal Courts, and I