Econlib

The Library

Other Sites

Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow CHAPTER IV.: JUDICIARY ESTABLISHMENT. - The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Return to Title Page for The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2

Search this Title:

Also in the Library:

Subject Area: Economics
Subject Area: Political Theory
Subject Area: Law
Topic: Property

CHAPTER IV.: JUDICIARY ESTABLISHMENT. - Jeremy Bentham, The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 2 [1843]

Edition used:

The Works of Jeremy Bentham, published under the Superintendence of his Executor, John Bowring (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1838-1843). 11 vols. Vol. 2.

Part of: The Works of Jeremy Bentham, 11 vols.

About Liberty Fund:

Liberty Fund, Inc. is a private, educational foundation established to encourage the study of the ideal of a society of free and responsible individuals.


CHAPTER IV.

JUDICIARY ESTABLISHMENT.

The arrangements in this proposed Procedure Code bear reference to a correspondent judiciary establishment, without which, execution and effect could not be given to them.

For the list of arrangements proposed for the establishment of it, see the Chapters in the Constitutional Code, from XII. to XXVII. inclusive.

Of the leading features of the system of arrangements, the following summary intimation may in this place, notwithstanding the scantiness of it, be not altogether without its use.

Exceptions excepted, and those few and narrow, and for special causes:—

1. Number of judges in a judicatory, in no instance more than one. Judicatories, each of them single seated. Principle, in one word, the principle of single-seatedness.

2. To the cognizance of every judicatory belong all sorts of cases, or say suits. Principle, in one word, the principle of omnicompetence.

3. From every judicatory, in every case, appeal lies, to one other judicatory, and no more. The judicatory appealed from, the immediate judicature: judicatory appealed to, the appellate judicatory.

4. Attached to every judicatory are—1. A registrar; 2. A government advocate; 3. An eleemosynary advocate: the eleemosynary advocate, for support to the interests of the otherwise helpless, among suitors.

5. Presiding each over a certain number of immediate judicatories, are appellate judicatories: the number, such as the experience of the need manifested of their service, shall have indicated.

In federal commonwealths and countries in which the population is thin, distance great, and means of communication comparatively rare, it may be of use that they be scattered over the country; and where sub-legislatures have place, for every sub-legislature, and in the town which is the seat of it, there should be an appellate judicatory: and thus, by the efflux of suitors to the judicatory, and of members and other functionaries of the legislature, a good public, filled with appropriate aptitude—moral, intellectual, and active—may in each of these seats of business be created and preserved.

But in England, on the contrary, where the communication is so prompt, and the occasions and means so abundant, the demand for a number of appellate judicatories in so many places distant from each other, seems hardly to have place. The metropolis, the immediate centre of all business, which at all times will be sure to afford a public, with the aptitude of which no other town can bear comparison, may serve for all of them.

6. To every judge belongs the power of locating deputes, permanent and occasional, in number to which no present limits can be assigned. To the judge-principal belongs a salary in possession: to each judge-depute permanent, the office of judge-principal, with the salary annexed to it in prospect. By this means, the quantity of judge-power, using the term in the same sense as in the cases of clerk-power and horse-power, will be at all times in sufficiency, at no time in excess. A man will not accept the appointment of judge-depute, in the case where the number of persons already in that situation reduces the prospect of succession to a quantity too small to produce the desire. A judge-depute is as it were an apprentice to his principal, learning his trade in the course of his service.

7. As to the office of judge, so as to the several offices of registrar, government advocate, and eleemosynary advocate, is the power of deputation as above allotted.

8. When time has given room for judge-deputes in sufficient numbers (each with sufficient length of service) to come into existence, no person will be capable of being located as a judge-principal, who has not, for a certain number of years, officiated as judge-depute.

9. At the same time, no person who has ever acted in the capacity of professional lawyer, will be capable of being located in the situation of judge.

10. In every judicatory, to serve as a check upon arbitrary power in the situation of judge, care will be taken to secure the presence of a good public, or say committee of the public-opinion tribunal. Elementary classes, and individuals entering into the composition of this committee, are these:—

(1.) Suitors waiting for the calling on of their respective suits.

(2.) Probationary lawyers, serving in this seat of judicature a quasi-clerkship, or apprenticeship,—duration of it five years,—during the two last of which, they are admitted to advocate the suits of helpless litigants, or would-be litigants rendered helpless by non-possession of the money necessary to the defraying of the expense.

(3.) The government advocate.

(4.) The eleemosynary advocate, i. e. the advocate appointed by government to give assistance on the side of litigants, and would-be litigants rendered helpless by relative indigence as above.

(5.) The quasi-jury, on the occasion of quasi-jury hearings.

11. The elementary functions, necessarily exercised on the occasion of every judicial inquiry, are—1. The auditive; 2. The inspective; and, 3. The lective.

12. The helpless litigants’ fund, or fund for defraying the expense necessary to effect the forthcomingness of such evidence as the suit may happen to furnish: a fund partly composed of fines, or say mulcts, inflicted for pursuits accompanied with temerity or evil consciousness.