Note (Back) — Chapter VIII

182. Supreme Court of Judicature: the High Court.—The higher tribunals within the judicial system were once numerous and extremely complex. As reconstituted, however, by the great Judicature Act of 1873, which, together with an Amending Act, took effect near the close of 1875, they have acquired a considerable degree of orderliness and even of simplicity. The measure of 1873 abolished the appellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords, but the Amending Act three years later rescinded this modification, and, as has been explained elsewhere, the House of Lords is still a court of very great importance.[251] Aside from the Lords, however, the higher courts of the realm—the Chancery, the three great Common Law courts, the Admiralty, Probate, and Divorce courts, and the intermediate courts of appeal from these tribunals of first instance—were consolidated by the legislation of 1873-1875 to form one grand organization, the Supreme Court of Judicature, which was thereupon cut into two branches, the High Court of Justice and the Court of Appeal. The High Court of Justice was assigned a general jurisdiction, civil and criminal, as a court of first instance and also as a court of appeal from inferior courts. Its jurisdiction represents essentially the aggregate of jurisdictions of the tribunals which it superseded, and the various divisions into which it falls perpetuate in a measure the names and functions of those tribunals. There were originally five of these divisions. To-day there are three: Chancery, King's Bench (with which the Common Pleas and Exchequer divisions were united by order in council of December 16, 1880), and Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty. Any High Court judge may sit in a tribunal belonging to any one of these divisions. The Lord Chancellor presides over the Chancery division, the Chief Justice over the King's Bench. The number of judges is variable. The Chancery division contains at present six, the King's Bench fifteen, and the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty division but two. All save the Chancellor (who is a cabinet official, owing his position to selection by the premier) are appointed by the crown upon advice of the Chancellor, and all hold office during good behavior but may be dismissed on addresses of the two houses of Parliament. The judges of the High Court sit both singly and in groups. The ordinary trial of cases is conducted, under a variety of stipulated conditions, by a single judge, either at Westminster or on circuit. The judges who go on circuit are taken as a rule from the King's Bench division, and when both civil and criminal cases are to be adjudicated they travel ordinarily in pairs, one attending to the civil and the other to the criminal business. Judges sit also, without juries, in divisional courts, composed of two or more members, to hear appeals from inferior tribunals, motions for new trials, and applications for writs. The High Court never sits as a single body, nor does even the Chancery or the King's Bench division.