Queensland Circuit Courts — Art and Antics

Chief Justice, Your Honours, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.

On your behalf I thank Sandy Horneman-Wren SC for his toast to the law.

As Sandy tonight, and the Chief Justice this morning so eloquently expressed it, this and the other regions of Queensland are serviced well by legal professionals. That is so not just in terms of the legal services they afford, but also the role played by legal professionals in local community and service organisations.

Government ought never stray into implementing policy which conduces to discourage lawyers from practising in provincial areas.

While the larger provincial cities of Queensland such as Rockhampton, Townsville and Cairns have permanent judges, many towns have local court houses with registry staff. Some harbour resident local magistrates but a greater number are visited by circuit judges conducting civil and criminal sittings.

Such circuit practice, inherited from English law, ought never be allowed to perish. Circuit visits nourish the local community, legal and general, inculcating a direct appreciation of, and attachment to the rule of law.

Local lawyers are thereby able to provide a full range of litigious services to clients across all courts, permanent lower and circuit upper. The townsfolk serve on criminal juries. Cases are reported in the local media.

People feel part of, not alienated from the legal system.

Up to the end of the nineteenth century, the English and Scottish tradition was that a circuit judge would ordinarily process, fully robed, into the circuit town with his retinue, in carriages, led by a troop of the local cavalry with lances at the ready.

No doubt that was meant to, and ordinarily did serve to capture the attention of the local populace to the legal business at hand. Such judicial visit, it screamed, was a serious event.

Such processing would then continue during the circuit. Formal processing would ensue, with local militia, to church services. On sitting days the circuit judge and his staff would proceed, robed, to and from the local inn for a meal at lunchtime and sometimes for the evening meal.

The latter occurred because judges in those days often sat until midnight, with many a sentence for death by hanging, or for transportation of criminals being made in the dead of night. The courts also sat on Saturdays. Justice McMeekin and Judge Britton please take note!

Processing was taken up to some extent in Australia but, given our trait of egalitarianism, usually without the Bengal lancers leading the circuit judge into town. In fact for many circuit judges the closest they came to tradition was being picked up at the airport or train station by the local police. Even that was abandoned by dint of the partiality of which it was redolent.

Some judges continued lunchtime processing throughout the first half of the twentieth century. But, understandably, with modern mores, that became redundant along with striped trousers and frock coats.

One would hope, however, that recent events in the United Kingdom do not serve as a precedent for or precursor to Australian government policy in affording the public circuit or local magistrates courts.

As you know the UK government has slashed its general budget expenditure, except in health and foreign aid, by about 20% to accommodate the huge debt accumulated during the GFC bank bailouts stimulus spending.

To be fair, to have done otherwise would have moved the UK further towards the parlous state of the US economy.

One of the casualties of such fiscal rectitude, however, is that it has been announced that about 103 Magistrates Court and 54 County Courts across provincial England and Wales will be closed over the next two years. One-third of the Scottish Courts, mainly provincial, will also be closed.

Think of the impact of those measures on the local litigants, the community and the legal fraternity!

And to think English lawyers, until recently, were worried only about the advent of retailer Marks and Spencer (“Marks and Sparks” as locals call it) setting up a legal department next door to the bottle shop department in their department stores!

Hopefully such carnage can be avoided in this country.

Albeit bereft of the fanfare of old, the sometimes frenetic and occasionally intrusive character of circuit business can produce lighter moments. Let me give you two examples.

Some years ago the then Central Judge, Justice Demack, was sitting on circuit in Mackay. He had a long list of sentences to attend to on his last circuit day.

In the corridor outside, the then highly ethical and pragmatic local counsel, and now judge Brian Harrison was taking instructions from an accused client in respect of an imminent sentence before his Honour.

Harrison, having received certain silly instructions from the client, in his no-nonsense fashion gave a riposte clearly audible along the busy court corridor. I will dispense with the profanity starting with the letter “F” with which it was liberally punctuated:

“You must be kidding if you think that I’m going to put up a stupid argument like that to the court. This old judge is no dope. He will think that I’m a fool and you will deserve everything you get in the slammer.”

And so the exchange between counsel and client about the merits ensued.

Inside the court his Honour stopped counsel in the matter before him, turned to the bailiff and said with the characteristic Demack calm:

“Mr Bailiff, I think it would be wise to shut the door so as to allow Mr Harrison to obtain proper instructions from his client in private.”

The ensuing sentence of Harrison’s client took but a short time. His Honour had heard the wheat sorted from the chaff well before a word of submission was uttered in court.

The circuit court must often compete for priority over local community events. These days the community is not in thrall of the visiting judge as they once were, or were compelled to be by aforesaid cavalry and militia.

Justice Dowsett, when a member of the Supreme Court, some years ago was sitting in Mount Isa where I used to attend the circuits. Again, as is often the case in such instances, he was on the last day of his circuit, anxious to conclude the list of civil legal business. A list of chamber matters was being attended to.

An almighty din swelled from the street outside, even through the closed windows. The racket was certainly distracting but I thought not disruptive.

The source of the noise was the local street parade of the round Australia Redex Car Rally. The participating vehicles, horns and claxons sounding, seemed to be going around and around, and every local brass band was participating with gusto.

The streets were pregnant with a goodly portion of the townsfolk.

Justice Dowsett, enquiring of and being told by the bailiff of the source of the noise, was not prepared to tolerate this interruption:

“Mr Bailiff, go down to the street and direct those in attendance that, by authority of a judge of the Supreme Court of Queensland, the noise is to cease forthwith!”

Just imagine this poor bailiff as he trudged down and stood among the exuberant crowd mouthing repeatedly the directed adjuration. A few of the locals standing nearby actually bothered to tell him what the judge could do with his direction.

The canny bailiff then duly waited about 10 minutes until the rally commenced to move on and trudged back before his Honour announcing:

“Your Honour, the local citizens have taken the matter in hand and, as we speak, are sending the rally drivers on their way.”

His Honour seemed mollified by that, although as I recall a diminished din persisted for some time.

Ladies and gentlemen let these circuits in our regional areas continue to flourish. Inexorably they benefit the local community with the comfort and certainty of the rule of law, and they provide opportunity for us to tell stories on occasions like this.

If world oil supplies continue to diminish rapidly, and electric vehicle technology does not advance sufficiently quickly, consideration, no doubt, may even be given by the Chief Justice to reintroduction of horse carriages for circuit judges led into town by horsemen who used to be Redex Car Rally drivers.

Sandy, thank you for your toast. Ladies and gentlemen I bid you a good evening.

Richard Douglas S.C.