The Express.
London, England, 1864-07-19 00:00:00

MOB WATiR AT WNW!! BRIMS.

TIM DAY Worley. Ih. Wm. . Di. Do.
TO-NOLILOW Moran". Vt. 25m... .Alleracom tit UAL

LONDON, TUESDAY, JULY 19.

➢fa.. Josurs WILLIAMS, a member, and not the
least eminent, of the late Committee of the Bar
on Legal Reporting, has addressed to his profes-
sional brethren a letter explanatory of his ideas on
that question. He observes that the proposal
which was made by himself and some others in the
committee was not entirely in accordance with his
own views, and he wishes to place on record the
recommendation which he would have desired, if
unfettered by co-operation, to bring forward. This
suggestion he expresses in the three following pro-
positions :
1. That all judgments of the superior courts should, ss
far as practicable, be written.
2. That all judgments of the superior courts. not com-
mitted to writing before delivery, should be committed to
writing under the authority of the court as soon as possible
after delivery.
3. That weal to all the judgments of the superior courts
should be afforded to every member of the profession as
speedily and cheaply as possible.

In support of these propositions Mr. NV'Lusms
urges that, inasmuch as the judgments of the supe-
rior courts make the law, their preservation should
not, as at present, be left to the cue of any re-
porter who may chance to be present ; that the
sole method of securing perfect accuracy is by the
use of writing ; that speedy and cheap access to
the judgments delivered can be beat obtained by
their being printed as soon as possible and pub-
lished at the lowest price that will cover the I
expense ; while there will be still left to the in li
-
dustry of the Ear sufficient scope in selecting from
this mass of authentic material such cases as are
really important, and publishing these ins separate
form. There can be no doubt that all these argu-
ments are founded in reason. Others, indeed,
might be added to them. The preservation
of judgments is not merely at the pre-
tent time left to the chance of a reporter
being present, or deeming, in his own discretion
at the instant, the cane to be of interest or value,
but if reported at all it is probably subject to all
the uncertainty which must necessarily arise from
the discordant accounts given of it by half a dozen
different hands. The judgments, even if accu-
rately taken down, do not profess always to ape.
cify the facts on which they proceed, and there-
fore the reporter is left to bin own reason and
imagination to select for mention such of the facts
as he conceives the court must have considered
material. Even if the character of " authority "
be given to the report by the judge revising his
speech, this statement of the facts is still left un-
corrected, and an unmentioned circumstan e,
found in another report, is still open to be brought
in by legal ingenuity to prove that the case cannot
be a precedent, for that it turned on "particular
" circumstances."

Although Mr. Wituams did not bring these
considerations before the meeting of the Bar which
was called to deliberate on the report of the com-
mittee, the resolution to delay the discussion upon
that proposition till after the long vacation will
allow the rejected proposition to obtain in the
meantime a fair hearing. It is tolerably obvious,
indeed, from the opinions which were then ex-
pressed, that the real contest will lie between Mr.
WILLIAMS' system and the existing one. The
proposal of the committee to supplement rather
than reform the present practice, by the institution
of a Council of Reporting, and by dividing the
responsibility between reporters and editors, found
little favour even with the so-called " autho-
"rifted" reporters, inwhnse interest it seemed to be
framed, and elicited small promise of support from
the body of the profession. The contest, there.
fore, will really be between the existing prac..ce
of leaving the accuracy and expedition of the
reports to be secured by commercial competition,
and the project of securing these objects by re•
quiring the judges to commit their opinions, and
the facts on which they decide, to writing before
judgment is pronounced.
In this simple form of the issue there is at least
the convenience that the debate is narrowed to a
single point. The moat inveterate partisans of the
old method do not deny that there would, in
almost every case, be a great gain if the judg-
ments were in writing. They only take their stand
on the customary plea that the idea is " imprac-
" ticable." In this, however, they labour under
the disadvantage of maintaining to be impossible
what, as appears from the report of their own com-
mittee, most civilized nations are actually practis-
ing, and what some of the most distinguished of
our own judges have both preached and practised.
Nor, when they descend from the upper regions of
vague generality to the lower ones of specific argu-
ment, are they much more satisfactory. They urge
that the writing of judgments would cause delay,
that in some cases delay would be fatal, while
in all it would be inconvenient, and that
in fact the judges could not, under such condi-
tions, overtake their work. But here it is to be
remembered, in the tint place, that the instances