Excerpt from The Law Quarterly Review, 1886, Vol. 2

Two opposite views appear to be entertained as to the manner in which this all-important subject of the increase of appeals should be dealt with. According to the opinion of some a salutary check should be imposed upon the liberty to appeal by prohibiting appeals in cases where the pecuniary amount at stake falls below a certain minimum, unless special leave to appeal be given. This solution is not without its drawbacks. The importance to the parties of an appeal is often wholly incommensurate with the pecuniary sum that is in controversy, while the gravity of the legal question in volved bears no relation to such sum at all. The opinion of the profession does not seem to favour the plan of making the right of appeal dependent on the leave of the judges whose decision it is desired to impugn. Such a rule of practice always leaves the suitor dissatisfied. On the other hand, to impose on the Court of Appeal the duty of determining whether leave to appeal should be granted is really to require them half to hear a case in order to decide whether they should wholly hear it. Moreover, it is exceed ingly difiicult for an appellate tribunal to refuse leave to appeal, if the point of law involved is open on the first blush of it to any doubt at all.

The alternative scheme which many lawyers prefer is to en deavour, while frankly acknowledging that the new system does and must encourage appeals, to destroy as far as can be all double appeals, or in other words to transfer bodil y to the Court of Appeal some substantial portion of the work done at present in the Courts in Bane. We have already pointed out the impossibility at this particular moment of directing immediately to the Appeal Court any large additional business, and will not again recur to it. To create a third division of the Appeal Court by adding three more Lords Justices to the present number would be an experiment to be adopted only in the last resort. The plan of prohibiting inter locutory appeals, and allowing final appeals only to penetrate to the Appeal Court, which some have suggested, does not recognize sufficiently the fact that the Interlocutory Paper in Chancery includes matters of the utmost moment, and that even in the Queen's Bench the new trial paper falls into the Interlocutory list. Upon the other hand, to withdraw from the Appeal Court appeals on matters of practice only, would be to withdraw from it a very slight amount of business, for the appeals on points of pure practice are becoming every day fewer and fewer. The conclusion towards which the preceding observations tend, is that the Appeal business will probably for the present have to be left much in its present con dition, and that we must trust to time to show whether the relief of the Lords Justices from circuit will not before long bring the Appeal arrears within control.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.