Another Factor in Injustice
Page 23
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AN opportunity of learning some inti mate details concerning the methods employed in running a magistrate's court presided over by a bench of local justices of the peace, was recently afforded to us during a long chat with one of these gentlemen.
As it happens, he is a well-known and highly respected man in road transport, with wellbalanced views on the treatment of offenders, and, in his opinion, in the average court far too much power is wielded by the clerk to the justices, who, .quite often, assumes practically the prerogative of the latter, taking upon himself the question as to the amount of a fine or the extent of any other penalty.
Our informant is by no means in the good books of his clerk, because in numerous cases where he considers that a fine of 10s. or 21 would be ample, the clerk suggests, say, 25, but is often overruled.
The magistrates comprising this bench are busy men and can sit on only certain days, and the clerk has adopted the wily little dodge of delayirkg particular motoring cases, to the days when the justice concerned in this episode is not likely to be sitting. No wonder the figure of Justice wears an eye bandage It would seem, therefore, that an anti-motoring clerk is an even worse pest to road transport than an anti-motoring magistrate, because the one is usually more permanent than the other, and is probably even more autocratic, whilst one of his chief interests appears to be in obtaining good "returns" from the court.
All this points more and more to the need for unbiased motoring courts controlled by men who are fully conversant with the problems of road transport and who are not so liable to discriminate against those who earn their livelihood by operating commercial vehicles. That such a move is justified is well shown by the case which we have quoted, for in that court quite threequarters of the time is occupied in dealing with road users.