Bench and Bar

COLLISIONS between the Bench and the Bar are not unknown in any country, certainly not in ours. As a rule, these occur only in subordinate courts, at any rate, not in the highest courts. The saying that the higher one mounts the purer and clearer the air becomes is nowhere truer than in this case. There, are however, exceptions to this as to every other rule. One of these occurred in Calcutta the other day when a Judge of His Majesty’s High Court caused a sensation, first, by asking a member of the Bar to leave the court and then, when the entire Bar headed by the Advocate General himself, staged a protest against his action and asked him to right the wrong, not only by refusing to do so but reading the Bar a sermon on the respect due to His Majesty’s Judges. We have already published a fairly full report of this incident, which we purposely took from an Anglo-Indian journal, which could not possibly be accused of bias against the Judge. The relevant part of this report is worth quoting again:– “Mr Justice Page asked if Mr Bose contended that the Court had no jurisdiction even to make a suggestion. Mr. Bose submitted that when his contention was that the court had no jurisdiction to go into the matter, he also submitted that the court had no jurisdiction to make the suggestion.

Mr Justice Page: I have made my order. Sit down, Mr Bose.

Mr. Bose: I must protest against your Lordship addressing me in this fashion.

Mr Justice Page: I refuse to allow you permission to rise again… leave the court.

Mr Bose: I leave the court, but I do so under protest.”