Sir Thomas More, the hero of A Man for All Seasons, is also a hero in the lesser known history of timely justice. In his two and a half years as Chancellor of England he worked with an alacrity that eliminated the backlog left behind by the 14-year chancellorship of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
This achievement gave rise to a rhyme:
When More some time had Chancellor been,
No more cases did remain;
The like shall never more be seen,
Till More be come again.
More was an intellectual who carried on a correspondence with Erasmus, and whose reputation extended to the continent. And he was a layman whose appointment as Lord Chancellor brought an end to a run of sixteen successive bishops in that office.
More initiated substantive reforms by eliminating the ability of court officials to issue subpoenas prior to trial, a practice used by the wealthy to pressure their enemies.
Perhaps influenced by the speed of his process the number of petitions during his term increased by two-thirds, attributed by Peter Ackroyd to litigants electing out of the common law courts. Despite the increased caseload More kept pace and reduced the existing backlog until no further cases were ready to be heard. More ordered the fact recorded, and for the rest of his chancellorship heard all cases as they came to him for decision.
Like many great judges More was a bear for work and decisive. Perhaps as importantly, he was unrestrained by rules of court which might have offered a greater thicket of rules for litigants to throw in his path.
The great judges both ancient and near to our times all seem to have been concerned that the effects of delay in their time and their court were pernicious. Lord Mansfield had a less-pronounced but still significant effect on the efficiency of the courts when he discouraged reserved judgments except when necessary, disposing of unnecessary appearances and accelerating the final disposition of cases. In our own time Chief Justice McEachern of the BC Supreme Court in the 1990s shortened the time to trial to 12 months.
In other blogs we will highlight the efforts of other jurists and welcome suggestions for other timely justice heroes who deserve recognition.
Great judges have recognised the need for timeliness. In many cases they succeeded in shortening or eliminating unjust delay. It should also be said that in many, if not most, cases their successes did not last beyond their tenure. Systematic reforms to achieve timeliness offer the promise of more enduring change, but also feature the need to secure the agreement of professional communities that are often skeptical or hostile to achieving timeliness.
