Zeylen. Dupreme THE JUDGMENTS OF THE Supreme Court of Judicature AND OF The High Court of Appeal OF THE ISLAND OF CEYLON, DELIVERED BETWEEN THE YEARS 1820-1833. EDITED BY P. RÁMA-NÁTHAN, Esq., - ADVOCATE, SUPREME COURT. COLOMBO : PRINTED BY THE CEYLON TIMES PRESS COMPANY, LIMITED, 1877. The Horible h. B. Claveme worth the PREFACE. "That contradictory decisions should have been pronounced "in this Court," said Sir Richard Ottley, in the year of his promotion to the Chief Justiceship of Ceylon, "is a matter of "regret, because, if one subject can be selected which more "than any other it is the incumbent duty of judges to attain, 66 we may say that certainty and uniformity of practice is that "object. It is an object which I consider of such magnitude that, "unless it be attained, no exhibition of talent, no display of "erudition or of ingenuity, could render the proceedings of the Court respectable" (a). The discordancy in the judiciary law of Ceylon, as deplored by this eminent judge in 1827, has not been remedied to the present day. Indeed, the evil appears to have increased. For Mr. Justice Thomson, writing in 1866, said: "The "absence of a complete publication of these decrees has led to "litigation and error. The decrees of the Supreme Court, when "unprinted, cannot afford instruction to the profession generally; "and consequently that Court has had to decide the same points, "often elementary points, over and over again, because the "District Judges, Magistrates, Advocates, and Proctors have had "no proper reports to refer to; indeed, even the judges of the "Supreme Court itself, having no index to its decisions, have "elaborately adjudged many questions of law, in ignorance that "those very questions had been as elaborately adjudicated upon "years before by their predecessors, or have unwittingly over-ruled "those predecessors and even themselves." (b) (a) See p. 92 of these Reports. Sir Richard Ottley had been Puisne Justice for about seven years before he was promoted to the Chief Justiceship. (b) The Institutes, preface, p. 5. |