About 5 years ago, I requested a copy of the Family Court Judge’s Benchbook, under the Official Information Act. The kind young man in Justice Department that I spoke to said he couldn’t see any difficulty, but he would double check with the Principal Family Caught Judge, Judge Mahony. (I offered that as it is probably fairly large and I only wanted to look through it, I would be happy to return it after a couple of weeks.)

I heard nothing back, so after about 7 weeks, I wrote formally and then eventually received a reply stating that judges are not covered by the Official Information Act.

Certainly, while acting judicially they are not, but I wasn’t requesting anything containing personal information about any case.

Judge mahony essentially refused to honour the Official Information Act. Although I was surprised, I wasn’t that surprised. He just dropped one step lower, in my estimation. I didn’t follow this breach up, as I was fairly confident that I could access all of the information through libraries.

I was glancing through the Pennsylvania Courts website and what should jump out and hit me – but the Pennsylvania Sexual Violence Benchbook! A couple of minutes later, I was reading it.

The Canadian Government has a policy for making official information publicly accessible on the internet, where it is perceived that the information may be of a degree of public interest – they will do this proactively. Pennsylvania is obviously doing the same.

Benchbook on Crimes of Sexual Violence in Pennsylvania

When NZ judges hold the legislation in contempt, what sort of a caught system do we have?

Especially, when they try to hide behind mis-interpretation of black and white legislation, they just leave themselves looking like……………….

I have heard other people making similar complaints about judges treating other legislation with contempt. There is a need for citizens to take political action, so that deadwood judges can be reinvigorated (electric shock treatment?) or replaced with working units.

Judge Boshier is more proactive in publishing, even going so far as to publish judgements of cases gaining bad mention in the news. I support his attitudes towards complying with legislation and being dramatically more honest with the public. His heart is in the right place (values). He has been a much more worthy recipient of Government largess than judge mahony. I could see people using the word integrity in the same sentence as boshier. It is a pity that there is such a divide between Judge Boshier and the rest.

Do you see NZ as just falling further and further behind the world?
Best regards, MurrayBacon.