Page 388 - Records of Bahrain (7) (ii)_Neat

778 Records of Bahrain

3.

Registrar and tho Political Agent who share
the bench with Bahrain Judges.
6. All those lines have been pursued but there is

not > I am afraid much progress to report, On three
of them tho position now is still what it was when
I wrote to Sir Rupert Hay on October 4,.1952 (My
letter Number 164400/52). Wo have moved a cortain
way towards converting tho Senior Joint Court into
a Court of Appeal and so complied theoretically with

the Bahrain Order in Council, but it remains to bo
seen how far it will be possible to conduct the
Court as a Court of Anneal. since, to the minds of
litigants, wakils and judges here, an appeal is Just

an opportunity for repeating tho whole trial, It
will bo the task of tho Political Agent,sitting with
the Rulor, to try to educate him, and the public, in
the Rules, just as it is the'task of the Registrar,
sitting with a junior Bahrain judge, to try to inculcate

some knowledge of and respect for procedure in
original jurisdiction in the Junior Joint Court.
7. The reasons for our slow progress along tho first

three lines mentioned in paragraph 5 are, to be looked
for, I think, in the Ruler's own suspicions, prido
(and prejudice) and ideas of what justice ought to bo
and how it ought to bo odrninlstered. His outlook is
not primitive, or fundamentalist, He makes a

distinction between tho Islamic C&Sion law and
secular law, and he has a conception of tho division
of the latter into Statute law (i.o. in Bahrain, the
Ordinances or I'lanat) and Common Law, hero

represented by a body of customs ('Urf) by which
/certain...