Page 389 - Records of Bahrain (7) (ii)_Neat

I

Legal affairs and justice, 1952-1957 779

4.
certain practices - pearling and date-cultivation,
for oxample, ore said to be traditionally regulated.

Neither the Registrar nor I have seen much evidence
that those customs ore generally admitted or even
knov/n to many Bahrainis, and they ore certainly

not beyond dispute or consistently acted on. Tho
Ruler professes to appreciate the value of
certification, and avers that the 'Urf are being
codified, but I am fairly sure that they are not. At
any rate, he seems favourably disposed to the idea of

one systematized and clearly ascertainable body of
law, and if only we could put before him a draft of
such a code, soy, of criminal lav;, I think v;c should
be able to make progress. But it seoins that the laws
delays begin in the very making of them and we are

still waiting for a draft Penal Code that was said,
a year ago, to be almost finished.
6. The appointment of a Judicial Adviser hangs
partly on this, as the Ruler has said (vido my letter
to Sir Rupert Hay of Octobor 4, 1952), but His
Highness approaches the idea with some caution

because, as an Arab Rulor he believes that the
administration of Justice ought to be a prerogative
of the Ruler and his family, and ho is jealous of
that prerogative escaping into other hands, It is
not an unreasonable attitudo, justified as it is not

only by Arab history, but by the history of other
nations also: wo ourselves hold in theory (or at
least in common beliof) that the Sovereign is the
original fount of Justice, Out task in Bahrain
should be to make tho delegation of his prerogatives

/to...