Page 390 - Records of Bahrain (7) (ii)_Neat

780 Records of Bahrain

5.

to suitably trained persons seem proper and
advantageous to the Ruler, His Highness, however,
is in somo matters a realist: ho must bo presumed
to know his own peoplej and he is, I think, not
unaware of the quality of professional judges,

barristers and others who live by the law in
neighbouring countries, One cannot help sympathising
with his reluctance to deliver the blindfolded lady

over to tho pleasures of people who, he suspects,
might in time achieve the standards of the shabbier
sort of Cairene or Bagdadi lawyer.
7. lie has, as I have previously reportod,
nevertheless agreed in principle both to tho
appointment of a British Judicial Adviser and to

the training of suitable Bahrainis in law. Tho
difficulty about the second thing is that there are
no suitable Bahrainis: at least, there is no young
man of the A1 Khalifah (and I think we must begin

with those) who, in the Adviser's opinion, has
sufficient English to be able to go to the United
Kingdom and both read law and acquire somo experience
of practice. I feel myself that we might do better
by tackling the appointment of a Judicial Adviser

first and, if we succeed there, make it his Job to.
teach the Bahrain Judges procedure as they sit. It
will, of course, be a long and disheartening job,
but given the right sort of Judicial Adviser, not

impossible of at least partial achievement} and I
think it would be less disastrous for the Islond to
havo a body of judges who might not be learned in the
law but who hod a grasp of procedure than to
encourage the emergence of a class of half-baked

/law. • •