Buri Kidu - Independence of The Judiciary

Independence of The Judiciary

The Constitution of Papua New Guinea left the judiciary of PNG in a somewhat anomalous position, deeming as it did the case law of the English superior courts as of the date of PNG Independence to be part of the "underlying law" of Papua New Guinea (i.e. the indigenous common law) whereas the decisions of the pre-Independence Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea were to be foreign law, on an equal footing as to persuasiveness with the decisions of other superior courts in countries having similar legal systems — most obviously Australia, but also New Zealand and Canada, as well as post-1975 England. This left the post-Independence PNG courts with somewhat a clean slate, though given that the immediately post-Independence Supreme and National Court personnel were the same as those who had occupied the Bench immediately prior to Independence, it was not immediately apparent that this was a conundrum.

With the Rooney Affair (see Law of Papua New Guinea) it became obvious that a watershed had been reached: would the judiciary now toe a political line, as in many other developing countries, or would it continue to be forthrightly independent of political interference?

In fact the Supreme and National Courts of PNG under Sir Buri Kidu stoutly maintained a firm adherence to judicial precedent as mandated by the Constitution, even to the extent of adhering to pre-1975 English precedent when Australian and other non-English common law jurisdictions had departed from such precedent (see Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea).