Its Part in the Growth of Shanghai and Present Importance hal: Wx Mixed Court and Uy A, M. Kotenev, "North: ina Herald, Shanghai. Price #20.
The Mixed Court of the Foreign Settlement of Shanghai is one of the most important of all the courts the world. Annually it deals with an enormous number of cases, both eri the eri inal side comprises anything from a minor first offence to a murder, the civil deals in cases involving millions. Moreover some of these suits have been of so compli-ated a nature that their hearings have gone on for years, To say that certain of them are classic is no more than the truth, and this combined with the fact that the Mixed Court as it appears to-day a special part of the development to the pablic.' This we believe can be found in a publication issued today entitled "Shanghat: its Alixed Court and Council" by A. M. Kotenev.
Early days in Shanghai We have laid special emphasis the Mixed Court in the above paragraph, and the reason for this, is that it appears in the history of the communi nal development typical of Shanghai. There had been in the early days an entirely unsatisfactory method of dealing with any Chinese offenders arrested within the Settlement:
Jepparently they were passed on to: the Chinese officials with a generally.
iadlequate statement of offence and evidence, and ax the community grew something had to be done to create a proper tribunal. So in 1264 the Mixed Court came into being, and in these succeeding years has attained to its present great importance. In connexion with this there is an interesting note in the The vaguenece of the ing to a part. of Europe, im the privilege of extraterritorial Jurisdiction "hardly. can "be called. the Toondation of iting legal status ofthe a giants are Chinese one of the mil in which the the defendant Chinese ising. inthe International Settlement. The origin of this status should. be youpht chiewhere, and Settlement of Shanghai Economical and politi powers, and of constant striving on the part of those responsible for the welfare of the Scitlement (o create an independent Court, ueinfinenced" by the ever Glanging internal situation in China.
To obtain a true appreciation of the position of the Mixed Court today we accordingly have to go buck to the very beginnings of foreign Shanghai, and this is what Mr. Kotenev's book does. He is a painstaking render and investigator, and while this gives his work a first-rate value in the eyes of those requiring a text-book, his writing surrounds his subject with so much iaterest—a great deal of it very human too—that it makes perfectly good reading apart altogether from the utilitarian point of view. The opening two chapters deal with the Gevelopment of." the Municipal Council, and then he comes to the main theme—the Mixed Court. One great thing about the initiating. of ized Court seems to have been that it was unencumbered hard and fast constitution, although ts powers in criminal cases were jetly Himited et that time, These latter of course have. since been greatly extended. Rules were drawn up, and were subsequently destroyed by fire, and new ones had to be made, but these were of such a nature as to allow for the proper development of the tribunal.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.