Reports Commissioners - Criminal Law (1847-1848)

Author(s): The Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the criminal law in the Channel Islands

Title: Second Report of the Commissioners appointed to inquire into the state of the criminal law in the Channel Islands; Guernsey; with minutes of evidence, and index.

Remarks:

Following agitation in Jersey, the barristers Thomas Flower Ellis and Thomas Bros were appointed by Royal Commission of 16 May 1846 to investigate, in all the Channel Islands, the subject of the titles of their reports, appearing for Jersey in 1847 and Guernsey the following year. Their recommendations for Guernsey and their subsequent adoption in legislation (or not) are helpfully listed in Dr Crossan's Appendix Six (see below). Le Quesne (p. 20) thought the Commissioners "admirably chosen", although Stéphanie Nicolle, not unreasonably, identified in them "... an inability to adjust to the fact that they were in a different jurisdiction than their own" (p. 92). The Report's index is seriously defective. Edition(s) (this copy in bold): 1848 (this copy forms part of the third of the fourteen volumes of Reports from Commissioners 1847-48 and as such is bound with the more general Fourth Report from Her Majesty's Commissioners for revising and consolidating the Criminal Law). Provenance of this copy: St John Robilliard Collection

Further reading:

R-M. Crossan, Criminal Justice in Guernsey 1680-1929 (Benderloch, Argyll, 2021).

G. Dawes, "Introduction" to G. Dawes (ed.), G. Terrien, Commentaires du Droict Civil (Guernsey, 2010), pp. 54-58.

G. Le Quesne, Jersey and Whitehall in the mid-nineteenth century (3rd Joan Stevens Memorial Lecture, Jersey, 1992).

S. Nicolle, The Origin and Development of Jersey Law: an outline guide (fifth edn, Jersey, 2009).