Benjamin Boothby
Australian judge (1803-1868)
Benjamin Boothby (5 February 1803 – 21 June 1868) was a judge in the colony of South Australia. He was removed from office for misbehaviour, one of four Australian supreme court judges removed in the 19th century. He was the father of electoral reformer William Boothby.
Early life
Benjamin Boothby was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, England, on 5 February 1803.
Career
England
Boothby assisted Sir Thomas Wilde in his electoral campaigns and read in his chambers. He was called to the Bar at Gray's Inn in 1825.
South Australia
In 1853, Boothby was appointed a Judge of the Supreme Court of South Australia. This was the last appointment of a South Australian judge by the Colonial Office.
Boothby, in a series of judgments, adopted a pedantic approach to Imperial Law, holding a number of South Australian statutes invalid, including those which introduced the Torrens system of land registration in the colony.
Boothby also asserted that the Parliament of South Australia had not been validly constituted since the enactment of the Constitution Act 1855–56.
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This entry incorporates text from “Benjamin Boothby” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.