Crown Counsel (Nouvelle Alexandrie)
| Crown Counsel | |
| post-nominal CC | |
 Crown Counsel are appointed by the Crown of Nouvelle Alexandrie. | |
| Overview | |
|---|---|
| Type | Senior rank of the bar (professional honor) |
| Jurisdiction | Nouvelle Alexandrie |
| Informal name | Silk |
| Conferral | |
| Conferred by | The Crown |
| Recommended by | Federal Legal Association and the Chief Justice of the High Court of Justice |
| Eligibility | Advocates on the Roll of Advocates |
| Establishment | |
| Established | 1721 AN |
| Authorizing statute | Federal Legal Association Establishment Act, 1721 |
| Status | Active |
| Legal profession of Nouvelle Alexandrie | |
Crown Counsel (post-nominal CC), informally silk, is the senior rank of the bar of Nouvelle Alexandrie. It is conferred by the Crown on advocates of standing and distinction, on the joint recommendation of the Federal Legal Association of Nouvelle Alexandrie (the Federal Bar) and the Chief Justice of the High Court of Justice. The rank carries precedence within the profession and the right to lead in any cause before the High Court, but it is a mark of honor rather than an office and confers no jurisdiction or emolument of its own.
Crown Counsel was created by the Federal Legal Association Establishment Act, 1721, the statute that founded the Federal Bar and established the Roll of Advocates, the register of advocates entitled to plead before the High Court. Only advocates on the Roll are eligible, and the appointment is made by letters patent under the royal seal. An advocate who receives it is said to take silk, after the silk gown that sets the rank apart from the stuff gown of the junior bar.
Because the High Court is the Federation's court of final appeal and of constitutional review, Crown Counsel lead in much of its most important litigation, and appointment to silk is the principal distinction of the practicing bar.
History
Before 1721 AN, the legal profession of Nouvelle Alexandrie was regulated by local and regional associations of uneven standard. The standing of a senior advocate, one who by custom led in court and was heard ahead of the junior members of the bar, rested on reputation rather than on any formal grade. The Federal Legal Association Establishment Act, 1721 drew the profession together into a single Federal Bar and gave that custom statutory form.
Article 10 of the Act created Crown Counsel as the senior grade of the bar, to be conferred by the Crown on advocates admitted to the Roll of Advocates. The bill was introduced by Deputy Paolo Antonio Aguilar, leader of the Federal Humanist Party and later President of the Government, and received Royal Assent from King Sinchi Roca I. The first Crown Counsel were called in the years that followed, as the Federal Bar enrolled its founding members and the High Court of Justice began to sit.
The rank developed alongside the High Court. As the Court's work came to take in the review of legislation and of elections as well as the final appeal, the advocates who led before it in the Federation's major constitutional causes were almost always Crown Counsel, and the grade came to mark the leaders of the bar. In periods of constitutional strain, among them the Spring Crisis of 1739, leading Crown Counsel argued the cases through which the Federation's institutions were tested.
The first silks
The first Crown Counsel were called in 1723 AN, two years after the Establishment Act came into force and once the founding members of the bar had been enrolled on the Roll of Advocates. The appointments were made by King Sinchi Roca I on the joint recommendation of Aurelio Sandoval, the first President of the Federal Legal Association, and Qatuilla Cuya Huanca, then Chief Justice of the High Court of Justice. Five advocates took silk together: Octavio Mercado of Santander, Amaru Tarqui of the Wechua Nation, Mathilde Aubrey of Alduria, Reynaldo Castellanos of Valencia, and Gérard Pelletier of the Isles of Caputia. Mercado, the senior advocate of the group and a leader of the bar since before the Association was formed, became the first Doyen of the Bar, and his was the first name knotted into the quipu that records the succession of silks.
Appointment
An advocate becomes Crown Counsel by appointment of the King, made by letters patent under the royal seal. The Crown acts on a joint recommendation of the Federal Legal Association and the Chief Justice of the High Court, and may decline any name put forward. The recommendation follows a round of consultation within the profession and the judiciary, in which an advocate's conduct, judgment, and standing before the courts are weighed. The rank is not gained by examination but earned by reputation over a long practice.
Only advocates entered on the Roll of Advocates, who already hold rights of audience before the High Court, may be considered, and in practice the rank is reserved for those of many years' standing. The Association, acting with the High Court, fixes the number to be called in any given year; the number is small, and in some years none are called. Those appointed are entered on a published list maintained by the Association, and the appointment is notified in the Federal Gazette.
Precedence and privileges
Crown Counsel rank ahead of the junior bar and take precedence among themselves by the date of appointment, the senior being the advocate longest in silk. The rank carries the right to lead in any cause before the High Court of Justice. By custom a Crown Counsel appears at the front of the bar and conducts the argument, while a junior advocate prepares the case and supports it in court; in matters of weight a litigant is represented by a Crown Counsel leading one or more juniors.
The post-nominal letters CC follow the holder's name. Precedence at the bar also settles the ceremonial order of the profession, as at the opening of the legal year and at sittings of the full High Court.
Dress and ceremony
The appointment is known as taking silk, after the gown of silk worn by Crown Counsel in place of the stuff gown of the ordinary advocate. In Nouvelle Alexandrie the silk gown is of imperial purple, the color of the Crown. The exchange of the black gown for the purple is spoken of as a rebirth, after the national motto Je renais de mes cendres ("I am reborn from my ashes"), and the advocates raised in a single year are known together as the risen. The gown is worn on formal occasions, among them sittings of the High Court and the opening of the legal year, and the letters patent of appointment bear the royal seal and the crowned phoenix of the Federation.
A new Crown Counsel is called in a short ceremony before the High Court, at which the patent is read, the advocate is robed in silk, and a place is taken within the bar. The Federal Legal Association attends, and the new silk is entered on the Association's roll of Crown Counsel.
Status and the judiciary
Crown Counsel is an honor and not an office. It confers no jurisdiction or emolument of its own, and it does not change an advocate's duties to the courts or to clients. The rank may be suspended or revoked only in the same manner, and on the same grounds, as membership of the Federal Legal Association, through the Association's disciplinary process and subject to the appeal to the High Court that the Establishment Act provides.
By convention, Crown Counsel are prominent among the advocates considered for the bench of the High Court of Justice, whose Justices are nominated by the President of the Government, appointed by the King, and confirmed by the Federal Assembly. Appointment to the bench ends an advocate's practice as Crown Counsel.
Customs and traditions
Each year the bar gathers in Cárdenas for the opening of the legal year. The Crown Counsel process to the High Court in purple silk behind the Chief Justice, led by the Doyen of the Bar (Alexandrian: Doyen du barreau), the advocate longest in silk, who speaks for the profession on ceremonial occasions and is by courtesy heard first when silks appear together. The year's risen are presented at the same sitting.
An advocate of the junior bar learns the work of the silks by devilling, drafting and researching in a Crown Counsel's name without public credit; a silk who takes on such a junior is said to keep a devil, and many name the leader they once devilled for as the making of their practice. A silk may mark a junior who has served well with the gift of a brief bag of purple sewn with a gold cord, an unofficial but coveted sign that the junior is thought bound for silk.
Beside its written roll, the Federal Bar keeps the succession of Crown Counsel in a quipu, the knotted-cord record of the Wechua tradition, as a token of the several peoples of the Federation. The cord is maintained by a quipucamayoc of the Royal Academy of the Wechua Language, who knots in the name of each new silk at the opening of the legal year; where the order of an old call is disputed, the reading of the cord by a quipucamayoc is taken as authoritative, as such readings are in the courts.
A Crown Counsel's silk is personal and is never inherited. On the holder's death the gown is burned and a little of the ash is kept by their chambers, and the bar's phrase for the death of a silk is that the advocate has returned to ashes.
