Beyond the Magisterial courts there are no other courts regularly sitting. There is indeed a nebulous body named in the Order-in-Council "His Majesty's High Court of Weihaiwei," but this Court very rarely sits. It consists of the Commissioner and a Judge, or of either Commissioner or Judge sitting separately. The Assistant Judge of the British Supreme Court at Shanghai is _ex officio_ Judge of the High Court of Weihaiwei; but the total number of occasions on which his services have been requisitioned in connection with both civil and criminal cases during the last five or six years--that is, since his appointment--is less than ten. The Commissioner, sitting alone as High Court, has in a few instances imposed sentences in the case of offences "punishable with penal servitude for seven years or upwards,"[62] and the Judge has on three or four occasions visited Weihaiwei for the purpose of trying cases of manslaughter. The civil cases tried by the High Court--whether represented by Commissioner or by Judge--number only two, though the civil cases on which judgment is given in Weihaiwei (by the magistrates acting judicially) number from one thousand upwards in a year.
This curious state of things is primarily due to the fact that Weihaiwei, with its slender resources, cannot afford to support a resident judge, and has therefore to content itself with the help, in very exceptional circumstances, of one of the judges of a court situated hundreds of miles away; but the existing conditions, whereby the magistrates perform the work of judges, are legally sanctioned by a clause in the Order-in-Council, which lays it down that "the whole or any part of the jurisdiction and authority of the High Court for or in respect of any district may, subject to the provisions of this Order, and of any Ordinance made thereunder, be exercised by the magistrate (if any) appointed to act for that district and being therein."[63] The rights of the High Court are safeguarded by the declaration that it "shall have concurrent jurisdiction in every such district, and may order any case, civil or criminal, pending before a magistrate, to be removed into the High Court."[64] In practice, it may be said, all criminal cases except the most serious, and all civil cases of any and every kind, are tried in Weihaiwei by the magistrates of the North and South Divisions, acting either as magistrates merely, or as judges with the delegated powers of the High Court.