However, the Court of Appeal in Jersey in McMahon -v- Attorney General (1993) JLR p.35 and this Court in Century (above) have introduced the English authorities which have interpreted such phrases as that "No appeal shall lie to the Court of Appeal … from any judgment of the High Court in any criminal cause or matter" and applied them to the interpretation of the Appeal Law of 1961. We are of the opinion that this Court has by introducing such authorities run counter to the intention of the legislature in the case of the transfer of the right of appeal from one Court to a successor Court, which in the case of the Guernsey Court was to have an equivalent jurisdiction to that of its predecessor. In the case of the Jersey Court there was, as the Applicants have urged upon us, a distinction from the position in Guernsey in that the Superior Number in Jersey had a jurisdiction which was both civil and criminal. We draw attention in particular to the effect of Art. 13(2) of the Guernsey Appeal Law of 1961; from this section it is apparent that all the appeals awaiting a hearing at the time when the law came into operation were to be transferred to the new Court. We do not think that it is in accordance either with justice or common sense to interpret the Appeal Law of 1961 in such a way that an appeal pending in the Cour des Jugements et Records at the date of the coming in to force of the Appeal Law of 1961 would be lost to the Appellant, because of the construction of a different statutory provision relating to the jurisdiction of a Court in England in an altogether different context.

Reverting to the purpose of the legislation, we do not consider it to be realistic to ascribe to the legislature, when providing for an appeal code, an intention that such matters as those with which we are concerned should fall into a "black hole" between civil and criminal jurisdiction.