ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½

A debate this week has been taking place in public across one of the key faultlines of national life. The important relationship between legislators- our elected politicians- and the operation of our independent justice system.

The serving Director of Public Prosecutions unusually intervened after the collapse of a case against two men accused of spying for China. While the government expressed ‘frustration’ at the outcome, Stephen Parkinson said it collapsed because of a government failure to supply evidence referring to China as a threat to national security. In the same week, an opposition politician criticised what he called ‘activist judges’ on the issue of immigration. These interventions in public are historically unusual in themselves, arguably becoming more common: but they can also be seen as a feature of a legal system which debates its evolution through case law and precedent. And champions the strong commitment to independent interpretation of any legislation passed by elected politicians.

A former Attorney General from the early seventeenth century, at a time when the relative places of law, parliament -and the church- were being debated (and were soon to be violently changed), said famously that ‘our laws are as mixed as our language’. Sir Francis Bacon was making the point that just as languages have mixed and sometimes contradictory cultural roots, evolving as they go, so does the law of this land as it is constituted. Not top down but bottom up. This system of checks and balances with regard to the exercise of power over the making and keeping of laws, arguably gives the best chance for societal change to be evolution rather than revolution.

Christ spent a lot of time answering questions from lawyers, mostly not giving a straight answer but replying with a question or a parable. It was a lawyer for instance who asked the question ‘who is my neighbour’ that elicited the powerful story of the Good Samaritan. Christ’s teaching in the gospels emphasises both the letter of the law being fulfilled, at the same time as the spirit of the law being paramount.

In a society such as ours, the letter and the spirit of the law find expression in the courtroom principles of advocacy, testimony and judgement enacted every day by solicitors, barristers, witnesses, juries and judges. But in public conversation, the principle of maintaining trust while offering challenge in the relationship between legislators and the operation of the law is vital.

And as individuals, in contemplating similar principles of the exercise of power, trust and the promise to tell the whole truth, an adaptation of an old preacher’s question comes to mind: if I were in the dock for living a just life, would there be enough evidence to convict me?

Show less