This was again a discussion on http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=41530697270&topic=6552
Ashim Sood about a minute ago "Amid the clash of arms, the laws are not silent", said Lord Atkin famously. This must be the mandate of every lawyer today. It is in times of strife and hurt, times such as the present, that the mettle of a democracy is tested. The results have historically been abysmal. From Liversidge v. Anderson, to Korematsu, to our own Fundamental Rights case, judges have famously bowed to popular sentiment and taken the easy, rather than the high road. A dissent, no matter how eloquent and ultimately famous, is really only the afterthought to an infamous verdict. The recent terror attacks will bring another brand of evil to our courts. Suspects will be picked up in midnight raids, and some will invariably be innocents, just as some are undoubtedly bound to be proven guilty. A scathed populace and a scathing media will bay for blood. Undertrials will not have the benefit of being mere suspects, or of their actions being alleged. In the public eye they will be deemed perpetrators and therefore guilty. Lawyers will be urged - perhaps threatened - not to represent these creatures of a treacherous ilk. If lawyers accede to such pressure, indeed, the temptation to believe that every suspect is guilty and that retribution is at hand, then alas, this abrogation of our legal objectivity will be the last unsung victim of terror. Certainly, we must oppose laws such as POTA, which famously destroyed the attorney-client privilege (a sycophant Supreme Court ruling it a testamentary, rather than fundamental, right). But that is not the biggest battle in this war. A greater battle lies in resisting public opinion daily in a courtroom, in standing between bench and bar, advocating for a man accused of heinous crimes, in making certain that there is only one judge in a courtroom, and that that judge is the only one burdened with the task of judging. As lawyers, our battle is to fight, struggle, exert every sinew in the defense of our client, no matter who that client is and what he stands accused of. We were trained for times like these, when our hard fought freedoms are preserved or finally killed. We must keep those freedoms alive and available to every individual who will stand in the dock accused of a crime. Anything short of that, and we will blur the lines between our democracy and the terror that threatens it. To expect members of the public or the media to sympathize with, empathize with, or even tolerate our vigorous defense is to expect too much. It is also likely pointless to explain to them that the battle lines for the rights of the accused must remain inflexible - not for the sake of that one prisoner, but for the sake of all their freedoms too. No matter - as lawyers, it is our job, not theirs, to understand the dangers of a flawed judicial process to our citizenry. The state and populist politicians have an interest in demonstrating that justice was done. We are the only ones who are capable of actually knowing whether it was. We must fight in the days to come to make sure that it is. Reply to Ashim<http://www.facebook.com/edittopic.php?uid=41530697270&topic=6552&action=4&reply_to=27859>Mark as Irrelevant<http://www.facebook.com/edittopic.php?uid=41530697270&topic=6552&action=64&post=27859> Report <http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=41530697270&topic=6552#>Delete Post<http://www.facebook.com/edittopic.php?uid=41530697270&topic=6552&action=256> -- Bobby Kunhu http://community.eldis.org/myshkin/Blog/ --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
