Harper Lee’s fictional lawyer Atticus Finch would make any shortlist of figures who have done the most to inspire a career in law. That inspiration is based on his depiction in To Kill A Mockingbird, in which he risks his life to prevent his black client being lynched. My eldest daughter is among the book’s fans, which led her to read its sequel Go Set A Watchman, in which an older Atticus is revealed as a white supremacist. Trying to make sense of what many see as a disappointing character mismatch, my daughter said of the earlier book: ‘I think he was just being a good lawyer.’
In other words Atticus had reprehensible views, but as a professional he stood by the right to representation and the authority of the court. Maybe, albeit through the fog of racial prejudice, he could also see a basic practical truth – that such rule of law points are, as the Law Society’s president said this week, key to a ‘functioning society’.
This week we are presented with mounting evidence that many real-life politicians don’t get the point, and would like to diverge from the basics. The legal charity Justice describes a ‘parlous state’ for the rule of law in the UK, in a report published this week. It points to a poor standard of law-making, in which the legal basics are overlooked. The growth of arbitrary ‘Henry VIII’ powers wielded by ministers is cited. Legal aid cuts and hostility towards lawyers also make the list.
Elsewhere, former defence secretary Ben Wallace asserted that the European Convention on Human Rights threatens our ‘national security’. Backlogs in the courts threaten our ability to do the basics.
There was also confirmation that the Department for Education has hired a management consultancy, for £19m, to devise ways to slash spend on special educational needs. That is set out in a DfE contract that, if fulfilled, would mean local authorities had ridden roughshod over children and young people’s legal rights, through advice funded by DfE.
As Justice notes, taken individually no one incident represents a breakdown in the rule of law. But as such issues feature on multiple pages of this week’s Gazette alone, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we are seeing regular and multiple micro-breakdowns in the rule of law.
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