Michael Del­blond

Po­lit­i­cal­ly and eco­nom­i­cal­ly, like the rest of the world, we may well be nav­i­gat­ing in un­char­tered re­gions. But "no big deal," as for us "fly­ing blind" has nev­er seemed to be a de­ter­rent, what­ev­er the state of the weath­er. When­ev­er our politi­cians let us down, which is more of­ten than not the case, we can in­vari­ably fall back on the ju­di­cia­ry. Ain't?

Per­haps it's be­cause of the in­creas­ing­ly cru­cial role that our ju­di­cia­ry has been asked to play in re­cent and not-so-re­cent pub­lic con­tro­ver­sies that I found my­self tak­ing yet an­oth­er look at ca­lyp­so's Lewis Car­roll, the Mighty Spoil­er and his lit­tle dit­ty ex­plor­ing the fun­ny sit­u­a­tion of a coun­try mag­is­trate hav­ing "to sit in judg­ment on him­self."

I'm not about to por­tray Spoil­er as "a con­sti­tu­tion­al ex­pert" or his mag­is­trate as an ex­am­ple of what a for­mer CJ once de­scribed as "unadul­ter­at­ed le­gal brandy." Spoil­er's mag­is­trate was caught speed­ing in a coun­try dis­trict and was du­ly charged. Sounds strange? Sounds fa­mil­iar? Be­ing the on­ly mag­is­trate in the dis­trict, it fell to him to try his own case. Le­gal ten­ants such as, "Jus­tice must not on­ly be done but seen to be done...con­flict of in­ter­ests...not be­ing judge in your own cause" didn't seem to ap­ply in this case.

The mag­is­trate sim­ply as­sumed a "dual per­son­al­i­ty" with the as­sis­tance of an "oblig­ing mir­ror." We there­after end­ed up with "He­s­elf" (the pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate) and "Him­self" (the de­fen­dant charged with speed­ing). Ac­cord­ing to Spoil­er, "Well, this one was class/ They charge a mag­is­trate for dri­ving too fast/ But is one court house in the dis­trict/ And he's the on­ly mag­is­trate there to run it."

No prob­lem here. He­s­elf (the mag­is­trate) told Him­self (the ac­cused), "You are charged for speed­ing." Him­self start to shout, "The po­lice­men ly­ing." He­s­elf told Him­self, "Don't shout, this is no sport and he charged him­self for con­tempt of court." "Aha, the mag­is­trate said, let we hear what hap­pen?" So the po­lice said, "You should see how this man could speed, point­ing to the mag­is­trate, John­ny Mead." There up­on the mag­is­trate in­quired as to the iden­ti­ty of the ac­cused. The po­lice­man shout­ed, "Is you, ah mean."

With typ­i­cal Tri­ni in­ge­nu­ity and ju­di­cial ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, which many a ju­di­cial or qua­si-ju­di­cial of­fi­cer could do worse than em­u­late, the mag­is­trate took out a "look­ing glass" (mir­ror) and stern­ly ad­dressed him­self (mir­ror im­age), "Is it true you were dri­ving fast?/One Mr Caruth came in and start­ed to pros­e­cute/ The mag­is­trate then called on his own lawyer/To de­fend the de­fen­dant, who is Your Ho­n­our."

En­sur­ing that the dis­tinc­tion be­tween "mag­is­trate" and "ac­cused" was plain for all to see, the "dual per­son­al­i­ty" farce, the mag­is­trate would look in his mir­ror, some­times se­ri­ous, some­times laugh­ing. At one stage He­s­elf threat­ened Him­self to "take away yuh li­cence book."

Even­tu­al­ly, He­s­elf (the pre­sid­ing mag­is­trate) fined Him­self (the de­fen­dant) $20 and af­ter much beg­ging and plead­ing, the "guilty par­ty" was giv­en five years to pay the fine. Sounds like a com­e­dy skit, doesn't it? But if you know us well enough the facts can more of­ten than not be stranger than fic­tion. Our lo­cal co­me­di­ans claim that with­out the pre­dictable gaffes of our politi­cians and oth­er fig­ures in pub­lic life they couldn't dream or mak­ing a liv­ing from their craft.

In­ci­den­tal­ly, I've nev­er been able to as­cer­tain whether the en­tire episode was sim­ply a fig­ment of Spoil­er's fer­tile imag­i­na­tion. As­sum­ing, of course, that the ca­lyp­son­ian was mak­ing some snide ref­er­ence to some spe­cif­ic "in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct on the part of a le­gal of­fi­cer," we are none the wis­er as to the na­ture of the in­frac­tion of the of­fi­cer's stand­ing and/or iden­ti­ty.

How­ev­er, to­day, in­ap­pro­pri­ate con­duct on the part of ju­di­cial or qua­si-ju­di­cial of­fi­cers-at any rate, con­duct rea­son­ably per­ceived to be so-is un­like­ly to es­cape pub­lic or in­formed, as well as un­in­formed, com­ment and scruti­ny. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a thou­sand times that "the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice is no clois­tered virtue, or the ex­clu­sive pre­serve of the ju­di­cia­ry."

I sup­pose that it's com­mon knowl­edge that the court is not an "elec­toral­ly ac­count­able" in­sti­tu­tion, but one can ar­gue that's in fact one of its strengths and that it's li­able not to be blown "hith­er, thith­er and yon" by "pop­ulist winds" or the im­per­a­tive of the an­tics and histri­on­ics in­volved in "play­ing to the pub­lic gallery."

That's not to say that its watch­word should not be pel­lu­cid trans­paren­cy in the full glare of in­formed (re­peat in­formed) pub­lic opin­ion. The leg­isla­tive arm of gov­er­nance is usu­al­ly held to a low­er stan­dard if any at all. I'm re­mind­ed of the Amer­i­can hu­mourist who opined half in jest that "any­time the US Con­gress pass a law, it's a joke and when they make a joke that's the law."