OPINION/John Waters: I expect I am alone in finding it ironic that on the day after Liam Lawlor finished his sentence for contempt of court, a working group was established to recommend what were termed "root and branch" reforms in the courts system.
I am not alone, I know, in remarking over recent times on the incongruous demeanour of Liam Lawlor: his seeming indifference to the consequences which have been visited upon him, and his absolute refusal, faced with imprisonment, to decline into a gibbering wreck, beat his breast and plead for mercy. He went about his business, dealt with various tribunal and court matters in a manner with which he himself appeared content, and accepted the logic of the system with regard to the inevitable consequences of his responses.
Some people, I know, think Mr Lawlor arrogant. Others have a sneaking respect for what might be termed his cojones. Still more believe that Mr Lawlor is simply stupid. (Although I have never had a conversation with him, I find this implausible.) Mr Lawlor's difficulties relate mainly to the attentions of the Flood tribunal, a forum infamously likened by one senior lawyer to a Star Chamber. You do not have to share this view to be perturbed by the manner in which political expediency has enabled tribunals to sidestep some of the most fundamental safeguards of jurisprudence and natural justice.
For something to invite the kind of radical reforms being mooted in respect of the legal system, there requires to be an acceptance of its serious flaws.
But how, then, can a system so manifestly flawed continue to operate even while reforms are being formulated, still demand the respect of the public and punish those who withhold such respect? It is interesting that it is being left to lawyers to decide where and to what extent such flaws exist. Of the 16 members of the working group, only one is a non-lawyer. This means that those who operate and benefit from the present system will decide how it is to be reformed. The public, which should be regarded as the major partner in the social contract of which the court system is the ultimate custodian, has been excluded.
AMONG the flaws which are acknowledged as besetting the legal system are the high cost of litigation and the long delays in bringing cases to court. Having spent a number of unforgettable days of my life standing in corridors adjacent to courtrooms, surrounded by perhaps three or four lawyers, for each of whom I was paying the equivalent of a month's income to stand around telling me bad jokes, I have often pondered how a system could remotely function along such lines and still call itself a system of justice. For considerably less than I was paying these jokers, I could have flown Billy Connolly in on a chartered Concorde to entertain me in my home. I would idly survey my fellow litigants, seeking to discern from their appearances if they were, economically speaking, any better situated to be there than I was; but mostly I found that, like me, they mostly bought their clothes in Dunnes Stores.
But the cost of litigation is just the beginning. In the past few years I have been inundated with communications from members of the public who, to say the least, have no confidence in our system of justice. Most of their accounts relate to their experiences in the family courts, which are held in private. If I published the details betraying any indication of the identity of a complainant, he (it is usually a he) and I would be jailed.
I received a letter before Christmas from a man who, having separated from his wife, had voluntarily signed over to her the family home, paid for his children's education and made an agreed contribution of £120 weekly maintenance.
On one occasion, when he experienced difficulties making these payments, his wife took him to court and obtained an order for a slightly reduced payment.
LAST summer he lost his job, was again unable to make the payments and found himself back in court. The hearing lasted three minutes. Asked if he had anything to say, he explained that he had no income and was unable to pay. "OK," said the judge, "two months in prison with a stay of three months on the order. Next please." I know there is a huge and growing sense among certain aggrieved sections of the populace that these courts at least, which deal with the most personal and intimate aspects of people's lives, are arbitrary and amoral. I believe also that this growing sense is contributing to a massive decline in belief in an objective and verifiable quality of justice.
And yet, there is no indication that the working group announced last week will have any brief to examine the role of the in camera rule, a rule purportedly designed to protect families but in reality employed to protect those who are fleecing families in the act of destroying them. The Chief Justice, Mr Ronan Keane, is on record as stating that when judicial proceedings occur in secret, corruption is inevitable, and yet he has said also that the secrecy of family courts is for good and obvious reasons. He has declined to elaborate on this.
When all this is taken into account, it occurs to me that Liam Lawlor's demeanour may invite a different interpretation, and that his attitude is something we will become more accustomed to witnessing in this society. For isn't it plausible that the only moral response to a legal system which has become so disconnected from morality, decency and natural justice that it can jail a man for losing his job is, in fact, that of contempt?