Lawyers and complications of justice

Justice may be difficult to define but nearly everyone can recognise it. It is simply a matter of instinct to know what is fair. In the long-gone days of our forefathers, life was very simple and justice was a straightforward thing. The laws were so few they could be counted on the fingers. They were unwritten but everyone knew them by heart. The sanctions too were forthright and people shaped up to them. Abominations were abominations and the boundaries were clear.

Judgments were firm and punishments certain. Justice was not only plain but was also dispensed with dispatch. Then, the people might have been crude but they were never complicated. They were firmly in control of their lives and there was some form of order from their imperfect humanity.

But with the passage of time and the evolution of man in civilisation, law and justice outgrew the understanding of the ordinary men. It became the lot of the men in black robes, .i.e. lawyers and judges, to learn all the laws, interpret and apply them to the people.

That was the point when life started losing its innocence. The laws thereafter were no longer simple. They have to be written mostly in very complex language, with a series of clauses, paragraphs, sections and sub-sections; packaged in several books as constitution, Acts, statutes and all. And in places where the people have had the historical misfortune of colonisation like Nigeria, the people have to make do with laws written in a foreign language.

Even then, mastery of the foreign language does not guarantee any citizen clear understanding of the law. In the particular case of Nigeria where the law is written in English, even a professor of English still has to have a lawyer by his side to grasp what the law is saying. Sorry, in matters of the law, only lawyers can navigate the high seas of language!

But even at that, one lawyer may not be enough to explain the law to anybody; because lawyers would just not agree between themselves on what the books are saying. Where there are two lawyers there is bound to be at least two opinions. An argument on a word as innocent as “status quo” could drag on for months if not years. At the end of the day, the very substance of the law is lost on the altar of semantics. Justice then suffers a hiccup that may well asphyxiate the entire system. And the man on the street, in the middle of the confusion, is left to wonder “what’s grammar got to do with it”.

As if all that is not enough, the legal application procedure has yet another headache. No longer can disputes be settled the same day before the village head, with sanctions immediately imposed and enforced against the guilty party. Now, people have to wait years before disputes are resolved because the lawyers do not want justice to be rushed. As they often say, “justice rushed is justice crushed”. (Whatever happened to “justice delayed is justice denied!”)

So, all cases must go through the courts and be proved beyond reasonable doubt, including the ones that are pretty much established by evidence. In fact, lawyers have even created allowance for cases to be tried and re-tried. And the process at any level is not free. Whichever side of the divide one finds oneself, money must be spent. And most times, it is big money.

At the courts too, things are not easy because with lawyers (and judges, by implication), justice is not a matter of black or white. There have to be several shades of grey in between. What seems to be a crystal clear case to the ordinary eye could develop dark clouds under the gowns of lawyers and judges.

Whichever way one looks at it, it is clear that lawyers as a professional group would seem to have added to the cost and labour of justice much more than they have added to the value of justice. Some of the complications they brought to the process have only led to a reduction in the achievement of justice in real terms. While the truth of this may apply to a lesser degree in well-organised societies, the situation in our country Nigeria is particularly dire.

The wheel of justice has almost completely lost its firing steam no thanks to our lawyers. First, they craft laws that are not only complex but which are filled with contradictions. Every time people have to go to court for interpretation of almost every word, clause or sentence in the statutes. When the cases get to court, lawyers file all sorts of motions to stultify the process and delay justice. Many of the judges tolerate and entertain all manner of funny motions and appeals and grant all sorts of questionable relief. Conflicting judgments are passed by different judges at the same judicial hierarchy on the same matter involving the same people.

Before it is too late, action must be initiated by our lawyers towards redesigning our legal system. In expression, interpretation and application, our laws must be ranged in favour of justice in its simplest form. The lawyers themselves must conduct themselves with a deeper sense of loyalty to the collective interest of the Nigerian people and society.

Sulaiman Akinosho, Ilasamaja, Lagos, Akinsmile007@gmail.com