Baroness Kennedy and the law

Just Law. Helena Kennedy. Chatto and Windus. [pounds sterling]20.00. xi + 333 pages. ISBN 0-701-7506-0.

Think of a leading woman QC, firm-minded, clear of thought and speech, prominent in Left-wing cases and causes--and a high earner: no, not Cherie Blair--the other one: Baroness Kennedy, a leading member of North London's leftish intelligentsia and a full member of the Good and the Great, that small group which emerges in every generation to take inquiries, head Government bodies and let its views be known, especially when they are critical of the Government. Baroness Kennedy is not happy about the way things are going in the law, and wants to tell us why. On page four she lists eighteen examples of steps taken or being taken, beginning with internment without trial of suspect aliens and ending with removal of judicial review in asylum cases, which she finds illiberal or unintelligent, and it is the lack of intelligence which upsets her the more. These are symptoms of a general malaise, of which the Home Office is the greatest pustule. She has nothing good to say about recent Home Secretaries, and is disappointed that a Labour Government could not find more generous spirits that Messrs. Straw and Blunkett. (She wrote before Mr Blunkett's exit from H.M. Government.) The phrase 'a liberal Home Secretary' is, of course, a contradiction in terms; it is a pity Helena Kennedy has never done a stint as a junior Minister there, to realise that it is the Department which sees most of human wickedness, and not much else, and that a year there strips away most illusions.

The writing cannot well be bettered. Helena Kennedy writes with clarity and force, gives many examples and anecdotes, sticks to facts and keeps one turning the page (and feeling glad one has not met her at work as a witness for the other side). Surprisingly for someone whose practice is mainly in the criminal law, she remains an idealist, and has a Platonic conception of what the law should be. Her opening sentences set the tone: 'The Law is the bedrock of a nation; it tells us who we are, what we value, who has power and who hasn't. Almost nothing has more impact on our lives. The law is entangled with our everyday existence, regulating our social relations and our business dealings, controlling conduct which could threaten our safety and security, establishing the rules by which we live. It is the baseline'. These are words which could only be written by someone who has lived in the law and done very well out of it. They ignore the fact that ninety per cent of us avoid the law and have as little to do with it as possible, meeting a solicitor perhaps once a decade when we buy a house or make a will. Good solicitors tell clients to stay out of court at any price, in the spirit of Kai Lung's remark that it is better to lose nine changes of raiment than to win a lawsuit. The great exception, of course, comes when we get into our car; the law then bears down on us, omnipresent, ferocious and interfering, telling us to drive at 30 when 40 would be perfectly safe, and catching us at random on one per cent of the occasions when we have broken it.

Helena Kennedy's other underlying idea is that criminals should be treated equitably, precisely and mercifully. She doesn't quote the great biblical injunction 'to do justice but to love mercy', but that is the general drift. Perhaps, after her year in the Home Office, one could prescribe a year living on a sink estate in an inner city, where Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, for which she has little use, are seen as the absolute minimum necessary, very little and very late. Her prescription for youthful offenders is lots and lots of social work plus money for youth clubs, etc. Meanwhile, most of the population thinks that the mass of drug-taking, car-stealing, vandalism and plain threatening rudeness constitutes a slowly rising tide of disorder, that we do not know yet what to do about it, that more social work is unlikely to be the long-term answer, but that in the meantime rough policing and prompt punishment are the dyke that holds the tide back.

This is only a partial summary. The book is packed with informative and useful things about, for example, judges, the law as a profession, human rights and the place of British law in the international scheme of things. There is a very good chapter on the Press and the Law which makes one recall Gandhi's remark when asked what he thought of Western civilisation: 'It would be a good thing'. The same could be said about a free Press. What we have is a Press controlled by owners interested in the bottom line, and taking credit for not interfering editorially.

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