Whether at the movies or before an audience of the Stamperland Church Women's Guild, there is no getting away from the fact that law, when boiled down to its essence, is philosophy in practice.  What each of us has to decide is, what are we prepared to lose, and do we value it enough?  Austin investigates. 

I had a busy week at and around work, including two trips to Embra and one to… Clarkston. Well, that’s an exaggeration, it was only Stamperland really. Specifically the Stamperland Church ( of Scotland) Women’s Guild. No, I wasn’t applying to join – there are two reasons why I would not be admitted. I was there on an invitation to address the Guild on my work in the law. The week before there had been a woman describing Chinese weddings, so I don’t know if I was an improvement or a disappointment.

I do a fair number of these talks to different groups, often church-based. A few years ago I attended lunch at our local orthodox synagogue, and was made very welcome – especially when I told the ladies and gentlemen that although my full name is Austin Joseph Aloysius Lafferty, my kids have Jewish names – Jonathan and Hannah.

Audiences like the tales of jury trials, the stock of bizarre accounts of human behaviour, and a few celebrity mentions – cases I have done with Donald Findlay, and being on the telly with Shereen Nanjiani etc. but after giving my stories and analysis of the law and the legal system, there is always an ad lib question and answer session.

This is the bit that is difficult to call beforehand. In front of 50 suburban and very charming ladies, you may get technical questions on wills, powers of attorney, how to avoid your house going to the state if you need to go into care, divorce issues (usually for their daughters who have married a wrong ’un), inheritance and inheritance tax problems. But also there are law-and-society questions, and on Tuesday at Stamperland they got straight into that area. The rights and wrongs of the jury system were first, some of the audience having either been on a jury or been witnesses in trials. We got the sentencing policy looked at, but the main event was that chestnut, “ How can you defend someone when you know they’re guilty?”

Most of you out there have been at the parties and the dinner parties and the conversations where non-lawyers ask it. There is a temptation to dismiss it as part of the usual diatribe against crooked/rich/dishonest/horrible lawyers, and to roll your eyes and talk down to your interlocutor – or be patronising or dismissive. But that would be self-defeating. It would at very least fuel the fires of suspicion and even contempt against us.

I on the other hand welcome the question, and use it as my chance to plug one more small gap in the wall of trust and credibility between us and them. The question is an intelligent one, albeit with baggage usually, but whatever the tone, I launch into my statement that you either have a system of innocence assumed, where judgment is by an impartial and selected delegate of society, or...

Or you have the only alternative, which is the lynch mob and the vigilante.

I use this phrase specifically, partly because of its dramatic effect and extreme imagery, but it reflects accurately what happens. I do the more complex technical bit about if the client tells you they did it you can’t properly run a defence as you are an officer of the court and no’ just a mouthpiece by the way. Actually it is probably that bit which is behind some at least of the questioners. The average police drama on the telly shows up the briefs twisting truth, getting their client an advantage at the expense of true justice, and usually looking pretty disreputable generally. No bad thing to reinforce the probity of the profession.

But the rationale should never be forgotten. The scenes of an angry mob shouting abuse and threats at a hastily departing prison van behind a court are all too familiar, but here are two other things to think about:

First, as a devotee of Radio 4, I listened all week to the serialised John Christopher story The Death of Grass, a science fiction tale about what would happen if a virus wiped out all grasses, starting with rice ( in China of course) and migrating to all wheats, grass itself, oats and the rest. The virus spreads, as they do, all over the world. Christopher is a master at this genre – in the John Wyndham mould, with The Tripods and The Guardians being among my favourite SF novels ever. As well as describing the geopolitical fallout in other countries (riots and eventually cannibalism in Asia, Pakistan invading countries all the way to the Med), Britain eventually falls victim , and there are no crops at all. Stocks get exhausted, there is no effective treatment for the virus, and civilisation breaks down. The law of the land quickly transmutes into the law of the group and the law of the weapon. Even with those well-disposed to justice are forced to make literally life-and-death choices. Those without scruples just turn violent. The narrative was gripping, and I guess the moral was clear. The only jarring note was that the narration and one of the characterisations appeared to be David Mitchell, the comedian of Mitchell & Webb fame. I couldn’t work out if this made the story more credible or less.

The other thing is our current economic crisis. A couple of weeks ago I mused on some of the societal effects of the crunch, and while I don’t want to be a breakdown-of-civilisation jessy, I can’t help feeling there is a brink we are not yet teetering on, but is there just over the horizon. Every day I hear of friends or acquaintances losing jobs – not least in the legal profession – with the knock-on effects about mortgages, living standards, future prospects, perhaps family relationships. Ok, apocalypse now is not perhaps yet the most obvious destiny for us, but when might rage and frustration boil over, even locally or sporadically? What will the Japanese do when their record-breaking economic recession changes their jobs-for-life culture irrevocably?

Let’s hope it all stays in an alternative universe, such as that portrayed in Watchmen, the new superhero- noir blockbuster. I confess that I went to see it at the weekend - again on my own as I did with the The Wrestler, my family being less bloodthirsty than I when it comes to the pictures. In the Watchmen world, masked vigilantes shoot and maim with relative impunity, and the rule of law is an aspiration more observed in the breach.

So I am not yet a prophet of doom. But whether with the douce ladies of Stamperland Church, or the costumed mayhem of the science fiction oeuvre, you can’t help being reminded how much we have to lose.

Austin