Fraternity-Testvériség, 1970 (48. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1970-02-01 / 2. szám
A British Judge Asks: What Good Is Freedom Without Law and Order? Lord Denning The United States and Great Britain are vastly different but also greatly alike. So when an astute Englishman, the most important civil judge in a judicial system which has common roots with ours, talks about how best to administer the law, he’s worth listening to. Lord Denning, master of the rolls of London’s Royal Court of Justice, spoke a while back to the California Bar Association in San Francisco about such things as delays in American courts in bringing cases to trial, about striving for perfection in protecting defendants, and about striking a balance between the rights of individuals and of civilized society. He touched a nerve end of America when he asked: “Have the rules for the protection of the innocent been extended so far that the door is opened to many guilty men? . . . And freedom, what good is freedom if we do not have law and order?” Here are other excerpts from Lord Denning’s speech: “Freedom, we have stressed through the centuries. But we are coming to think that equally important is the security of decent, right-thinking people. “Freedom, we know, means the freedom of every man to think what he will, to say what he will, to go where he will, on all his lawful occasions without . . . hindrance (from) anyone, save as prevented by law. “Yes, but what good is any man’s freedom to him if his home is invaded by thieves and robbers who are not caught; if his womenfolk are to be assaulted; if his security is in jeopardy? “What good is freedom to us unless . . . our state . . . is secure? “We must maintain the freedom— or rather, the right—of society to arrest those who commit crimes, to search them, to detain them, for the protection of the community at large. ... If conspirators are conspiring against our state or our security, there should, under proper safeguards, be a right in society even to tap wires. “But here is a problem. The power to arrest can be abused. The power to detain can be violated. The power to wiretap can lead to tyranny and oppression. All these safeguards of society, once abused, can lead to the police state in a tyranny worse than we’ve ever known. “The problem is to find the balance, the balance between the freedom of the individual on the one hand, and the security of a civilized society on the other.” Lord Denning then turned to comparing the speed of trials in England with those in the United States. In England, he said, everyone arrested is tried within eight weeks — “the greatest length between arrest and trial.” Some American defendants are not tried for two or three years—or even longer. British courts do not necessarily grant a defendant bail. Lord Denning defended this controversial practice. “When a man is arrested for a serious offense - let it be murder, rape, bank raid or the like—in England we do not allow this man out on bail,” he said. “We keep him in prison pending his trial. It isn’t necessary to show that he may abscond. If there’s reason to think that he may commit another offense, we do not let him out so that he may do it pending trial.” On the matter of leaning over backward to achieve the perfect trial, Lord Denning said, “I often think that whilst we’ve been busy clearing the innocent, our rules have let the neck get too wide, and the guilty are only too often not convicted and punished, but they escape through the door which the law has opened. “Just think of the next step. In the United States you have a fundamental principle that if evidence is unlawfully obtained, nothing which results from it can be given in evidence in the courts. In England we don’t go as far as that. “Supposing a man makes a confession, in the course of which he says where he hid the stolen goods, and a police officer goes and finds those stolen goods. That evidence as to those stolen goods is admissible before the jury, even though there may be something wrong in the way the confession was taken.” Lord Denning advocated the hard line in sentencing the guilty, sometimes, as a means of teaching a lesson. He cited the case several years ago of white hooligans who had beaten up Negroes in London’s Notting Hill section. It was feared there would be more beatings. When the whites came to trial they were given not the six months in prison that might have been expected, but five to seven years. The beatings immediately stopped. Lord Denning told the California lawyers and jurists: “A sentence such as that did a world of good.” END Copyright 1970, Nation’s Business—the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Reprinted from the February issue. 13
