Page 3319 - Week 12 - Tuesday, 18 September 1990
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that in so many courts it is a search for the precedents? Lawyers find something that they can hang their argument onto and forget the simple and natural justice of things. Justice today still depends on whether you can afford the highest priced lawyers. I do not think anybody would deny that. If you are in a rich corporation taking on civil matters, it is a battle of the top QCs in the land.
The problem goes back centuries, of course. There are three problems in my view - tradition, the mystique that is built up around courts, and the privilege that the courts have always maintained. The courts in early days were designed to keep the establishment classes in safe and secure positions. It was their protection against others. While much of that may have gone, I would not pretend, and I am sure other people would not pretend today, that they are in any ideal situation.
I want to put in a plea to Mr Collaery and others as they consider the future of courts. Let us get some low cost justice - a catchcry these days, I know. Nevertheless, this is an area where too little is being done although the problem is certainly being recognised. I want to say to you: do not lock yourself into this concept of a unified court system. Think of all the other options that are available, and I want shortly to give you some principles that should operate.
As I do so I want to point out that there are three areas generally where we can focus our thoughts if we want a lower cost of justice, a lower cost that will bring some genuine justice to our legal system, and those are the courts, the laws that we make and the legal profession itself. The focus in this speech will be on the courts. Let me again quote Charles Dickens and let us see how much of this would apply today. Referring to the Court of Chancery, he said:
This is the Court of Chancery; which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire; which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse, and its dead in every churchyard; which has its ruined suitor, with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress, ... which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right; which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope; so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart; that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give ... the warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you, rather than come here!".
Keep out of court. It is not a bad message, is it? And it still applies. So I would ask Mr Collaery to think about that. The courts ought to have four principles in mind. The court structure you establish ought to be simple, and it ought to be quick, cheap and fair. I do not think anybody would deny those principles.
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