The Legal Eagles

I carry on with my reading of Glenn Knight’s The Prosecutor. On pg 29, Glenn Knight described the character of Chief Justice Wee Chong Jin, who he said was the only Chief Justice whom he had to deal with, and who was the person who had interviewed him for a position at the attorney general chambers.

“He was greatly admired by his peers and critics alike. If he was convinced that there was an intention to commit a crime, he would not hesitate to find an accused person guilty, even if it meant that the death penalty had to be meted out. His judgments, even if they were brief, were well-written and demonstrated the clarity of his legal mind.”

Included was an excerpt of Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong’s address at the launch of the book, The First Chief : Wee Chong Jin – A Judicial Portrait – “Chong Jin was the dominant judge of his time. He administered justice with a firm hand, quiet dignity and fairness. His great virtue was not to say too much in court. He did not find it prudent to state a principle of law wider than necessary to dispose of the point in issue. His judgments will live on in the law reports, but over time they will be cited less and less as successor judges leave their own imprint on the judicial canvass.”

This reminds me of a verse in the apocrypha book of Ecclesiasticus/Sirach, which states “Do not aspire to be a judge, unless you have the strength to put an end to injustice; for you may be intimidated by a man of rank and so compromise your integrity.” (Ecclesiasticus 6:6). I would be hesitant on accepting a verse in an apocrypha as good moral teaching, but this verse sounds reasonable in what it says. Indeed, a judge needs both a prodigious intelligence, as well as the moral verve to mete out the right judgment without fear or favour. But further, this verse exhorts a person to not aspire for high positions in society unless he has the courage and tenacity to see to his duty. As a judge, I suppose there would be an onus on the person’s part to protect the integrity of the constitution, as well as to ensure judicial independence within Singapore’s tripartite Westminster model of governance.

Another prominent figure that Glenn Knight described in the chapter is David Marshall, who was also Singapore’s first Chief Minister from 1955 to 1956.

“We always remember Ghows (the Solicitor General succeeding Francis Seow) as eternally intimidate by what David Marshall could bring to the table when defending a case. Marshall was in a class of his own altogether, his legal manoeuvrings often made you wonder just how to deal with him. He was a great man and many a time, lawyers were found to be quite wanting when they went up against him. Once, there was a rape case where the allegedly raped female victim made Marshall look very weak in her testimony. Many of us could not understand why he allowed her to publicly get the better of him, that even the Deputy Public Prosecutor who was in charge of the case openly bragged that the alleged victim had taken Marshall to task. It was only at the end of the trial when the judge had to render a verdict that Marshall’s gambit became apparent. He had merely pretended to be a weak advocate and proved to the High Court judge, Justice Dennis D’Cotta, that there was no way that this alleged victim could have been as submissive as she had claimed to be when she was raped, when she clearly demonstrated to the court that she could even take a seasoned veteran advocate like himself to task. Needless to say, Justice D’Cotta acquitted the accused. Here, David Marshall showed just how versatile and formidable and opponent he could be.”

I sometimes have the suspicion that the adversarial judicial system makes a case into something more like a game between lawyers. It becomes simply a battle of wit, with the case panning out to the better lawyer. I think it worth considering whether justice was indeed served in the case, or whether judgment was given to the lawyer with the better presentation and eloquence.

Anyway, I have heard much about David Marshall as a lawyer. He was legendary. It is said that he was a better lawyer than he was a politician. He was very good at obtaining an acquittal for almost all the convicts that he defended in trial because he held sway on the jury with his exceptional eloquence. This was during the time where criminal trials were conducted by a jury. So much so that one of the first thing that former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who was also a lawyer, did when he became Prime Minister was to abolish the jury system and make them judge runned trials instead. As Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew described to the BBC and in his memoirs, due to his experiences as a trial lawyer, "I had no faith in a system that allowed the superstition, ignorance, biases, and prejudices of seven jurymen to determine guilt or innocence."

I truly suspect that there will be the likes of such legal eagles within my cohort in law school. The best bet would be those who appear on the dean’s list. Then there are those who do well in mooting and trial advocacy competitions. Those would make good litigation lawyers, and have their future as partners of firms and senior counsels.

As an afterthought to my reading, we need intelligent people to operate our judicial system. This includes the likes of judges, academicians, and lawyers, in order that the judicial system can be runned effectively and carry out its duties to the public. And we also need people of integrity and moral courage. I certainly hope I am fit to play a role in the judicial system, but if I am not, I will have to be humble enough to accept other callings in life.