Abolish the silk trade!

I dreamt I was listening in on a Supreme Court matter in which some unnamed person was petitioning the court (coram) to rule whether silk ought to abolished. Thought you might wish to be a part of my dreams (to turn Trinbago into the paradise isles they were created to be, but, are not). Here goes!

The essence of the case
Are silks any longer relevant to any modern legal jurisprudence?

The current situation
To qualify for appointment as assessors of the artifice of all attorneys, judges and magistrates are themselves required to be attorneys. In Trinbago, though the legal professions were fused eons ago, attorneys are still legally-graded -there is Junior Counsel and there is Senior Counsel.

The distinction and privileges enjoined upon and enjoyed by the two have been already articulately and aggressively adumbrated, so no need here to detail them, except by reminding that, unsilked lawyers who become judges and magistrates always demure to their silk-clad brothers and sisters in law appearing before them, rather than regard them as mere supplicants. Furthermore, that in certain matters, it is required the litigants engage Senior Counsel...else, no case.

Clearly, the instant matter is of heavy import, for the ordinary citizen is the one who stands most to benefit by its resolution. For that purpose, the thinking here applied reaches outside the box rather than within cloistered quarters.

The precedents
One famous melodic adage advises:

Lean on me when you're not strong, I'll be your friend, I'll help you carry on.

A prosed second that:

Out of evil, good sometimes cometh.

And, a prosed third, that:

Advocacy is a business whose stock in trade is the time and advice lawyers offer for sale

As a friend of what's right and proper, this coram has heavily heeded the latter two. Thus, it has decided the silk trade is so muddled there is need to hasten its rectification, for silk, being what it is, its purchase does not come cheap!

The decision
Let the Invisible Hand determine who is top dog in the advocacy business, the same way the Invisible Hand does with any other business that provides/offers goods and services to the buying public.

Nationally and internationally, Trinbago has long established and or portrayed itself as an open market economy. Indeed, many laws which offered preferential treatment to particular business interests have long been repealed, or, where not repealed, no longer enforced. In passing, this coram notes that nothing yet has been done to remove the Fuel Subsidy, though it is clear it benefits not those for whom it was intended.

To remove all doubt, the coram states its unanimous agreement that the Law has no business codifying professions in a manner that forces conjecture as to how and why such codes are set and enforced. Accordingly, any such practice by the Law, except as hereinabove ordered, must cease.

Layman's interpretation of what the above judgement means
So, Honourable Members of Parliament, having already defused the distinction -by fusing legal professions of barrister and solicitor into one- the time is come to make the necessary circle-completing constitutional rearrangements. And there is no better way to do that than by altogether abolishing the silk trade! With no silk trade, the clients decide who is the best attorney to suit their purpose, hence, by their fruit, not their suit, the attorneys themselves will have to demonstrate the mettle of their high-priced accolade.

On 7 January 2012 06:24, MFRahman <mfr1@tstt.net.tt> wrote:

MFRahman. 683 4698.  7/1/12.

Diminishing the CCJ.

“Precedent is no criterion for correctness.” Yet impropriety has its degrees and a speck in another’s eye is the greater magnified by him who surveys with a beam in his own.

What ought merely to have raised eyebrows received venom befitting criminal culpability from sanctimonious colleagues who were silent as lambs in serial precedent instances and worse whose own practices can ill afford scrutiny of similar degree.

Our silken road if ever it were trod by donkey carts was much so traversed by earlier luminaries whose vanities were never criticized least of all so vociferously as by current agitators.

The taint of political bias is flagrant in the current campaign that has forced the eminent Chief Justice Ivor Archie and Justice of Appeal Wendell Kangaloo to admit tacitly that they erred in judgment when they are innocent of having sought honour as their predecessors did.

Rather than cleanse the Judiciary of any imagined taint, the politically driven saboteurs have diminished the stature of two distinguished luminaries who did not stand to benefit basely from the accolade they received.

There are ways to accomplish rectification in camera, and any perception of irregularity ought to have been addressed thusly rather than publicly in the unseemly manner in which it was done.

There clearly is some vendetta against the CJ and JA that has manifested.
What cannot be disregarded is that the iconoclasts all live in glass houses and purport to stand on holier ground.

No ascendant CJ has ever relinquished his Silk, no temporary Judge has ever suspended his Silk, and no SC his ever surrendered  his Silk after being humiliated by the Privy Council for immature Counsel.

Hypocrisy has laboured to slander innocent men.

With such a skewed and vicious perspective demonstrated by its head, the CCJ has found itself plunged into diminution in some eyes.

The ship of Justice has foundered on the shoals of political expediency as criticism intended against the political directorate has exploded within its hallowed stateroom.

The wider issues of propriety regarding legal recipients such as PM, AG, DPP and others are dealt with in detail in the statement by new SC Mr. Surendranath Capildeo and need not be repeated. One hopes that these will stand their ground as firmly as others have been allowed to by the earlier approving silence of current dissidents.

A misperceived indiscretion has been made scandalous by men who preferred to urge on a donkey cart across our luminous legal highway.

The continuing contributions through our learned CJ’s publications, essentially Higher Counsel of the loftiest order, cannot now be appropriately recognized. Outstanding Judges who must rubbish SC’s arguments must do so from a disadvantaged position.

The arguments of compromising judiciary status is patently specious since any award by the state must have the same effect.

Hypocrisy and slander have temporarily become the stock in trade of a few. Mature reflection has been aborted and reason has fled to brutish beasts.

MFRahman.