The outgoing president warns against making personal attacks on the judiciary
In the second part of NZ Lawyer’s interview with outgoing New Zealand Law Society | Te Kāhui Ture o Aotearoa president Frazer Barton, he listed significant initiatives he’s been part of that have made his time at the helm memorable. In the third part of this interview, Barton discusses reinforcing the importance of the rule of law in New Zealand at a time when it is being threatened in other parts of the world – and why New Zealand also needs to be careful to not follow the same trend.
What’s a key thing the Law Society has focused on in the past year?
I suppose I was always aware of the collegiality in our profession, but [being president] reinforced the importance of the passion lawyers have for their job and for justice. We've done a whole lot of work in the last year on the importance of the rule of law; in the past, we didn't really have to talk about it very much, but as a result of what's happening in other countries, it's right at the top of our agenda. You can't have democracy without the rule of law. You can't have rule of law without access to justice and ideas. You can't have access to justice without effective legal aid. So all these things get combined.
Here in New Zealand, we see some echoes of what's happening in other countries, so we mustn't be complacent. We have to be vigilant and we need to speak up. The Law Society is really vocal on these things through its law reform committees and its submissions to select committees. I think that's an important part of the work we're doing. We don't feel there's a high enough level of awareness in the profession and the public about this. I've been involved with that, but that needs to continue going forward as well.
What are these echoes that you're observing in New Zealand?
We're seeing attacks on judges, verbal attacks. We've always said it's quite acceptable to debate, analyse, and take apart decisions, but it’s getting personal now and that's not acceptable. The judges can't speak up for themselves.
That's our job – to speak up and support them in those circumstances. In the States, it's become acceptable to attack judges. So we need to watch that that doesn't happen here too. And there are certain constitutional values that we need to continue to uphold.
There's too much legislation being done under agency, for example, and that comes through on our report. These are trends over the last 20 or 30 years, and we need to remind people of the importance of some of these basic principles, particularly at this time when we see on the news the decline of democracy in the country that was supposed to be the home of the free and the brave.
