The Gazette 1979

GAZETTE

SEPTEMBER 1979

Service for the Opening of the Michaelmas Law Term St. Michan's Chu r ch, Dublin, Monday, 1st October 1979 (The Archbishop of Dublin, DR . HENRY McADOO)

summing up what he sees as the Christian basis of law- administration, and we shall see that some things do not change and must not change if we are to contribute to achieving a measure of the just society for our own time and place. These verses from the Book of Job, he says, spell out four duties for all in positions of authority "and more especially for those that are in the Magistracy, or in any office appertaining to Justice." And he continues "Those duties are four. One, and the first, as a more transcendent and fundamental duty. The other three, as accessory helps thereto. . .. that first is, a care and love and zeal of Justice. A good Magistrate should so make account of the administration of Justice, as of his chiefest business, making it his greatest glory and delight: v. 14 / put on righteousness, and it clothed me: my judgement was as robe and diadem. The second is a forwardness unto the works of mercy, and charity, and compassion. A good Magistrate should have compassion of those that stand in need of his help, and be helpful unto them: v. 15 and 16 I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame: I was a father to the poor. The third is diligence in examination. A good Magistrate should not be hasty to credit the first tale, or be carried away with light informations; but he should hear, and examine, and scan, and sift matters as narrowly as may be for the find- ing out of the turth: v. 16 And the cause which I knew not I searched out. The fourth is courage and resolution in executing. A good Magistrate, when he goeth upon sure grounds, should not fear the faces of men, be they never so mighty or many; but without respect of persons execute that which is equal and right even upon the greatest offender: v. 17 And I brake the jaws of the wicked and plucked the spoil out of his teeth."* Four necessary qualities then he sees - a zeal for justice and fair play, the steady exercise of charity and compassion, the careful uncovering of the truth of the situation and a courageous impartiality. As in a mirror, a mirror cast centuries ago, we see the face of our own times and their needs reflected. We see more, for we discern things that do not change; principles which bear on human needs and situations and which remain valid and essential for the man of the atomic era just as much as for the man who endured the political and economic upheavals of civil war in seventeenth-century England. More still, we can descry the features of a great truth, the great truth for the members of "the household of faith," (Gal. 6: 10), the truth which explains why these principles of justice and charity cannot alter or be affected by time's corrosion or by changing fashions. It is because they are themselves reflections on that central and living truth Hensley Henson used to call it "the great text" "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." (Heb. 13:8). •Sermon I Ad Magistratum (L.A.C.T. ed Vol. II pp 173-4).

The ultimate context of this Service for the opening of the Law Term is that of a society whose presuppositions are Christian. Yet it is a society very much in via; a society in a state of becoming; a society in which the effort to express its Christian presuppositions in practice is in continuing conflict with human greed, envy and violence; a society in which the quest for justice takes many forms and encounters hydra-headed opposition. It is a society seeking not to be become a Utopia but a society groping through countless setbacks after the realisation of its best self while at the same time recogniz- ing that its very structures are open to radical criticism and can even lend themselves to injustice. Social settings change: yesterday's economic dogma becomes to-day's economic heresy. Emphases in politics change in their distribution and vary in the manner of their application, but justice in its essence does not change and moulds and controls the forms and instruments of its own administration. I was forcibly struck by this when last week I turned up a sermon delivered to the magistrates at Grantham in Lincoln in the year 1623. It was delivered by a famous Anglican, Robert Sanderson, a victim of the Cromwellian overthrow of the English Church, later in happier days to become Bishop of Lincoln and one of the outstanding moral theologians of the Anglican Church. He courageously applied the principles of justice to the social abuses of his own time. Nor did he shrink from con- demning the contemporary oppression of the rural poor by nobles and rich men, and doing so publicly to their faces when preaching before the Court. The sermon he preached to the magistrates on that June day three hundred and fifty-six years ago illustrates the essentials which do not and cannot change if im- perfect men are to administer justice to and for their im- perfect brethren. It must have taken three quarters of an hour to deliver, so I suppose that seventeenth-century hearers were endowed with a stamina matching that of their clergy in the pulpit. Things are different now — so, recognizing that our society provides the ultimate context, may we for a few minutes allow Sanderson's theme to set the tone and to provide the immediate context for the work of this dis- tinguished gathering whose members, at the different levels of the administration of justice, are continuously serving their fellows as individuals and serving the nation as a whole. Sanderson took a superb passage from the Book of Job (29:14 -17) and made of it a brief guide for the interpreter and administrator of law and justice: "I put on righteous- ness, and it clothed me: my judgment was as a robe and diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet I was to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. And I brake the jaws of the wicked, and plucked the spoil out of his teeth." And so let Sanderson preach to us in his paragraph 2 1 0