An open letter to English lawyers
These are desperate times when a Brazilian lawyer needs to exhort and defend English lawyers.
When I was a child, I dreamed of being a writer. This happened when I read stories. I imagined what it would be like to create characters that would take readers on a journey through books, just as I did.
But I grew up, and after I turned 15, I no longer had time to dream because I had to work to pay for my studies. And I continued studying for a long time and eventually became a lawyer. Which is still the realization of the dream of writing stories, because that's basically what lawyers do: they properly narrate to the court something that happened to their clients, something that has legal relevance and can be demonstrated in some legitimate way in court.
Lawsuits are sometimes dramatic stories of people with legal problems, but they can only be resolved according to more or less fixed scripts prescribed by law and defined by case law. A part of me, however, continues to dream of other types of stories, which I transform into short stories.
My characters usually don't have names, and they struggle in curious situations that defy logic and live in the cracks of incoherence that exist beneath the coherent surface of everyday reality. I have some readers, not many, it's true. But that doesn't matter, because I don't write short stories to gain an audience, make money, or become famous. I do it because I enjoy it...
But despite the playful aspects of my profession, I sometimes dislike being a lawyer. This usually happens when my clients' stories aren't resolved in court according to the law and contradict understandings solidified by case law.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not sad because my professional skills were somehow deemed insufficient. What makes me sad is knowing that an injustice committed by a court always becomes a new, unsolvable drama. Injustices are never forgotten, especially when they are grotesque and visible to everyone.
There are also dramatic stories created by the Legislature itself. Unjust laws force judges to resolve the stories of people with legal problems unfairly, which is in itself a double burden for lawsuit writers to bear. Because they know that their client's story deserves to be resolved one way, yet it will be resolved another.
The shameful way in which the English justice system handled Julian Assange's case exceptionally in a situation of democratic normality leaves no doubt in my mind. This is an example of a story well written by the WikiLeaks founder's lawyers that was not immediately resolved fairly by the English justice system. Shame on you, justices of the English Supreme Court.
But there's a lot of trouble ahead in England, I suppose. Justice should not protect the perpetrators of genocide, because mass murder is a crime. And yet, in England, judges can now be forced to convict those who attempt to stop a genocide, based on a horrendously unjust law. Will the English Supreme Court throw this law in the trash and guarantee freedom of conscience, expression, and demonstration for the English? I highly doubt that will happen, because Zionism seems to guide the actions of judges in all European countries.
Well, it seems that in Australia, a court has ruled that criticizing Israel because of the genocide in Gaza is not anti-Semitism. Justice Stewart explained: "Political criticism of Israel, however inflammatory or adversarial, is not, by its nature, criticism of Jews in general or based on Jewish racial or ethnic identity... The conclusion that it is not antisemitic to criticize Israel is the corollary of the conclusion that blaming Jews for Israel's actions is antisemitic; one flows from the other." This is a story with a happy ending, but it is unlikely to be reflected in a decision by the English Supreme Court. England is a sad country colonized by the US, a decaying empire completely in the grip of AIPAC, which is indirectly controlled by Netanyahu.
When justice is a crime and the judge is forced to become a criminal who protects mass murder, there is no way for lawyers to fulfill their duties believing they can succeed. In such cases, they are depressed writers of depressing legal stories that can only result in new spirals of depression. And more than anyone, they know that only in prison will innocent people exist. Everyone else is a co-author of two crimes: the genocide that continues with the support of some and the forced silence of many; the unjust persecution of those who dared to oppose this crime.
In the current exceptional situation of authoritarianism confining democracy, English journalists who report on or support the movement against the genocide in Gaza will also be caged as if they were terrorists under the new law. Any doubts? The same will eventually begin to happen with lawyers, because after all, they will necessarily have to defend things that the state considers indefensible, and this can potentially be treated as a crime.
In several countries, we have seen authoritarian and autocratic regimes cross the red line to trample on lawyers in order to more easily crush the enemies of the state created by unjust laws. In the US, Trump is ordering the deportation of lawyers who defend immigrants. Julian Assange's lawyers were criminally spied on as if they had no legally guaranteed professional prerogatives.
In Brazil, lawyers who work on criminal cases involving certain types of crimes are treated as suspected criminal partners with their clients. Lula's lawyer was criminally spied on at the behest of Judge Sérgio Moro. This made me speak out in his favor. But now that he's on the Supreme Court, Cristiano Zanin violates the prerogatives of lawyers by ordering their smartphones seized and sealed as if they were firearms before they enter the courtroom. This is repugnant, especially coming from someone who knows all too well how important it is for lawyers to have their prerogatives respected.
I hope English lawyers will not be intimidated by unjust laws, by judges who apply them automatically, and by police officers who enforce them on the streets as if they were gangs of fascist thugs. If they do this, those who tell their stories in the future will simply say: shame on you!
It is very easy and profitable to defend justice according to the law. But it is not shameful to defend justice against unjust decisions by a judge who does not apply the law. Defending justice against an unjust law and the judge who applies it can be indispensable, even if it is unpleasant and does not result in financial gain. However, a lawyer who was imprisoned because he dared to do his job well and independently is worth many times more than one who remained free and did nothing. When the time comes, do not refuse to take on and pursue a just case for a client knowing that it would be resolved unfairly, by a judge forced to be unfair based on a horrendous law.
Remember, my fellow lawyers: when you write, or choose not to write, in court the stories of desperate people trapped in sad situations who seek you out, you are also, in a way, writing your own biographies. Let us, then, write our best biographies of the best versions of ourselves. And not the biographies of embarrassed or fearful professionals who avoided taking risks because it seemed safer.