Rule of law issues cause for concern
I refer to the debate about who should control the process that decides whether to press charges at the end of investigations involving senior government officials.
Grenville Cross, former director of public prosecutions, argued that the secretary for justice should recuse himself and leave the control of sensitive cases to the director of public prosecutions ('Too hot to handle', May 4). But current director, Kevin Zervos, disagreed, claiming that the Department of Justice's established mechanisms ensure fair and impartial case management ('Prosecution processes accountable', May 9).
Mr Cross emphasised the rule of law and quoted outspoken judge Lord Denning, who, ironically, as a BBC report noted, felt no qualm changing 'any rule of law that stood in his way'. The contradiction between Denning's words and deeds evinces a fundamental problem of common law about who watches the watchers.
Mr Zervos emphasised whether the prosecution system fairly serves the public interest rather than who or whose office controls prosecution decisions. But this approach poses questions about how to justify legal interpretations of fairness and balancing public interest.
Consider the BAE Systems case. The House of Lords upheld the Serious Fraud Office's decision to discontinue investigation of alleged corruption, averring to the need 'to balance the rule of law against the wider public interest'. But the company was investigated and tried in the US, because a US bank was implicated. US District Judge John Bates ruled that 'BAE's conduct involved deception, duplicity and knowing violations of law on an enormous scale'. The rule of law is valued only if the law serves public interest which varies and is culture-dependent.
Would objective observers find it agreeable that there has never been a native Chinese-speaking director of public prosecutions, a job that inevitably involves public interest, in our predominately Chinese-speaking city? In self-styled cosmopolitan but in fact snobbish England, Denning [in a book] seemed to suggest that black people were unsuitable jurors probably because he found them not fully assimilated.