Omerta and ingroup wrongdoing
Richard Moorhead ~ Richard Moorhead
Sir Edward Garnier KC did a nice turn on the Today programme this morning when asked on to talk about the timidity (his word) of the CCRC. He pointed out how the typical response to miscarriages of justice from the legal establishment (my word) was a rather pallid, "Oh dear mistakes happen, let's move on,…
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Lawyer Watch
Sir Edward Garnier KC did a nice turn on the Today programme this morning when asked on to talk about the timidity (his word) of the CCRC. He pointed out how the typical response to miscarriages of justice from the legal establishment (my word) was a rather pallid, “Oh dear mistakes happen, let’s move on, there’s nothing much to see here.” He was then asked to segue into discussing the Government’s announced and indicated that focusing on lawyer bashing was a red herring (and I added in my own mind given his tone, nothing much to see there, let’s move on). He made the important point, that I do agree with, that a significant part of this about distracting from the Government’s immigration policy failures (with ‘blame the justice system’ being a significant plank of that).

I plan to come back to that later, with a more thoughtful (I hope) post on the issues raised by the Task Force on Professional Enablers picking on the Government’s favourite low hanging fruit, but I think it worth recognising that lawyer bashing is rather difficult to argue against when behaviour properly subject to criticism is engaged in. The problem for the profession is that they have very little to say here hence the mumbling about red herrings. The President of the Law Society, for instance, as sought to say professional ethics is mainly a PR problem. Leading them in the position of being very sure it is also a PR problem. You can say the problem is exaggerated only if you are really on top of it. The problems posed for the SRA are related but different (more of that anon).

Lawyers don’t like criticising other lawyers for behaving like lawyers (just as academics don’t like criticising other academics for behaving like academics,* doctors other doctors, and so on) but professional loyalty leads to one being overly inclined to dismiss the proper scrutiny of wrongdoing; it leads to a kind of omerta that is drives both the problems Garnier spoke of, not just one. Of course the Home Secretary’s rather invidious rhetoric may have driven the defensiveness here, but that it’s aim; the same is not true, interestingly, of things like miscarriages of justice, where the problem has different, deeper roots.

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