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Home >>Law Colleges >> The World and the Legal Profession
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The World and the Legal Profession
The three words I wish to mention to my fellow graduates concern the world and the legal profession which they are entering. Draw, if you will, upon my experience. My prognostications can also be summed up in three little words.
The first is globalism. This is an idea which was certainly not mentioned at my first graduation in law in Sydney, Australia, 35 years ago. The law was then wholly confined to a particular jurisdiction. Now they are entering a new millennium in which our countries laws will have to adapt to international law.
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This will apply to India as to South Africa, Australia and every other land. Seeing the law with a strictly local perspective will change as law is increasingly moulded to a global environment. The duty of lawyers will be to develop local law and to do so in harmony with international law. This simple truth was brought home to me a decade ago and, as it happens, here in Bangalore
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I attended a conference summoned by the former Chief Justice of India, Justice PN Bhagwati. The Bangalore Principles laid down rules apt to an age of globalisation of the law. Of course, the first duty of every lawyer and judge is to apply the local law. But if that law is ambiguous, if any Act of Parliament can have two meanings, if the common law is uncertain, the duty of lawyers of the coming millennium will be to try to resolve the ambiguities and to full the gaps by reference to international legal principles.
Such a global approach to law is entirely appropriate to the world of intercommunicating fax machines, of jumbo jets and satellites. It is right for the world of great international challenges such as HIV / AIDS, the human genome project and the global economy.
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Lawyers of the future must play their part in this adaptation of local law to international law. This is a lesson I learned in Bangalore a decade ago. It is a lesson I have practiced in my work as a judge in Australia. It is a lesson for all of us. Lawyers of the coming millennium will be lawyers of the world.
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The second word is humanity. One of the greatest changes that has come upon the world, and upon its legal systems, is the development of universal human rights law. The movement received a tremendous impetus from the Second World War and the events that followed it. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, laid the foundations for a new world order. From that instrument have emerged the great charters of human rights which state the principles that will help to defend our world and our countries against the abuses which autocrats and oppressors, big and small, inflict upon humanity.
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Mahatma Gandhi, a great exemplar of human rights, taught of the moral obligation never to tolerate departures from fundamental rights. He was himself a lawyer. He knew how the law could be used. He and his dedicated band of followers used law and courts and peaceful resistance to achieve India's independence 50 years ago. Yet sometimes laws are not enough. New laws - law reform - must contribute to the building of just societies. Real access to the law and its protection must replace satisfaction with the theory of equal rights. Law has a part in securing these ends.
The third word I offer is service. In the midst of all the technology and globalism and the struggle for universal rights, it is easy to forget the fundamental mission of a lawyer. Ours is a noble calling. It is to be a helper to people with problems. It is to defend the unpopular and to insist on their rights. It is to support the otherwise defenceless, where necessary without fee. Those who graduate in law hope, naturally and understandably, for economic rewards. But the abiding commitment must be justice under the law. Their duty must be - faithful service to the clients, rich and poor; weak and strong; popular and despised.
In the golden anniversary that India now celebrates, there is much to be proud of. India stands as the great alternative democratic model for the future of humanity. A society open to global forces; unashamedly dedicated to human rights is a state which always is, or should be, the servant of its people. The judges and lawyers of India are the guardians of this model of constitutionalism. It is vital for humanity that the great Indian experiment in governance survives and works.
May you, in return, think globally, think big. May you defend fundamental rights in all that you do and never become so proud that you forget that, as a lawyer, you are a servant of the rule of law and of the people who are protected by it.
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