LECTURE AT MATINS FOR HER MAJESTY’S COURTS OF JUSTICE IN THE COUNTIES OF DURHAM, NORTHUMBERLAND, TYNE & WEAR AND NORTH YORKSHIRE, DURHAM CATHEDRAL, 14TH JULY 2004
BY RT HON SIR ROBERT BUCKLAND KBE KC, Honorary Lay Canon, Bristol Cathedral.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Although I had accepted the kind invitation of the Dean and Chapter to make this address many months ago, for me, its timing, couldn’t be more appropriate. It is a time of change here in the United Kingdom and we are still only a week or so after the General Election in which things changed for me personally. In the words of King Solomon, at Ecclesiastes 3: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:…
3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;…
6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;”
Those of you who were brave or keen enough to endure the long watches of the night and see the election coverage may well have seen me implicitly acknowledge the truth of Solomon’s words as I conceded defeat after a count that was almost as efficient as some of the local counts here in Sunderland and Newcastle.
Across the world, this is a year of elections. India and Indonesia have been examples of democratic votes in growing and vibrant countries. Today is Bastille Day, and the Fifth Republic is dealing with the consequences of last week’s National Assembly elections, called very suddenly by President Macron only a few weeks ago. The Left, Centre Left and Centre of French politics have coalesced in order to defeat the Populist Right. Polarisation is the order of the day. Such were the fears of the authorities in Paris and elsewhere about possible disruption as people took to the streets to exercise the French prerogative of protest, that the police and army were mobilised on Sunday night to deal with any consequences.
In the United States, just hours ago, we have witnessed the first assassination attempt upon a President or Presidential candidate in over forty years. The political situation there is increasingly fractious and divided.
Contrast those scenes, however, with the way in which power was handed over here in the UK, only a day or so before. From the time that polls closed to the appointment of a new PM, just fourteen hours had elapsed. There was no disorder and no dispute. Those in power did not question the result but, with good grace and humility, ceded responsibility to the new government. The outgoing and incoming Prime Ministers chose their words very well indeed. We reminded the world that we are still more than capable of getting the fundamentals right.
At the same time, none of us can afford to be complacent or oblivious to the forces that are indeed leading to significant changes in our politics. Whether it be concerns as to the very nature of our society itself, or the direct impact of foreign politics and policy into the voting intentions of some, then our elected representatives and indeed those of us who have direct and long experience of government, have a duty to address.
Hidden underneath the headlines was a worrying decrease in turnout. 10% of the electorate who voted in 2019 switched off. Should we blame the voters for this, or blame our leaders? Are more and more people coming to believe that their vote is irrelevant, as an increasingly dehumanised, desiccated government machine grinds on, blind to the actual concerns of those that it should be serving. Where is the humanity, you may ask? Where is the leadership?
What, then, should we be looking for in a leader? I would start with judgement, and as I started this lecture with Solomon, and I will continue with him. We all remember his dream in the First Book of Kings, where the young King asks God, not for long life or riches, but for good judgement. In his dream, he is granted not only a wise and understanding heart, but riches and long life too. It is after this dream that Solomon is presented with two women, living in one house, who gave birth to two babies. One child died in the night and gave rise to a dispute between the women as to maternity rights to the child that lived. In seeking to determine which woman was the child’s true mother, Solomon’s response was to take a sword and to propose cutting the living child in two. One of the women begged the King to spare the child and to allow the other woman to have it, whereas the other woman agreed to the child being cut in two. Solomon awarded the child to the first woman.
The Judgment of Solomon, therefore, is not an agreement to divide an asset down the middle as often happens in divorce financial settlements, but is the emotionally intelligent response to the words and deeds of a witness. Solomon, rightly, decided that only the true mother would consent to her child being given away, because the child’s life was precious to her above all things. This was an assessment of credibility based upon a shared understanding of basic human emotions. The “law”, insofar as it existed, was based upon Solomon’s experience and qualities as a leader. This is human judgement at its most fundamental.
Generations later, we now have deep and complex systems of statutes, conventions and regulations that cover our jurisdictions like a forest, to paraphrase the words by Robert Bolt in “A Man For All Seasons”, his wonderful play about another former Lord Chancellor, Sir Thomas More. What good, however, are these laws without leadership and judgement behind them? This isn’t just a question of political imperatives, but it goes to the heart of law and justice itself.
What is judgement based upon? Evidence and rules, but is that all? When I was trained as a part time Crown Court Judge, like many of you here today, at the end of my course at the Judicial College, the then Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the late, great, Lord Judge, whose advice I later came to rely upon and who we all miss greatly, reminded all of us that in our work and our judgments, we should not lose sight of our humanity; in other words, our experiences as human beings, as opposed to our training as lawyers. This was a reminder that, although the law is there to be applied, judicial discretion is shaped not just by our legal training and experience, but our experiences as humans, our knowledge, if you will.
Knowledge would be the generic term, but it takes different forms. Knowledge can be pure and also empirical, to use Kant’s distinction in the “Critique of Pure Reason”. Pure knowledge which can be acquired before use, namely rules and laws stands in distinction to empirical knowledge, which can only be gained from human experience, for example, observations based upon the reactions and behaviour of others in situations. The former is absolute, universal even, whereas the latter is confined by our own experience. Judgement, therefore, will be either analytical, based upon hard facts where nothing more need be added, or synthetical, based upon arguments where something extra is then added. In other words, the power to make determinative judgement is based on universal concepts, but judgement based upon particular information is reflective judgement.
Practical judgement involves the enactment of principles, demanding that a particular action be taken. A good example of the use of practical judgement in our daily lives is a decision whether to be truthful to another person, when telling the absolute unalloyed truth will upset their feelings. Do I say that the colour combination chosen by my best friend makes it look like she got dressed in the dark or do I exercise my discretion and say nothing? Using our discretion is part of practical judgement.
The use of reflective judgement will also apply to moral dilemmas eg a conflict of loyalty, to use the phrase coined by Lord Howe of Aberavon. In this context, the aim shouldn’t be complete convergence or uniformity, but a variety of different responses within an ethical framework. Each answer or use of judgement will be based upon the situation that presents itself.
In my work on the impact of AI and machine learning on the administration and practice of justice, as a Senior Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School, I have started from these first principles is because I think it is vital to seek an alignment between human thought processes and the Artificial Intelligence that might replace them.
It is also vital to ensure that, as we use machines as augementors and partners, as our servants, we are able to explain the reasons for decisions made and that they remain challengeable by the ordinary citizen. An impenetrable “computer says no” system might be efficient, but it is not justice. As we seek to find better ways to provide essential public services in a way that taxpayers can genuinely afford, then we must not cede ethical ground in the drive to ever-greater efficiency.
An impenetrable, infallible system of government has other dangers too. The less relatable it is to the lives of the citizens it serves, the more we will see a move to political extremes, with their glib answers to complex questions.
Now, more than ever, is the need for servant leadership, through empathy, good judgement and the relentless pursuit of positive outocmes. In other words, to DO and not to BE.
As the machine has to be our servant, so we, the human leaders, have to with humility put service of others at the heart of all we do. A truly self-serving system will, like the dystopian nightmare of uncontrolled generative artificial intelligence, eat everything in its path and ultimately will eat us too.
When it comes to human values of judgement and leadership, this, in the words of Ecclesiastes, is very much a time to keep, if justice is to continue to be seen to be done.
Tad, Mab ac Ysbryd Glan, amen.
