Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
On the torpidity and tardiness of the LPC
The [laudable aims of the Legal Practice Act] will remain little more than lofty ideals rather than achievable goals if the necessary will and effort to give effect to them is not present amongst the administrators of the profession. Having a code of conduct which sets out the fundamental rules by which an attorney is to practise and which provides that they shall at all times maintain the highest standards of honesty and integrity and shall treat the interests of their clients as paramount, is all good and well, but it is worth very little unless it is enforced… if those practitioners who contravene the rules and standards of the profession are not dealt with promptly and effectively by [the LPC], then instead of ensuring accountability and upholding the integrity and status of the profession a culture of impunity is fostered and the profession is lowered in the eyes of the public, and the values and principles which are essential to its survival are debased.
