In Herman Wouk’s masterpiece “The Caine Mutiny,” the clever, intelligent but execrable LT Keefer manages to maneuver and manipulate his shipmates into committing a de facto mutiny, removing Captain Queeg from command of his ship. In the court martial that follows, the lawyer turned Navy pilot, (again a lawyer as he recovers from being shot down) Barney Greenwald gets them off by convincing the panel of officers that Queeg had, in effect, cracked under the pressure of too much time in combat at sea.

What follows is a celebration of their courtroom acquittal. Greenwald walks in, already drunk, and confronts them, asking the XO, Steve Maryk, if his actions would have been necessary of they had been decent officers and had earlier given Queeg the support he asked for. Maryk realizes it probably would not have been necessary to remove Queeg from the bridge.

At this point, Ensign Keith chimes in: “If that’s true, then we were guilty.”

LT Greenwald (the Lawyer) comes back: “Ah, you’re learning, Willie! You’re learning that you don’t work with a Captain because you like the way he parts his hair; you work with him because he’s GOT the job, or you’re no good! Well, the case is over. You’re all safe. It was like shooting fish in a barrel.”

Greenwald had made the law work for him, had made court procedure work for him, and had, during his questioning, manipulated Queeg so as to make his many problems rise to the surface in front of the court.

But had justice been done? No. Greenwald knew it, and now they all knew it. The law had been manipulated, justice had not been served.

It’s been an interesting several weeks for “justice,” hasn’t it? First there was the decision by the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, and two others: Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh. The ICC then issued arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

For the three members of Hamas, the charges involve: “extermination, murder, taking of hostages, rape and sexual assault in detention.”

For Prime MinisterNetanyahu and DefMin Gallant, defending their country from attack, the charges include: “causing extermination, causing starvation as a method of war, including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies, deliberately targeting civilians in conflict.”

There are some obvious problems here: Israel is not a party to the ICC. In fact, a look at the International Criminal Court yields a sense that this is sort of like the model UN: The only place it’s real is with the people who agree with it. Or look at it this way, who besides Israel, is not a party to the ICC? The USA, Russia, China, India and Indonesia (among others). And why not? Because they don’t want to surrender their sovereignty. So, the major countries that have the actual operational reach to make this sort of thing effective (if not morally justified) are not part of the system.

Further, unlike judicial proceedings as we understand them in the west, where evidence of any major crime must be presented to a group of citizens – not lawyers – a grand jury, to establish that the prosecutor has enough proof that crime has been committed and that a “reasonable man” might conclude that the accused is involved, the ICC just lets a small panel of lawyers pull things together amongst themselves.

International law – law that has just sort of congealed without being subject to the scrutiny of the citizens of some state – and international lawyers, also not subject to any sort of review by citizens of any state, who get to act in a way that scratches their itch.

Anyone who agrees with that process needs to go back and look at why we have grand juries. Simply put, citizens make the important decisions, not judges and prosecuting attorneys. That is how the system works. Or is supposed to. The judge’s job is to make sure the law is applied, not to insert any of his or her prejudices, likes or dislikes into the proceedings.

After a fair reading of another case that made the news over the past week, it is difficult to assert that those proceedings were free of any of the judge’s prejudices.

I grant that that case is, from a public opinion perspective, radioactive. Everyone is pretty much already hard over one way or another on the defendant. But I’d encourage everyone to re-read the judge’s instructions to the jury and ask yourself one question: if you were the defendant in any case whatsoever, would you want those instructions read to the jury that was about to decide your case?

The law is worked and argued by lawyers and judges, but it is the property of the citizens. When the law starts getting manipulated and twisted and turned on its head, it might be called “legal,” but it is moving further and further away from justice and it is undermining the state.

Ignoring hundreds of years of precedence, judges inserting their prejudices, manipulating the law so as to ignore common understandings, all should be expected. After all. courts are places inhabited by real people and all the weaknesses and foibles of humanity are on display in any court.

But justice, and the security of the state are not served by the presence of that prejudice or partisanship in the court.

The courts – both nationally and internationally – are being weaponized. The end result will be the opposite of what some intend; it will not serve justice and only in the strictest, narrowest definition will it serve the law. Manipulation of the law, and the fundamental concept of a nation of laws, is terrifying “terrain.”

We would do well to consider that the lawfare now being waged is directed against ourselves, against, if you will, the rest of the crew on the ship of state. As with the Caine, that won’t end well.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
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