Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting opening ceremony

Presiding Officer, Lord Advocate, Attornies-General, Ministers, Distinguished representatives of Judiciaries and Governments, Delegates & Senior Officials…

Let me say how delighted I am to be here in the Parliament of Scotland for the Opening Ceremony of this, the fourteenth Commonwealth Law Ministers Meeting.

I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the Government of the United Kingdom for its generous offer to host the meeting, and to The Rt. Hon. Elishi Angiolini, Lord Advocate and all her colleagues at the Scottish Executive, for their many months of great planning and preparation for this event.

It has been a real pleasure to work with them.

They, and we, should all take pleasure and credit for us having come together again as the Commonwealth legal community.

I begin now where I finished just this afternoon at the closing of the colloquium on the Commonwealth’s Latimer House Principles on ‘the accountability of, and the relationship between, the three branches of government’ – the Executive, the Legislature, and the Judiciary.

First, by repeating that the Commonwealth of 53 nations is an organisation of shared values – or Principles.

The Latimer House Principles, and the primacy of the concept of the Rule of Law, are as the heart to the body: central, indispensable – and, more than that – defining.

Second, by repeating that we are a Commonwealth of Governments and of Peoples.

As such, we help Governments govern – and this Meeting is above all about helping you govern.

But we govern for our citizens, and we must remember that it is they – especially the poorest, the most marginalised, and those who for whatever reason are denied access to the most fundamental of rights, that of justice: they are our real constituents today.

We meet to better the lives of the people of the Commonwealth.

We in the Commonwealth share a pluralistic legal background built around the principles of common and statute law.

Our common thread and working bond is our shared heritage of common law and its jurisprudence.

That means that the Commonwealth legal community is a very powerful platform for sharing collective challenges and collective responses.

Our Law Ministers last met in Accra three years ago.

Some of you have experienced the highpoints of past Meetings, notably that in St Vincent in 2002, which debated the Latimer House Guidelines, which were ultimately endorsed as the Latimer House Principles at the Heads of Government meeting in Abuja in 2003.

Those with longer memories will recall more difficult Meetings, such as that of 1986 in Harare, where there was robust debate over our scheme for Mutual Assistance on Criminal matters.

Perhaps both of these – the Latimer House Principles, and the Harare scheme – point to the challenge of bridging the gaps of intention and reality, of aspirational and actual commitments.

We have come a long way in acknowledging the principle: our task now is to act out our commitment.

The commitment of the Commonwealth Secretariat to serve you is not in doubt.

We ask you, over these three days, to guide us as to how we can support you better.

I convey my appreciation and recognition to my colleague Betty Mould-Iddrisu and her colleagues in the Legal and Constitutional Affairs Division, for the exceptional work they and their experts have carried out in many areas, and four in particular stand out: counter-terrorism, access to justice, administration of justice, and gender.

Perhaps the greatest testimony to that work is that others (inside and outside the Commonwealth) have picked it up and run with it – I think especially of the UN Committee on Terrorism and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

Our work in the legal department – especially in drafting model legislation and in training legal professionals – is second to none.

The record of our member states to the rule of law, and to the separation of powers, meanwhile, has some way to go.

Inevitably, it is the failures – a state of emergency involving a summary dismissal of the judiciary, the overthrow of a democratically elected government and the removal of the Chief Justice, flawed and violent elections – which command our attention.

But we should look beyond the headlines, for both the accomplishments, like the development of new handbooks and training for court staff and prosecutors, as well as to the challenges, in which issues like inadequate availability of legal aid should concern us as much as the more flagrant political abuses.

This is the context – of the rule of law in principle and the rule of law in practice – for this Meeting.

It leads directly to our theme for our Meeting, of the developing role of the Law Minister.

I acknowledge Professor Christopher Gane for his paper on the subject, not least for the way it flags the potential and the pitfalls of a position which is not, in general, written into national Constitutions, and the tasks of which are as wide as they are ill-defined, and changeable.

I posit the simple thought that the role of the Justice Minister is to try and ensure that the citizens of his or her country have access to affordable, speedy and irreproachable justice.

Where legal costs are too high, the ends of justice are frustrated, as they are when legal delays are protracted, or where legal processes are undermined by any form of inefficiency or, worse, any form of bias or interference.

We would claim to be champions of Access to Justice, and we would claim to subscribe to the ingredients set down in the UNDP’s recent report on Programming for Justice: Access for All.

In our discussions here, however, we are challenged to consider the role of the Law Minister in defending the independence of the judiciary, especially when the judiciary struggles to exercise its right of reply.

Criticism can come from politicians – politicians closely associated with Law Ministers themselves.

I for one look forward to the session set aside to explore this theme.

I welcome other things about this meeting, including its tremendously wide and varied agenda.

I also welcome the voice of civil society at this Meeting.

The Commonwealth Foundation – the Commonwealth’s inter-governmental body which promotes civil society – has worked with 17 other bodies (11 Commonwealth, 6 global) to advise Law Ministers where it can advance their work.

Remember the debt that we already owe to Commonwealth civil society in that it was four organizations – the Commonwealth Lawyers Association, its Legal Education Association, its Magistrates and Judges Association, and its Parliamentary Association – which were instrumental in giving us the Latimer House Principles.

So Wednesday’s session is an important first: Law Ministers are following in the footsteps of all other Commonwealth Ministers, and we are in tune with our Heads of Government who, at their last Meeting in Kampala in November, reaffirmed that the voice of civil society must be heard in all our debates.

I have said elsewhere that the Commonwealth helps its member governments enact and implement good laws.

Your mission is to assist the people you represent, and my colleagues and I are proud to help you in this task.

The policy directions you take here are a vital tool in focussing and directing the modern Commonwealth, and serving to make us as practical and relevant as ever.

In our work in the Secretariat, we will take our cue from those directions. I wish us all a very successful meeting.

ENDS