Lord
Black has crafted for himself a larger than life persona that is
meant to inspire reaction. Unfortunately he allowed himself to get
caught up in vagaries of the US legal system and get excessively
sentenced for what at best was a misdemeanor. What he uncovered in
glaring publicity is the informal corruption surrounding the legal
system itself. In Chicago, the court system is gamed by prosecutors
to get their wins and they play politics in the mix. Justice takes a
distant place in their scheme of things.
In
law school, I am told that there are two underlying philosophies of
law and all that. All very good of course. The problem omitted is
that the third aspect is the underlying political model that can be
gamed to also achieve results and this effectively put justice on
sale.
In
the USA the political aspect is local and visible which sometimes
tempers things. In Canada, the political aspect is hidden in an
informal old boys network that is dominated by the legal profession.
True
reform cannot happen unless this aspect is addressed.
I
personally suspect that the proper answer needs to take the the
following form.
1 All
appointments to the bench must be drawn from non local jurisdictions
were the lawyer in question has never practiced. I really think that
this is the least that needs to be done. This is not a minor issue.
A lawyer who is senior has met every other lawyer and has history.
This opens the door for a far too friendly game of golf. I do not
believe that this has been done anywhere.
2 The
second idea could be to provide an oversight board of both retired
judges, retired politicians and perhaps citizens at large, that
reviews the conduct of judges and the quality of their work. The
present situation can range from excellent to criminal with rare
notice taken.
All
this helps to extract the octopus of political influence from the
corpus of the law.
I
have watched excellent work done by judges but I have also seen a
situation systematically undermined by criminal political
intervention, so I unfortunately know of what I speak. The only good
thing that can be said of present arrangements is that most folks
simply give it up or are too small to be affected and never notice.
Michael Den Tandt:
A fitting homecoming for the reviled Lord Black
Jibes from scribes,
pundits, politicians show fallen media baron still has power to
incite passion
BY MICHAEL DEN TANDT,
THE GAZETTE MAY 4, 2012
This is the paradox at
the heart of Conrad Black's return to Canada: Why on earth would he
choose to live here? For if ever there were a persona designed to be
resented, belittled, disrespected and reviled by so-called average
Canadians, it is Black's. And guess who crafted that persona? Black.
So perhaps, as
Black-baiting wits and scribes, led by New Democrat Opposition leader
Tom "Che Guevara" Mulcair, gird their loins for combat with
the great despoiler of widows and orphans, they might consider this:
Lord Black of Crossharbour lives for the fight. In transforming him,
once again, into an avatar of the coddled super-rich - a position he
never actually occupied, even at the zenith of his power - they may
be giving him precisely what he wants.I don't know Black personally.
But I met him a few times, during his ascendancy in the late 1990s.
Like others who worked on the National Post launch, I attended his
parties and benefited indirectly from the largesse that, for a few
years, transformed the Canadian newspaper industry. And what always
struck me was this: The alacrity with which, when Black was on top,
the great and the powerful lined up to kiss his backside.
I remember
then-Ontario opposition leader Dalton McGuinty, at one party in late
spring of 1998, trailing around after Black like a puppy dog,
desperate for an audience with the great man.
Even then Black
presented as someone who had stepped through a time machine out of
the 19th century.
Were there excesses?
Absolutely. The Post's very existence, in the early days, was
excessive. I will never forget the day the lead guitarist from
Triumph gave a solo concert outside the editor's office - or the time
we put the paper to bed while knocking back margaritas, as a mariachi
band snaked its way through the newsroom, in full throat. It was
glorious.
Black's Christmas
parties of that era were outrageous, glittering affairs attended by
the cream of Canadian media, politics and the arts. And for every
Canadian newspaper journalist who went to work for Black, often with
a substantial increase in pay, there were two others at the Globe and
Mail, the Star or the Suns who received offers but stayed put, as
their employers produced inducements to keep them. For a few years,
until the great stock collapse began in 2000, every newspaper
journalist in Canada lived in the penumbra of Black's spending.
But here's the thing:
Not one of us who benefited during the golden years expressed
reservations at the time, that I know of. Yet, by 2004, as Black's
legal problems mounted, there was an outpouring of schadenfreude, as
those who had formerly dined at Black's table circled to put the
boots in. I remember the editor of one Canadian daily chuckling, with
ill-concealed glee, as he contemplated Black's being brought up on
charges. The sentiment was all but universal: "He brought it on
himself."
And, of course, he
did. Black had made himself a target of U.S. prosecutors, just as
Martha Stewart did, by courting notoriety and deliberately thumbing
his nose at those he considered his inferiors, which was just about
everyone. Black had earlier committed the unpardonable sin, in the
view of some Canadians, of renouncing his citizenship in exchange for
a British peerage.
He then proceeded to
make his situation worse by stiff-arming anyone who dared criticize
him, and adamantly refusing to acknowledge mistakes. It is Black's
lack of contrition, it seems to me, that got him in such trouble.
The justice system,
whether in the United States or in Canada, demands obeisance, and
despises defiance. Black never gave them obeisance. He fought. Even
now, bloody but unbowed, he fights.
Which brings us full
circle. Though Canadian born and bred, Black does not speak like a
Canadian; he does not think like most of us, either. His is an
extravagant personality, out of a storybook. In his insistence on
framing his life as a colossal classical drama, Black remains as
alien here as a tropical plant among geraniums. Of course, Mulcair
would cast him as "the British criminal Conrad Black."
That was easy, and
cheap. Clearly, the comparison with former Black Panther Gary
Freeman, who once shot a police officer, is risible. How many people
has Conrad Black gunned down in his career?
But that's not the
point. The symbolism is the point - just as it always was. After all
these years away, Black still has the power to get us arguing
passionately with one another, about him.
Who but Canadians
would pay him this kind of attention? And that, perhaps, is Lord
Black's true welcome home.
mdentandt@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/mdentandt
© Copyright (c) The
Montreal Gazette
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