After thinking about it for a long time, let’s talk about it from the judicial system that I feel most deeply about.
Undoubtedly, the film's greatest achievement is supporting the plot of the entire film. Just because they went to the wrong place at the wrong time, a group of young people represented by Julie lost the best years of their lives, as well as the "blood of Joseph's life". During this period, we were shown the British judicial system. The darkest period in history.
Justice was supposed to be the ultimate weapon for defending the sanctity of the law, but in this film, justice is precisely the culprit of trampling on the law. Why does this result, I think, can be summed up in three words---irrational. Separately, they are political irrationality, judicial irrationality, and jury irrationality.
1. The origin of the irrational
story at the political level is the period in the 1970s when the Irish Republican Army organized armed riots and terrorist attacks, and the United Kingdom promulgated the "Anti-Terrorism Act", which allowed the police to detain suspects without any reason. Seven days of power, and this is political irrationality.
It can be said that in any country, in the event of a national security incident, power will always be concentrated to safeguard the so-called public interest. This seemingly normal move is actually extremely contradictory to analyze in detail. The expansion of power means that the obligations that citizens have to perform will increase, and the corresponding civil rights will be reduced. The expansion of public power with the goal of ensuring public safety has certain rationality and legitimacy, but it requires the consent of citizens' representatives, and efforts should be made to reduce the restrictions on citizens' rights. However, public power is naturally expansive. In the film, the "Anti-Terrorism Act" was passed by the British Parliament, which means that the Act is legal, but when the law is implemented, the rights of citizens are inadvertently reduced. limited a lot. In the film, law enforcement officers are detained for long periods of time, extorting confessions by torture, and intimidating to induce confessions. It can be said that as long as there is a slight flaw in the cage of the system, the beast of power will stretch out its claws to harm the rights enjoyed by citizens.
2. The irrational
film at the judicial level, the spokesperson of the judiciary is the judge, the "My Lord" who wears a silver-gray wig and holds the gavel. Although in
In the Anglo-American legal system, judges only play the role of interpreting the law and do not play a central role, but they are still representatives of judicial justice. However, in this film, the image of judges' justice and solemnity is completely subverted. He was more or less influenced by national sentiment, and even when he sentenced Juri, the judge made such remarks: It's a
pity that you are not accused of treason, so I will sentence you to hang without hesitation!
During the trial, the next judge also exchanged glances with a senior government official sitting in the gallery.
This was the darkest part of the British judiciary 50 years ago. The independence of the judiciary, which was once advocated by capitalism, was actually not independent. At that time, it was held hostage by politics. Now, it is actually affected by the emotions of the people and the personal value orientation of judges.
Here, we have to talk about China's civil law system. In theory, although the judge of the civil law system occupies a central position in the court and has the final right to judge, he cannot create laws, that is, he can only follow the existing written laws. Trials should be conducted step by step, not based on one’s own understanding, that is, from a theoretical point of view, the results of trials in China should be more fair, and thus gain the support and conviction of the public, but the reality is often the opposite. There was great public anger, and people yearned for the Anglo-American judicial system.
Exactly why, I think, apart from the lack of independence of China's judiciary---susceptibility to political interference, non-disclosure---prone to cause conjectures, etc., there is actually something deeper, I will Described later.
3. Irrationality at the jury level
In the whole system of the common law system, what I personally cannot accept is the jury system. Although there is no denying that the system is also a full manifestation of Western democracy. I have always insisted that the law, or more precisely the judiciary, has always been and should be a matter of the elites. The common people understand the law is the embodiment of their personal qualities, but the common people must not be placed at the level of the judiciary for the sake of democracy, because The people are creatures of emotion, and justice should be the crystallization of reason. Let emotion control reason, and there will inevitably be misjudgments that are hot-headed.
So, in the film, we see that just because the defendants, represented by Julie, were born Irish and went to the wrong place at the wrong time, they were unanimously judged by a jury full of nationalist hatred. The harshest sentence was imposed.
It can be said that there are reasons for the irrationality of the political level and the irrationality of the judicial level, because they are the owners of power, and power means desire, so it will inevitably lead to possible corruption; but the jury is different, they do not The absolute power and interests conferred by the law, so, at this level, the only reason for their misjudgment is that they are irrational, that they cannot control their emotions. So, that's what separates professionals from the general public, and that's why I disagree with the Western jury system.
Some people may say that the jury system in the Anglo-American judicial system has been perfected. In the United Kingdom, the jury system is no longer used in ordinary civil cases; the United States has strict regulations on the number, identity and composition of jurors. But we must not be blinded by a single leaf. I once read an article about the author's jury experience in Switzerland. The landlord of the author's residence in Switzerland once served as a jury member in an unprepared situation. Several other residents who were also inexperienced were sentenced to a case together. We cannot judge whether the judgment is appropriate from a legal perspective. From this experience alone, it can be seen that the jury system is still a little sloppy. Ordinary people cannot make judgments from a professional legal perspective. Therefore, they can only proceed from intuition, and only rely on emotions. To a certain extent, it is equivalent to trampling on the majesty of the law.
There are two similar concepts in the field of sociology - "tyranny of the majority" and "collective unconsciousness", and I think these two terms are the most appropriate to evaluate the jury in the film and even all the groups that lead to the entire injustice. Their original intentions may be good. The government just wants to maintain social stability; the police just want to find the real culprit as soon as possible to calm the anger and appease the people; the public just wants to punish the real culprit for their own safety. However, people like to judge things based on their subjective consciousness, and it is difficult to see them in a fair perspective, which leads to collective unconsciousness, and finally evolves into the tyranny of the majority.
At this point, basically the three levels of irrationality are finished. Here, it is necessary to answer the question I mentioned at the end of the second level, why are the Chinese people more skeptical of the judiciary than the United Kingdom and the United States?
I think the answer to this question, in addition to the lack of openness and transparency of the Chinese judiciary, is a very important point that the Chinese lack belief in the rule of law. I have always believed that people with faith are happy, and the Chinese people are full of hostility today, largely because the cultural revolution and the tide of reform and opening up have swept away the last trace of people's beliefs. Faith is a kind of reverence at a low level, and trust at a high level. It is precisely because of the people in the Anglo-American countries that they believe in the legal system, so although they are not satisfied with the results of some judgments, they still choose to believe that the judgment results of the judges are correct, and there will be no objection in action (of course, when the facts are sufficient to prove that When this is a wrongful case, there will still be scenes of resistance, such as the parade in the film. I am talking about legal but unconscionable sentences here). The most classic proof is the "Simpson murdering his wife case". The judge and jury finally found Simpson innocent, but then a media survey showed that about 94% of American citizens believed that Simpson killed his wife, but at the same time believed that the verdict was fair. of.
This is faith, faith in the rule of law, faith in justice. In China, due to thousands of years of rule of man and rule of virtue, as well as the imperfect legal system (although the legal system at the propaganda level has been established, it is not complete), therefore, the Chinese people do not have a deep understanding of the idea of the rule of law, let alone Talk about belief in the rule of law. Because of the lack of legal beliefs, Chinese people often do not seek legal explanations for some unreasonable sentences, but spontaneous group speculations, imagining the relationship network behind the case, black box operations, and so on.
Because of lack of faith, we doubt, we resist, we are hostile, and we lack faith. Such a vicious circle should arouse our vigilance.
Finally, back to my topic - the judiciary advances in the struggle against irrationality. Why I wrote this title, because in my opinion, the main theme of "In the Name of the Father" is "resistance", except for the ordinary people's resistance to power, represented by Julie; the legal profession represented by Mrs. Pei The struggle against judicial injustice, the film also has a deeper level of struggle, that is, the struggle between justice and irrationality - including the struggle against the irrational political level, and the irrational struggle with the judiciary itself (or judicial personnel) And the irrational fight with the jury!
British and American countries emphasize "separation of powers and checks and balances", and the judiciary is one of the independent powers. Before I watched this film, I had always admired this kind of "judicial independence", but after watching the film, I began to have a new understanding: true judicial independence, like "communism", is just within sight and out of reach Yes, although it is perfectly feasible in theory, at the implementation level, it is difficult to achieve, communism has to fight against "dying imperialism", and judicial independence has to fight against human nature, against the irrationality of human nature, and in this Progress continued during the struggle.
The film review is almost over. Because I took a double major in economic law, I can be considered half a law student. I wrote this text with very unprofessional legal thinking. In fact, what I want to express most, Mrs. Pei has already said it for me:
Mr. Di, you paid the debt with blood,
you got the blood of Joseph Conron,
you got the card Showing the blood of your life,
you got my client's blood and sweat
... In the
court, you had a colleague who once sat in your seat and said that it was a
pity that you were not charged with treason, so I would sentence you to hang without hesitation!
Excerpted here, to encourage myself.
Postscript: I analyzed above: the judiciary progresses in the struggle against irrationality, and the essence of this irrationality is human nature. So, is the ultimate goal of justice to destroy humanity? In fact, it is not. The ultimate purpose of justice is to defend the sanctity of the law. The essence of law is social relations, and it is the embodiment of the normalization of human nature. That is to say, the judiciary moves towards substantial independence in the struggle against the irrationality of human nature, and then achieves the ultimate goal of defending the sacred status of the law, and the essence of this ultimate goal is to regulate social relations and harmonize human society.
Attached is the most shocking scene in this film: Humans are inherently good, even the so-called villains—they just fail to properly handle social relations, and the law helps them deal with them.
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