Justice, Politics, Women's Issues

Happy New Year – A Toast To The Rule Of Law

Where warped belief systems prevail over basic human rights, the law has failed its people.

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Constitution constitutional law We the People“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
–Martin Luther King

Before the new year began, I told my daughter a story about a little girl just like her named Gharibgol who is six. In 2016, Gharibgol’s father was struggling to feed his family in a place called Afghanistan, so he sold his young daughter into marriage with a 55-year-old cleric in exchange for a goat, a bag of rice, some tea, sugar and cooking oil.

I tell my daughter that Afghanistan is a country where women have incredibly difficult lives, where they might not be able to leave the house alone and if they do they might have to be accompanied by a man and cover their whole body and face, even their eyes. If they don’t do this, someone might hurt them or kill them. I tell her that some little girls in Afghanistan won’t go to school at all, they won’t read or write or learn to count, they won’t play instruments or use computers, and they won’t paint or sing or dance or play games. To my daughter, who reads in bed with a torch every night long after we’ve insisted she go to sleep and who asks us at every holiday how long it will be before she can go back to school, this lack of education is unthinkable.

My daughter’s idea of marriage comes from Disney films and pictures of happy smiling faces on the walls of people’s houses, showing two people choosing to stand next to one another and take on life as a partnership. My daughter’s connotations of weddings involve flowers and music and smiling faces. Those feelings of happiness and joy that she associates with marriage don’t correlate with the video image I show her of Gharibgol sobbing after she has been taken from her family to live with a paedophile.

I explain that once married in Afghanistan, Gharibgol might not be able to find someone to divorce her from her husband, even though what he did by marrying a girl under the age of 16 was technically against the law. I go on to say that because the marriage was carried out by religious ceremony, the law cannot help Gharibgol, and the marriage can only be overturned by a man who is deemed to have the same religious powers as the man that married her. My daughter doesn’t understand this because at six she, like many Western children, already enjoys vast liberties of choice. We mostly let her choose her clothes, her hairstyles, what she eats, which books she reads, what she watches on TV, and which friends she plays with. It is incomprehensible to her that a person can buy another person, let alone child as young as six, as a wife. It is unfathomable to her that her counterpart in Afghanistan might have to walk around shrouded from head to toe in cloth and be a prisoner in a house she may never own without a job or any way of earning her own money. A life without that kind of freedom doesn’t seem to be any life at all in her eyes.

In response to what happened to Gharibgol, my daughter asks me if religion is more important than the law. It is phrased as though it is a Top Trumps question. Eventually, I decide to tell her that there are lots of laws and lots of religions all over the world. I tell her that some laws will be good for society, and some religious practices and beliefs will be good for society too. I explain that when it works well, the law is supposed to protect people from harm. The law is supposed to protect everyone whether they are rich or poor, male or female, young or old, whatever their religion or sexuality and no matter what colour their skin is. It is an administration of decisions which are meant to be fair and just; it is supposed to treat people equally. Religion, I tell her, is a system of beliefs, a set of principles guiding how people should live and what might happen to them when they die. I tell her that some believers will not have a regard to fairness or equality, hence little girls of six can be shackled to marriage with men ten times their age, homosexuals can be tortured, and women can be forced to marry people who hurt them on religious grounds. The problem, I explain to her, is that in many countries belief systems have become so forceful that people cannot distinguish right from wrong and the law is not applied fairly for everyone in the way that it should be.

I tell my much cherished daughter that sometimes people die fighting to change the law and to win rights for other people to have choices in life. I tell her that we have to be grateful every day that other people fought for us to have the freedoms that we now enjoy. I show her a picture from 100 years ago on 10 January 2017, when daily picketing began outside the White House and more than one thousand women joined the protest over the course of 1917 to lobby support from Woodrow Wilson for women to have the right to vote. I also show her a picture of Emily Davidson, who was killed as she stepped in front of the King’s racehorse at the Epsom Derby in June 1913 fighting for the same cause in the UK.

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Where warped belief systems prevail over basic human rights, the law has failed its people. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and as we celebrate our new year, we should also celebrate living in a system that embraces a strong rule of law, a democracy, and a society where being able to choose your beliefs is paramount. A toast to freedom.

Happy New Year!

Jayne BackettJayne Backett is a partner at Fieldfisher LLP in London specializing in banking transactions, with a particular focus on real estate financing. Fieldfisher is a 600-lawyer European law firm, with a first-class reputation in a vast number of sectors, specifically, financial institutions, funds, technology and fintech, retail, hotels and leisure, and health care. Jayne has a depth of experience in mentoring and training junior lawyers and has a passion for bringing discussions on diversity in law to the forefront. She can be reached by email at [email protected], and you can follow her on Twitter: @JayneBackett.

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