Justice delivers call to action
Supreme Court judge tells U.S. students that justice is increasingly under threat
OTTAWA— A Supreme Court of Canada judge told an American audience she is “deeply worried about the state of justice in the world.”
Justice Rosalie Abella delivered a commencement speech, after accepting an honorary degree from Brandeis University in Massachusetts, that was part-biography, part call to action.
In it, she suggested that the lessons of the Second World War are being lost in a world where “narcissistic populism” and disregard for human rights, courts, free press and democratic norms are increasingly common.
Abella said the lessons of that “devastating war” once inspired nations of the world “to unite in democratic solidarity” and commit “institutionally and legally to the promotion and protection of values designed to prevent a repetition of the war’s unimaginable human rights abuses.”
“Yet here we are in 2017, barely seven decades later, watching ‘never again’ turn into ‘again and again,’ and watching that wonderful democratic consensus fragment, shattered by narcissistic populism, an unhealthy tolerance for intolerance, a cavalier indifference to equality, a deliberate amnesia about the instruments and values of democracy that are no less crucial than elections, and a shocking disrespect for the borders between power and its independent adjudicators like the press and the
“Indifference is injustice’s incubator; it’s not just what you stand for, it’s what you stand up for.” JUSTICE ROSALIE ABELLA SUPREME COURT OF CANADA
courts.”
Abella made no reference to specific world events, countries or leaders who she believes are eroding those norms.
But it could easily be understood as a concern about the direction the United States is headed under President Donald Trump, who has disparaged courts, the judiciary, the media and his political critics, and a broader criticism of ongoing conflicts in troubled states in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia, and the international community’s failure to resolve them.
It’s the second time this year the Canadian judge has been honoured by an American university. In January, Northwestern University of Chicago named her global jurist of the year, to recognize what it said was a lifetime commitment to the defence of human rights and international criminal justice.
The speech, delivered Sunday at Brandeis’s Waltham, Mass., campus, outlined the personal losses of Abella’s parents, their journey to re-establish themselves, and the words of American lawyers who once wrote letters of encouragement to her father. She urged her listeners to fight for social justice to protect the vulnerable.
“It is time to remind ourselves why we developed such a passionate and, we thought, unshakeable commitment to democracy and human rights, to remember the three lessons we were supposed to have learned from the concentration camps of Europe: Indifference is injustice’s incubator; it’s not just what you stand for, it’s what you stand up for; and we can never forget how the world looks to those who are vulnerable.”
Abella has frequently spoken of her parents’ survival of the Holocaust and the deaths of their 2-year-old son, her father’s parents and other family members. She was born in Stuttgart, Germany, right after the war in a displaced persons camp. The family later immigrated to Canada.
Appointed in 2004, the first Jewish woman Supreme Court justice said her father inspired her decision, at age 4, to become a lawyer after she learned he was unable to pursue the career he’d trained for because of laws barring non-citizens from legal practice.