Justice is yet to wake up
The following is the text of the speech made by Ranjan Gooneratne’s “Before Justice Awakes”
at the launch of Senior Attorney book at the Sri Lanka Foundation Institute on Friday, May 3.
Nothing gives us greater happiness than to be present at the launch of Ranjan Gooneratne’s magnum opus “Before Justice awakes”—a vade maecum for the legal fraternity, judges and anyone interested in law. In that felicitous title “Before Justice Awakes” one cannot help but notice the compelling and provocative innuendo—justice is yet to wake up and it is in deep slumber. Like Rip Van Winkle it lies buried in the sand.
It is characteristic of Ranjan Gooneratne to entitle his book this way because he has remained first and last an erudite fighter. But the book contains a minefield of material narrative about that fancied enclave of justice Hulftsdorp, and it is given only to a few famed historians such as Ranjan Gooneratne to lay it bare in the public domain.
Striking up a conversation with him about 15 years ago for the first time in the corridors of Hulftsdorp, it was like deep calling unto deep. I found in him a learned historian and a raconteur par excellence. The seeds for the oak tree—to borrow the reference to oak from the school song of his rival school Royal College—were sown at that great seat of learning, S. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia and as all scions of that era would wend their way to England, he went to St. Catherine’s College, Oxford and graduated from the Honour School of Jurisprudence in 1963. He was called to the Bar from Gray’s Inn in 1964.
As a law student, I remember watching his late father, Mr A.C Gooneratne QC’s duelling in the dusty arenas of the District Court of Colombo and while that great lawyer, a former President of the Bar Association in 1979 and 1980, would definitely be beaming his beatific smile from far away elysian fields at the writing skills and retentive memory of his first born, I can only imagine his righteous indignation at Ranjan having missed his lineal line.
Come to think of his single blessedness and bachelorhood, I am reminded of Mr Bumble in Charles Dickens’s classic Oliver Twist.
There was some theft of a few trinkets at a workhouse. Mr Bumble had a domineering wife and he was naturally henpecked and cuckolded. He had this devilish streak of a bully. When Law Officers questioned him over the theft, he responded “It was my wife who committed the theft.”
The police officers said: “If your wife has committed the theft, the law presumes that she acted at your direction.” It was quite funny that was the English Law at that time. The husband was vicariously liable for the wrongs of his wife.
But it was just the opposite in Bumble’s case. He always acted at the dictation of his domineering wife but he was being told that English law presumed that the wife acted at his bidding.
Bumble retorted to the police officers: “If law presumes that a wife acts at the dictation of her husband, law is a bachelor; law is a ass. The worst I wish the law is that its eyes may be opened by experience.” You may see Dickensian use of “a ass” instead of an ass.
Bumble’s view is that because law is a bachelor, it does not know the ways and ways of women. It is only through the experience of marriage that its eye would open-Bumble lamented.
Certainly, Ranjan did not want his eyes to be opened by experience. He loved the pleasure of his bridge and golf more than conjugal company. He may have been the reluctant candidate for matrimony but he enjoyed his passion for litigation and he always impressed us as a rara avis in Hulftsdorp and honest to the core.
I have watched Ranjan both from the bar and the bench. Like his father, he always came across as a charming gladiator. Ranjan was outgoing, articulate, eloquent, moving and challenging, as one imbued with a crusading spirit.
His book is an impressive trailblazing study which could adorn any library of an avid reader. Undoubtedly, he pokes fun at the judiciary and the legal fraternity. Caricaturing judges is not a flaw that is unique to Ranjan. There have been pioneering caricaturists of judges and lawyers before. Who else can create cameos about Hulftsdorp other than someone like Ranjan who is infinitely richer for the opportunity he had, to be exposed to rich influences and traditions? Fortunately, no fun is poked at the current composition of the Supreme Court or the Court of Appeal. I thank him in return for his magnanimity in inviting us.
Commenting on the introduction of the vernacular in courts, he alludes to the immortal words of Virgil in his book, “facilis descensus avernus sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, Hoc opus, hic labor est.” Easy is the descent to Avernus (hell). But to retrace thy steps and escape back to the upper air, that is the task, that is the toil.
All that he has said may be painfully true, but it is not the whole truth. There are other influences and traditions at the bar which never died and which must be crucial for the commitment we have made to bring real justice, dignity and freedom to all the citizens of this extremely exciting country, of so much promise and richness: so much romance and cruelty.
I am sure the book will make compelling reading. The constellation of his stories will titillate everybody but I have no doubt it will stimulate thoughts and provoke reflection on the very need to leave a great tradition and legacy for the future generations.
There is good reason to think that he will continue to produce superlative sequels of this nature. Once more Mansfield’s poem “Sea Fever” comes to mind. “I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied...”
There is firm hope that Ranjan Gooneratne has a law fever that may not be denied or diminished. Meanwhile, we his friends and well-wishers wish him all the joy and glory of the moment and happiness he so richly deserves.