Ivan Klíma - Judge On Trial

I started to hunt out more books related to my topic. Records of cases long closed: absurd indictments by the Holy Inquisition; crimes all the more cruelly punished for being so shamelessly trumped up. I read on out of a self-tormenting need to confirm my original impression, that beneath the veil of time-honoured justice, the mask of redemptive faith and the smile of holy compassion, was hidden the face of the selfsame beast as ever; it had simply been cunning enough to conceal its whims and combine them into a code which it contrived to foist upon humanity. Again and again, it demanded its ration of blood; tearing and ripping flesh with tongs, burning flanks, disembowelling, cutting off breasts, breaking limbs and crushing joints, piercing through tongues, gouging out eyes, burning alive, an eye for an eye, an eye for nothing, purely on a whim, out of injured vanity, out of spite. It murdered as retribution and as warning; it murdered for fear’s sake and for enjoyment’s sake. It murdered for theft of crockery, for infidelity, for banditry; for superstition and because it too was superstitious, for calumny and because it too believed calumnies, for belief and for unbelief; it murdered the sick and the healthy, the sick in mind and the greatest minds of the day. Always with the same conviction and utter faith in the rightness of its actions, until one day it came up with the gas chambers, into which it planned to thrust everyone without distinction: a whole nation and whole nations. What would it think of next so it could eat its fill, so it could do away for good with the entire human race, and with itself?

Happily my thesis had a deadline. I had to finish my reading and start to put it down on paper. But now I could not face copying out abstractions just to prove I could work with source material. It seemed to me I had to solve the contradiction between people’s yearning for justice and the institutions that pretended to be satisfying that aspiration.

But I was unable to pursue my quest with sufficient integrity and impartiality. After all, it was my job to write about the cruelty committed by class justice in the service of power and obscurantist ideology, superstition and unreason. I sought out and ardently extolled the first manifestations of advancing, triumphant reason. I had become an enthusiastic advocate for the Enlightenment. The things it had achieved! It had put an end to religious intolerance, abolished the Inquisition, imposed a ban on witch hunts and torture — and even abolished the death penalty in many countries. Throughout history, the class struggle had assumed the character of a battle between reason and unreason. Bit by bit, reason was displacing unreason — which always promoted belief and blind obedience, and disparaged thoughtfulness, the spirit of conciliation and the opinions of others.

There had been periods, it was true, when reason was suppressed and triumphant fanaticism had destroyed books and ideas, along with those capable of thought or merely eager to think for themselves. Unreason, I wrote, had always unleashed passions and violence and sown fear: such fear that the voice of reason was silenced; both those who doubted and those who knew stayed silent and served unreason, before themselves turning into pitiless murderers in the end.

But human reason was indomitable and had always been humanity’s guide. Hence reason would always find a way out of the darkness; it would emerge from silence and rise from the dead. Only now was I approaching the purpose of my essay. What else was reason’s supreme achievement but my Model State: a society carefully run so as to leave no scope for unreason? What else was the apogee of reason but the idea of socialism? The new judiciary would determine culpability solely on the basis of evidence that could be verified rationally. The sole objective of the court would be to steer citizens who had gone astray back on to the path of rational and useful activity and peaceful coexistence.

The thesis was sixty pages long — twice the required length. Only later did I discover that my teachers had long argued about whether it was a case of extreme naivety, or, on the contrary, extremely subtle insolence, whether I had really got so worked up about an extinct form of justice or whether I had been artfully attacking the present legal system. I don’t know who stood up for me and persuaded the rest to accept the former assessment, but I do recall Professor Lyon bringing me into his office at that time. He wanted to know if I had a particular interest in the history of law, or whether perhaps my concern was the executive, or even, quite simply, the death penalty.

I gave a confused answer of some sort because up to that moment I had had no particular interest. He told me he had read my thesis with interest (it had not occurred to me that he would read it) and asked me if I would like to visit him at home some time.

He was one of the most respected specialists in the field of penal law, so the mere fact of the invitation flattered me.

4

I found it impossible to imagine what went on inside the heads of the older professors. We youngsters could scarcely have any real inkling of what law, legal culture or legal traditions were. We didn’t even know the basic terms. Even had we been aware of the decline, we had no way of gauging its extent. But what about those erudite gentlemen who had still had the opportunity to study Roman law, who still retained, or should have, something of the pride and sense of independence their profession could once boast? Many of them had left, of course, and many had been expelled, but what about those who remained? How did they feel when the faculty was swamped by semi-educated youngsters who immediately started to lecture them on what they should teach, what they should study, what they should believe and what they should condemn? What could have been the feelings of men who had penned truly scholarly works when they read in their journal (one of the oldest in the country) theoretical essays for which they would have failed first-year law students? And here they were signed by their colleagues. What were their feelings when they themselves concocted similar articles or even whole books? Why did they behave the way they did? Were they goaded by fear, or was it only the cynicism of people who had already lived through too many changes? Or did they too believe that there was no direction in which to continue, and that it really was necessary to start afresh and from the bitterest beginnings seek to give legislation and law a new meaning, in the same way that life was being given a new meaning? Or did they have the wisdom to know that it was only a passing phase? Revolutionary fury would always blow itself out, the revolution would start to eat its own and they would be needed to assist the work of auto-destruction. Then they would return to their interrupted work and resume the tradition where it had been curtailed.

I remember my uneasiness on first entering Professor Lyon’s study at his villa in Dejvice. The window filled one wall and the three other walls were covered in pictures and shelves of books. I couldn’t understand why he had invited me, why he had taken a liking to me — if he had at all. But he invited me on several occasions and I would sit there in a deep leather armchair gazing at the wall full of books which were totally inaccessible to me, because, though I had almost completed my studies, I was incapable of reading in even one of the world languages.

The professor would ask me more about my interests. He wanted to know what had made me write as I had, why I had discussed bygone trials and bygone injustices with such fervour. Why was I so incensed by violence which had taken place such a long time before? Then he told me I allowed my feelings to run away with me. It was wrong for a lawyer to let his feelings get the better of him or get carried away with false hopes. Legislation was enacted and its implementation was assured by the rulers, and rulers always used violence; every law was intrinsically an act of violence against human liberty. He asked me whether I believed it was possible to achieve some kind of pure justice. I said I didn’t know (I tended to be humble in his presence) but that maybe we ought to strive for it.