THE EDITOR, Sir:MR. BERESFORD Hay often makes some meaningful suggestions in his contributions in the print media. To be sure, he sometimes employs a caustic pen, but in the main, his offerings usually come across as having been made with a level head.
However, his contribution in the Letter Of The Day of Saturday, April 17, (last week), touching on the gift made by the United States Government of a standby generator to the Supreme Court Building, is decidedly wide of the mark.
The view is expressed by Mr. Hay that "(A) nation cannot finance and administer a system of justice and ensure the enforcement of its laws within its boundaries without external interference is a nation of wimps." That is true. But there is a word of difference between "external interference" and "external assistance."
Times have changed, Mr. Hay. In a global arrangement, beset by cross-border criminal activities, a struggle to combat the powerful and expansive trade in narcotics with its links to guns and other dangerous weapons and the constant threat of terrorism, countries are forced to collaborate with and to assist each other. No one country, however economically powerful, can by itself, meet and finance those challenges in such a manner as to be able to administer a system of justice to "ensure the enforcement of its laws within its boundaries."
This has ripened into a global position, rather than holding to a dated myopic view. In this regard, it is said that "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere."
Mr. Hay stridently claims that, regardless of the fact that the judge(s) or Minister may act with utter propriety, confidence in the system may be undermined if it is "propped up by bounty." Why does he regard the gift of a standby generator as bounty?
For years, rather decades, our justice system has been propped up by the provision of a court, judges and staff by the United Kingdom Government. Does Mr. Hay regard such a gift in our formative years as an independent nation as 'bounty', or its acceptance by us as a display of mendicancy? And, with respect, neither has that fact, by itself, moved anyone to regard the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council or the United Kingdom Government with suspicion, or has made us come to be regarded as a "nation of wimps."
I am, etc.,
A.J. NICHOLSON, Q.C.
Attorney-General and Minister of Justice
