 Hello everyone, welcome to this the fourth in the 221st session of the Royal Philosophical Society, can you hear me at the back. I need to. Can you hear me at the back if I speak louder. That's the, that's the secret. So welcome to the fourth in this 221st session. Some announcements fire exits at the front and the back you know that the toilet is downstairs. There's a lift at the front here if you need to use that if you have a hearing loop you can tune in because we, we have that. Welcome to the small number of people who are joining us by zoom from home. It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker. She who was born into privilege, the privilege being born in Glasgow. She is a glass region and still has family in the city. In the late 1960s, leaving Hollywood secondary school and a strong Catholic and Labour background. She moved to London. She studied and trained in English law. How bold was that. And what followed has been stellar career becoming one of the most known and respected lawyers in the UK possibly the most known and possibly the most respected specializing in criminal law and acting in many famous cases. During trial, the Guildford for many cases of domestic abuse and more recently cases of domestic terrorism. She's that increasingly rare thing and advertisement for the House of Lords. Baroness Kennedy of the shores of cut cut a labor pier since 1997, who it is said has defied the party whipped more frequently than any other labor peer, a descent rate of 33% to list her many other roles. As patron of this president of that chair fellow public inquiry chair broadcaster journalist, university chancellor college principle. It would take the whole of our time this evening to suffice to say she's in demand, and she collects honorary university degrees by the dozen. She's 40 so far and I believe, including every university in Scotland which must be a record. And what's that tells us is that Elena embody something that the university's value, and with which they want to be associated her pursuit of truth and justice. She's been a campaigner, promoting the law as an instrument of justice. And balancing the law as an instrument of power and defending the law from attack. 1992 book Eve was framed is now a classic. Next, a cogently argued examination of how the British legal system ignores downgrades underrates and discriminates against women. In 2018, much has been achieved but there's still a lot to do, not only for women but for other disadvantaged groups. She has spent her professional life, giving voice to those with the least power within the system, championing liberties and promoting human rights. So please welcome Helena back to her home city to talk on the nature of justice Helena. I must tell you how thrilled I am. I thought that on the windy night that we had tonight, there would be a very small audience, and it's just thrilling to see that so many of you have turned out. I came up on the flight from London and from city airport and we circle Glasgow Airport. I have to tell you for over half an hour, because the wind was so strong that the pilot was anxious about landing. Anyway, I'm here and I'm thrilled to see you all. I have to brought back to mind, when I wrote Eve was framed back in 1992 and I just become a Queen's Council and now I'm a King's Council. And I was the book was launched in Glasgow and I went to an event and it was very, very packed and, and we did a sort of question and answer session. My mother wasn't there. She had a really bad filthy cold. My sisters were all there. My cousins were all there. Of course, half the audience were related to me, but the other half went. And, and there was somebody there was a somebody in the audience who came up to get the book signed, and he was a priest he had a color on. And he said to me, Archbishop winning has sent me to, to get a copy of this book. And so when I signed it to Archbishop winning. And I told my mother and my mother, did they know the kind of woman you are. So I hope that I hope I can shock you all tonight but my mother was clearly very anxious. My mother was was was she's no longer alive, but she did keep her daughters feet very firmly on the ground, particularly mine. And remember, one of my sisters telling me that she was with my mother and a woman stopped her in the street and said, I saw an article in the papers Mrs Kennedy about your daughter. I don't know how she manages to do all the things that she does. And my mother said yes but you've never seen her skirting boards. So I do want you to know Graham that I have a failure in some departments. It's, it's a real delight to be here and I just wanted to start by emphasizing that I am not a philosopher, but I do know that the Scottish enlightenment meant that all of us were supposed to, you know, broaden our horizons by listening and hearing as many things as we could to enrich our own lives but to understand the world better. And so I hope that I might add a little to that tonight but I hope that you all are much more probably philosophically informed than I am will draw some philosophical threads from this talk to see if we can forge some sort of understanding of what justice means. And even if it remains indefinable. There are some solid parameters around it. I do know that very little children instinctively know what's not fair. I went once to my children's school, and they used to invite in mums or dads to talk about what they did when they worked. And so somebody had been who was a policeman and he talked about being a policeman and, and so on. It always reminds me of a sister a story my sister tells about who teaches here in Glasgow, and she said that she was in. She was in one of the big housing schemes, one of the rather poor housing schemes and she said that the police came in, and it was to talk about children having to, you know, basically avoid being abused, and to be careful about strangers or even, you know, to talk about anything that was done to them that they was wrong. And so it was about safety. And so the police had brought in to start it on the more obvious end before they moved to the more difficult end, they brought in a number of items, a kettle and electric kettle and, and a toaster and things. And they said, why should you not touch these things. And now we boy in the front will put his hand up and said, because you'll leave your fingerprints. So, I wanted us to think about was the parameters of justice but children know what's fear and what's not. And when I went into the school of my children, it was a primary school. I brought with me my wig and gown and I tried to explain to them that I was a lawyer and I was a barrister. And, and I said, does anybody know when something's not fair. And they all put their hands up. And they all were able to say, if you're blamed for something that you didn't do. If somebody hits you or take something that belongs to you and takes it from you. They all had examples of what they thought wasn't fair. And it starts early in our being that sense of injustice. And so I think that we do instinctively know when injustice is taking place. There's an old story that's told of two great American legal figures. Justice Holmes, who was on the Supreme Court, and Judge Leonard Hans who ended up being there. But they were having lunch. And as they separated at the Capitol in Washington, where the Supreme Court is justice hands was about to go off to a sitting of the court. And Leonard Hans said in his parting shot to Holmes. Goodbye, dear sir. Do justice to which Holmes replied, that's not my job. My job is to apply the law. Now, it's an interesting thing, but like many stories it's changed over the years and it's got, you know, it's gathered moss, but some claim that he actually said my job is to play the game according to the rules. But either way, he's presented as distinguishing between justice and law. I've had a long and very satisfying career in the law. I really love my career in the law. And I think I think law is really fundamental. I believe in it. But I have seen up close, when it has done terrible wrongs in the lives of people. And I believe that that sort of way of interpreting law is an inadequate thing within a justice system. I called one of my books just law. And it was, it was really because one of the occasions and green referred to them, I would I would regularly vote against my own party in government. If it was doing something that I thought was an egregious affront to the law. I'm a lawyer, it's in my guts, I feel it's bitterly. And, and, and my, I feel that my master is the law rather than a political party and I did not hang my brain up on the peg, when I went into the House of Lords. And so I regularly was at war with my own party when it came to issues to do with justice and to do with the, with, with law. I, I, I think that it's very important that we confront some of those areas of law where justice has been left behind. And so it, I have, I, and I make confession to this I have always seen my role within the law is to use it for social change to use it in order to seek to affect justice and I've tried to find ways to reposition the rules of the game as described by in a way that would create greater justice, especially for women, because when I went to the bar in the 70s. And I want you all to look and say, she's not bad for her age. I have been practicing this year, 50 years at the bar. I was called to the Y 1970. So I in those early years in the 70s, I saw so clearly the ways in which law had been made from a perspective that did not include the experience of women. And so I made the perspective of those who were sitting in our courts in the higher courts because you know how law is made. It's made either by statute in Parliament, or by our judges in the higher courts passing down precedent which is supposed to then inform how lower courts will make decisions. I looked and certainly when I went to the bar in the 70s, when you looked and saw that the people who were basically making law in Parliament and indeed creating law in the courts, where by and large man of a particular class. And, and we have to understand that law is the product of power, law comes out of power, and those who have traditionally made law have been the powerful those who have some form of power. And, and around the world that is true. And around the world, the nature of our world has been that those who had power were essentially male, but also from particular class backgrounds. And so it's not going to surprise most of us that there has been a struggle, particularly through the latter part of the 20th century but into the 21st century of trying to inject a greater sort of democratic sense into a system systems of law. The experience of women, the experience of those who are on the margins, the experience of people who are in minorities and so forth. So I saw in my early years of practice in the law, a great deal of injustice. Huge amount of injustice. I started in the lower courts. And so when, as most young lawyers do. And, and when I went into those courts I saw discrimination of many different kinds. I saw the way in which the, the those who were basically being punished for being poor. I saw the way in which people who were gay male homosexuals at that time, you wouldn't see a gay woman in the courts for anything connected to her sexuality. But you certainly saw men, and you would see young men who were basically being harassed and pursued by that time that certainly in England there were vice squads that used to sort of hang around in gents toilets, looking for the opportunity that they thought might be homosexual and the hand of the law went on their shoulders and often they hadn't done anything. But they would arrive at court and then we would do an assessment to see whether the press were present in the court. And if they weren't they would often, even if they had done nothing, they would plead guilty to avoid coverage of their case in the press. Finding out that they were homosexual, their employers finding out and therefore the ramifications it would have in their employment and so on. I saw regular miscarriages of justice. I saw the way in which women who experienced domestic violence. We then use the term battered women because we had a very kind of limited notion of the ways in which abuse could operate. There were women who were being beaten in the most senseless way and there was no justice for them. They often, if they did complain to the police or neighbours called in the police, there would be no response to the fact that they had been beaten. And often they'd be told to kiss and make up and the police would say this is not to waste police time, this is not the real purpose of policing. I saw and was involved in cases of rape and sexual violence. And again, women were just not believed. The assumption was that women made these things up. And the disbelief of women's accounts of the ways in which they were violated was a common place. And it would be common to go in front of a jury and for them to give you the thumbs up. And unfortunately, it wasn't just men who were hard on women. It was women who were also hard on women, assuming that any woman had got herself into the situation where she had found herself being raped. Then she shouldn't have been wherever she was that she had allowed that to happen to her. She must have in some ways be culpable for letting this happen to her. I remember, in fact, just last night I went to a gathering for somebody who was celebrating their 80th birthday. I'm not there yet. I've got a good way to go. But and their present was an appeal court judge. And he came and had a word with me and he said, I remember having dinner with you back in when you just become a new young QC. And I said, I remember it very well. And I do remember it very well. And he had no recollection of this. He remembered the dinner. He had no recollection of the conversation. The conversation was about Mike Tyson and Mike Tyson had was being charged and tried for the rape of a young woman. And the young woman had been a beauty queen. She was a young, you know, sort of African American beauty pageant. And she had been this young beauty queen and mixed race. And and he had met her at the social event after one of these things and then had him said he'd like to take her on a date. And then he had said he wanted to call into his room at the hotel and to come up because he wanted to pick up some things from there and it's credit card. And she had gone with him and then she had been sexually brutally assaulted by him. And she told her parents when she got she got home and her parents took her to the police. And around the dinner table of people who eventually became senior judges, the expression was that what kind of girl goes to a man's hotel room and that she had it coming to her. And I'm afraid that was a commonplace at that time, the idea that somehow a man had expectations and if a woman in any way given indication that she might be available then that that was that was it. And so we've come a long way in that journey of my career in the law, a long way in that journey in understanding what justice might mean for women who are the receiving end of that kind of sexual violence. I also then went on to do, as I became a more senior lawyer, after those years in the magistrates courts and in the lower courts and doing, you know, less grand trials, but where miscarriages of justice happened to. But then I went on to do grander trials, bigger trials, trials involving that came out of the Irish troubles. And, and while in amongst them, of course, there were people who were guilty of atrocious crimes. There were also people who ended up in there, simply by association or because they were part of the Irish community. And, and terrible miscarriages of justice took place and they really were miscarriages of justice. I mean, we know that because the scientific evidence that became available showed that they couldn't have been there and, and then witnesses who had been silenced came forward and told what had happened to them. And the threats which had produced confessions and the violence that can produce confessions came to light. And so many of the ways and then to that time there were a lot of pollution in this or judges just just did not want to hear anything bad said about our police officers. And so I regret to tell you that justice is not always available in our court system. And seeing failures of justice is a really painful thing to watch people being imprisoned for things that they haven't done is is shocking when you have have a role within the legal system. And I remember particularly representing a woman called Mary drew in and this was nothing to do with terrorism or she was a she was a woman who had ended up homeless because of a number of tragedies in her life. And a fire took place in a place when homeless people used to to take shelter was sort of a sort of DOS DOS in place. And it was a place that had one time been a painter's sort of with, you know, rooms that were kept where they kept their paints and so on. And it had been a little old sort of that storehouse. And they had found a way into it and they used to sleep there in the winter. And she was convicted of having set a fire there, which led to the death of two men. And someone came forward and said that in the week or so before there had been an argument most drunken people and she had an alcohol problem. And it had her saying, you ought to be dead. One of these days you're going to come to a story pass or something of that sort. And she ended up being convicted. I didn't act for her at the original trial but I did the appeal. And I still have this searing memory of going to see her in prison because the television program, raw justice, you know, there was that justice program that used to visit possible miscarriages of justice and they would excavate evidence and so on. And they, they got a proper scientific evidence to revisit the evidence in the case. And it was shown in these premises. There was hugely combustible material because there was turps and turpentine and all manner of things. And they showed that the seat of the fire, the place because of where the burn in the premises was intense, an expert was able to say this fire couldn't have taken place in the way that was being suggested that she'd thrown a match into this place and that somehow there was paper there and it had gone up in flames. But this was not how that fire had happened. And it was probably that one of the men had fallen asleep and his cigarette had set light to combustible materials in a particular room that was intensely contaminated with very, very inflammable material. And the scientific evidence in the end showed that Mary Drewham hadn't been responsible. She'd always said that she hadn't done it. When I went to see her in prison, she had turned into a person who was like a child who asked permission to stand up. She was like a little girl. And I always remember that at the Court of Appeal, when her case was heard and she was acquitted in front of the Court of Appeal 11 years after spending all that time in prison. When we walked out into Fleet Street from the highest courts of appeal and the noise of the traffic frightened her and she was frightened of crossing the road and she didn't know how to start her life again. And those sorts of experiences sear into you a sense of what injustice is, even if it doesn't tell you what justice is. I wanted to just run through the fact that the rule of law is recognized as fundamental to a well-administered society. And while here in Scotland, the principle that no one should be above the law is rooted in the Statute of a Broth in England and Wales. And in fact, it's sort of a claimed in around the world that Magna Carta is hailed as the foundational document of the rule of law. And even the King, of course, I mean that that time it all came about because of the an oppressive King John. And it was basically about the aristocracy, basically taking him to account. They were sick of being taken into unlawful wars, having to round up the people who worked on their lands, who were being forced to become part of the Royal Army. And then they wouldn't have people to plow the fields and do all of that things to keep estates going. And so the great resentment grew up amongst the barons. And so they wanted the King held to account in the same way that they would be. And so Magna Carta came into being. And for King, you now read presidents, premiers, prime ministers, ministers of state, indeed every arm of the state, the police, the immigration services, the armed forces, and so on. And in fact, the recorded use, we can say this proudly we Scots, the first recorded use of the term rule of law was in the 16th century. And it was a Scottish theologian Samuel Rutherford, who argued was arguing against the divine right of Kings, the idea that the King was godly and therefore was above the law and had impunity. And he was making the point that that that was was me so. But as we know that notion that the law has to apply to all is often honored in the breach. And I don't intend to be party political but I think we did see that Boris Johnson and his cohorts and Downing Street clearly didn't think the covert laws applied to them. And we know that because the police ended up prosecuting a number of people in there and and took a great deal of care I'm sure over when and how and what evidence they were prepared to do that. But I suspect and I recommend to your book called chums, which is is written by a Financial Times journalist, who was at Oxford but not part of this. But apparently the Bullington Club and viewed in its membership, a sense of entitlement and a sense of superiority that the law like taxes were for the little people. And I think that perhaps has remained in the hearts of certain people. In 1999 when I was the chair of the British Council and it was it was a, it was a wonderful role. I have to tell you because it meant that I traveled to China to lots of different parts of the world in that role because we were trying to, you know, it was soft power it was a way of making connection with people through educational institutions through organizations through all programs and I was very firmly of the view we should not be about Britain trying to tell folk in the world how to do things, but about an exchange of learning and and experience, and that you came together as equals in partnership over many different projects from the arts through education and through law and so forth. And when I went on a state visit to China in 1999. In the run up to it. I mean the British Council had been involved in arranging for the training of cohorts of lawyers and so I was very interested in how that was being done. It was basically to train lawyers in commercial law because China was wanting to take part in the, in the global market and it was a sort of slightly different China from the one that we're dealing with today, in that it did look as though change was was happening. So the cohorts of Chinese lawyers came to Britain went to the School of Oriental and African Studies, of which I was the, the Chancellor, the equivalent of being the Chancellor I was the president of the, of the School of Oriental and African studies which is part of the history. And, and, and so we were connected in that way of bringing lawyers on, and we built into it as understanding of what legal systems here might be like and in fact we brought Scottish judges out with us to this grand meeting. Which was of course essentially about trade, but along the side of it were these other things to memories remain with me one was that we did this mock trial as a display of the United Kingdom's legal systems workings that we have jury trials. And we had in preparation for this work was done, and a Chinese jury heard the case of some act of fraudulence or dishonesty, and in fact the Chinese jury acquitted the person was on trial. Quite unusual thing, let me tell you from what I certainly will I know now about a lot of what happens in Chinese courts, but the Chinese believe that their system also complied with the rule of law. And it's about that importance of us understanding what a rich, a rich interpretation of the rule of law really means the central communist administrative body made the law, and the Chinese people were required to obey it. And that was the rule of law. And in many totalitarian regimes that they would say is the rule of law. In democracies the concept of the rule of law is given legitimacy by the fact that statutory law is made in parliament by members of of that parliament elected by the people. And under the common law system, law is also made and developed by judges as the interpret laws and create precedence and that happens in Scotland as well as in England, and they're binding on the lower courts. Law making has historically been invested, as I've said in men of a certain class and color and it's only been in comparatively recent times that we've seen the sort of drive to create a more diverse sort of judiciary with people from very backgrounds with men and women with people of color with people. Is that me that did that. Anyway, so the rule of law. And it has it, it's been enriched the sense of it that fundamental to it is the idea of the independence of the judiciary, the judiciary should sit alongside anything to do with politics it should be over here. And impartial. Maybe I'm too close to something. Maybe it's your students like to take this over to your side of the room. There will be a happy explanation other than I otherwise it's a poltergeist of some sort. Anyway, but there are a number of notion are fundamental to the rule of law and it is that the law has to be clear. So you try. Sorry about this technical person who's six foot 10. No he's not he's there I can see him. How could we how could we mistake that man. Am I doing something very strange. Am I. You don't know. What do you think. You think I should just use the microphone. All right. Is this better. It's obviously me. My phone is not anywhere near. I have been, I have been sanctioned by the Chinese, and we have been talking about the Chinese. The complaint about the Chinese being involved in doing treacherous and terrible things to the Uyghur people, a minority in Xinjiang province, led to my being sanctioned by the Chinese. So it may be that mentioning them as far down the theories. Anyway, let me make it clear. The Chinese people are not the subject of my criticism. It's the Chinese government and Mr G that I'm not very happy with. The law. So the law has to be clear. It has to be publicized. Strange going on. So there has to be equality before the law. And it's very interesting if you look up the encyclopedia Britannica the rule of law is described as being the mechanism process institution practice. Or not. That supports the equality of all citizens before the law. And that there has to be a non arbitrary form of government and more generally, there should not be the arbitrary abuse or use of power. The interesting thing and you. My God, I'm going to move away. You. What can that be? Like over there. Is it something here? Take some and just walk there. Okay. Can you can you hear me. The dinner party that I really would like to have gone to was one that Eleanor Roosevelt had. After the Second World War, her husband would been the president of course had died. And she was really a remarkable woman, and she gathered together lawyers and jurists and judges from around the world. I mean, I mean really a gathering of people of real distinction. You know she had a confusion from China because it was before the Chinese Revolution. She had, you know she had someone from Stalin's Russia. She had a Brazilian she had a Canadian she had of course a bridge and I hope it was a Scott but I can't tell you whether it was or not. But a full range of lawyers from very different legal traditions. And what she brought them together for and she had this apartment in Washington Square in New York, and she brought them all there. And I think there was something like 18 of them. And she brought them to to look at the conditions that had led to the horrors of the Holocaust and the horrors of the Second World War. And the role that lawyers and judges had played in it, because in the Nuremberg trials it wasn't just the sort of leaders of the Nazi Party, and the ones that we know about who are put on trial but judges to where and I if you if you can dig it out. There's an old film, Justice at Nuremberg, which is about the trial of a Bert Lancaster plays a German judge and Spencer Tracy plays one of the tribunal the Nuremberg panel that tried people. And it's really a remarkable film because it's about the ways in which judges and lawyers played a role in the administration of the Nazi regime that led you know sent people to concentration camps and administered law that was clearly, clearly an affront to what we would all consider to be justice. And, and so she brought all these lawyers together to say, How do we stop that happen? How do we stop ever happening again? How do we make real the idea of never again? And we create global law, and people pointed out that you, it's not possible to create global law because law comes out of the traditions and the, and they, they, the past of nations. It grows from the sort of subsoil of nations and the cultures in which people are brought up. And so it would be impossible to suddenly create global law that said you can't do these terrible things to people. But what came out of those meetings, and I would have just even to have been a fly on the wall to be part of those discussions about how do you create the sort of ethical standards within law that prevent these horrors taking place. And what they of course came up with was the idea that of a universal charter, the universal declaration of human rights, which in itself although nations signed up to it and signed up to it then in itself did not create law. It had to be then brought into the law of the individual nations. But what it set out was a set of, of values, which were to inform there would be a template against which all legal systems would be tested. And, and so it's worth remembering that that was what its purpose was, was to create that template of values. And the way that it has worked was that of course, by 19, I mean that it was created as you know, after the Second World War, after all the gatherings that they're aware and the formulation of those values, you know, the important right to life. But of course, people have to be able to defend themselves if they themselves are being attacked or if a nation is being attacked by another nation. It was recognized that there had to be certain limits put on the right to life. And indeed, the argument would be now about women's rights to make decisions around their own reproductive capacity. But the protection of life being vitally important and that there have to be ways in which the taking of life is reckoned as being something of great seriousness. And then the business of the right to fair trial, the business of the freedom of religion that people yearn to have meaning in their lives to know why they're here. And whether it's to believe or just to basically have your own, your own right to know things. And so the articles were put together based on those things, the fundamental need that people have to love and be loved, providing the right to family life. And those many different things, freedom of speech, freedom of association. And yet as we look around the world now, there are so many places in which some of these things are being eroded by the day. But the creation of that great document then gave rise to the creation, for example in Europe, 1950 of the European Convention on Human Rights signed up to and I mean the energy for it coming from Winston Churchill. Drafted by conservative lawyers. Because at the time in the aftermath of war, it felt there was an urgency to do this. And somehow the passing of time has eroded that urgency. Now, the Nuremberg trial as I've said involved the trial of judges. And they were all highly educated. They were internationally respected these judges, and yet 16 of them have been put on trial in real time in the film they only have a few people on trial. But 16 senior judges were put on trial. And they explained their positions as being actions grounded in patriotism, that they were only following the law. They were only administering the law. They were doing, as Holmes described, basically being an administrator of law. And some of them explained and justified their position on the grounds of what had happened to Germany in the Treaty of Versailles and the way in which they felt that they were unjustly punished as a nation. And so justice did rear its head, but only in defence. So that business of only interpreting laws without having the injection of a score sense of what is just and what is unjust does not deliver what just and fair nations need. Now, what we saw, and we have seen, is a recognition that you have to have in having this independent set of judges, you also have to have an independent legal profession. In our countries in the United Kingdom, it gives rise to is the place from which eventually many judges come. That's the training ground for the judiciary, not so in lots of other countries. The judiciary being separate, separate from politics. But lawyers, the independence of lawyers, meaning that they should not be confused with the actions or the politics of their clients. Because so often we act because we're trying to keep the system strong, because if you don't have people properly defended, even when it comes to war crimes, then you are undermining systems of justice. I am currently part of a task force that was put together at the invitation of Ukraine to help them in consideration of how they might deal with war crimes. And one of the real difficulties which you can well understand is that the Ukrainian Bar Association, there are two, are very clear that it's very difficult to persuade any Ukrainian lawyers to defend the people that are being put on trial for killing civilians. There already have been a number of war crimes tribunals and court cases involving the murder, the cold blooded killing of Ukrainian citizens by Russian soldiers. But great difficulty in finding lawyers who will act for those who are charged because of the strength of feeling of the Ukrainian people. And so the very serious discussions that are taking place about whether it's going to be necessary to have a body of lawyers who are external to go in to do those cases, to make sure that people are properly represented. And those are the sorts of problems that arise when there are serious passions and energies released in times of conflict. And yet at the same time, it's when we have to make sure that our systems of law remain true and the persuasion that we have to make of the Ukrainian legal system that it has to distinguish itself from what would happen in Russia. Which is happening daily in Russia. Look what's happened to Navalny, the opposition leader. Look what's happened to so many of the people who dared to confront Putin. 600 journalists have fled to the Czech Republic having been given emergency visas. 30 to Lithuania, 45 to Estonia. And there are others who got out earlier on before emergency visas became the only way of getting out. Human rights for me is the way of injecting justice into legal ecosystems. And it's why we have to be very protective of human rights legislation. And currently here in the United Kingdom, we've had a return, we thought it had gone and it had been abandoned. But we're having a return to the idea of a British Bill of Rights who will pull together by deeply conservative lawyers who do not like human rights legislation. And they don't like it because it holds power to account. I mean, that's essentially what it does. And so we should be concerned that human rights laws that were brought into Scotland through the Scotland Act into England through the Human Rights Act are now going to be dissolved and into one British Bill of Rights. How it's going to accommodate what happens in Scotland, who knows. But we should all be deeply alarmed about what is taking place. Treaties and conventions and protocols followed from the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The genocide convention, the convention on the rights of the child still not signed up to in part by the United Kingdom. Other conventions to protect those most vulnerable in our societies. When the millennium took place, we had just had the trial or the attempt to put on trial of Pinochet. He come to Britain for an operation and was being treated in Harley Street and one of the private hospitals there. And then gone to recuperate in a very lavish house in the outskirts of London. And he was arrested using universal jurisdiction, universal jurisdiction being something that international law has brought into being that for certain kinds of high level crimes, the jurisdiction runs across the globe. And then a race can take place anywhere. And so Spain had issued a warrant for Pinochet because of the terrible things that were done to people during his yunta years. And it was a very interesting moment because that case went all the way to our Supreme Court. And at the last minute, he was allowed to return to Chile because he was suffering from Alzheimer's. And it was felt that he wouldn't be able to defend himself because of his condition. But what was clear to lawyers was that here was the first real case of universal jurisdiction being used against a dictator for the terrible atrocities and crimes against humanity which took place under his period in office. And it meant that Saharto and other other dictators and other parts of the world stopped thinking that London was the place to which they could come for their medical treatment. I made a speech at the end of that of the 20th century, just as we were going into the millennium, saying that I thought that the 21st century was going to be the century of human rights. I wanted to actually be creating a better world in which that recognition and that chilling effect that there would be if people thought that we would be prosecuted in other jurisdictions for the things that they did at home. I thought as being a sort of moment of real change. Unfortunately, 9-11 happened and put paid to that. The invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Iraq has tested the law to its limits. The invasion and the economic crash of 2007-2008 sent the world into a spin which led to growing numbers of populist nationalist governments led by strong men who basically tore up the rule book. And the trajectory is familiar. What those kinds of authoritarian rulers do is they promise simple solutions to complex problems. They aim minorities for this social ills and for any of the financial problems or employment problems that the indigenous nation might be experiencing. And so that marginalizing of immigrants and asylum seekers and so on, we see it in Eastern Europe. The nation's woes are blamed on others. I was shocked not very long ago when I went to Budapest and they're hanging on banners in the main streets where these banners of George Soros, hugely rich philanthropist who's put a lot of money into trying to strengthen democracies and civil societies and so on and created the European University in Budapest. And he's a hate figure to Orban, the premier of Hungary. And he has basically used, although it's by stealth, the sense of Soros the Jew in some way funding organizations inside the country, which are essentially democracy developing organizations to strengthen civil society. The same thing in Turkey. Interesting, the assault upon open society, which was the organization that was George Soros gave a great deal of money to, which was to build civil societies in places where people didn't know their own power and didn't know the ways in which they could influence government. And it's one of the great strengths of Scotland and the UK generally that we have very active civil society. This is an expression of it here today, the idea that people come out that they come together together for opportunities to learn and discuss that they take part in charitable endeavors that they give time to charities and so on. And so he put money into those things being developed in places that had been formerly part of the old sort of Soviet and communist world where people were not able to do those things. What has happened in those places, those many places, Turkey, Erdogan, Orban, Hungary, what's happening in Poland. In many of those places what they do is they go after the judiciary, they capture the judiciary so that it's a judiciary which will do the bidding of government and always find in favor of government. And any judges who fall foul of that end up being given very early retirement and their pension probably reduced. The same thing happening in the Philippines with the Duterte and now with Marcos, the return of the Marcos dynasty. The same thing happening in, and we see it happening unfortunately in Israel, we see it happening in so many places. And those are places which of course describe themselves as democracies because the people vote for these strong men. But what they get in return is an attack on media freedom, an attack on the rule of law, attack on the judges who act for those who are voices of opposition. And unfortunately there are more authoritarian governments now than there are democracies which was not the case at the end of the 90s. So we get the limiting of access to the courts for ordinary people or for those who experience arbitrary power. And that's certainly been happening in my own jurisdiction in which I operate. The judicial review has been curtailed, legal aid has been cut to the bone, the courts are in absolute disarray. South of the border there are 50,000 cases waiting to be tried in the criminal courts. It will take years before they will come before the courts and yet our Lord Chancellor, Dominic Rab, is prioritising the creation of a British Bill of Rights. And it will be a Bill of Rights which will have less rights, not more. So we're seeing a world that is dramatically divided and more so between rich and poor. And the rich such as the oligarchs can use the law to silence their critics. And we've seen it here in the courts south of the border with journalists being taken to court. Catherine Belton by a number of oligarchs because of her criticism of Putin and their criticism of them as their funders of Putin. This was called slap litigation where they use the power of the courts to silence investigative journalism and to silence free speech. Carol Cadwalader, I don't know if her name means anything to you, but she was an observer journalist who started on air thing. The ways in which algorithms are used were being used during the Brexit referendum and in the run up to the elections that followed. Russian influenced with Russian money, paying for some of this stuff, but algorithms being used in order to penetrate the democratic process so that people were receiving inordinate amounts of information, often disinformation, which would direct their votes in a particular direction. The chilling effects that these things have shouldn't be underestimated because people start worrying that they might become somebody at the brunt of these kinds of efforts. And so we should be alarmed when we hear that the government is seeking to disengage from the European Convention on Human Rights, something that we had a powerful impact in the creation of. The attacks that are currently taking place on the media, on independent media, the attacks here on lawyers and judges. You'll remember that business where the Daily Mail spoke of the senior judges who said that Parliament should actually get to vote on after the referendum, should get to vote on the way, the method for disengaging from the European Union. And it was resisted madly by those who strongly wanted to see Brexit. But the attacks of the judges who made the decision that Parliament in our system should be the place where these things are voted upon was just shocking, enemies of the people. And then a kind of deep, deep penetration of the lives of judges and who their wives were and what their wives did for a living and what their children did for a living to suggest that they were partisan. The othering of people fleeing persecution, which is taking place just now in this country is shocking. Tomorrow morning, one of the things that I will be doing while I'm up here is launching a report on the horrible events that took place at the beginning of COVID here in this city, where people were taken out of the flats and homes that they were living in. And while they were making their applications for asylum and so on, people who had gone through persecution, who had fled conflict and terrible events and were taken out of their homes at short notice, put into hotels because it was going to save money. And then, of course, had the mental anguish that led to suicide by one person, a psychotic episode by somebody else who ran around stabbing out at people with knives and then his being shot by the police to protect other people. But it was a sort of travesty that came about because of putting money before the well-being of human beings. Now, I happen to believe that the Scotland Act has enriched the law here in Scotland. I happen to believe that the Human Rights Act in England and Wales has enriched the quality of law and the lawyering and the judging in our country. And if you want to read about the rule of law in our modern world, I would recommend to you a small book, a tiny book written by Tom Bingham who was the president of the Supreme Court for a while before he died about the rule of law. And in it he's very clear that the rule of law in the contemporary world and in our society involves recognition of human rights and the need to protect the humanity of each and every one of us. And so my life has been about calling for diversity in the judiciary, my life at the barn in the legal profession and then in the world of academia where I've done different things and headed up a college and so on. I've done those things really because I think that I think the law is fundamental in our society, but it has to be good law. It has to be just law. And perspectives have to come from a diverse judiciary, from a diverse practicing set of lawyers. And I'm a firm believer in the jury system and I think that juries, well-informed juries, play their important role as representing the community within our system. So in recent times I've become the director of an Institute of Human Rights for the International Bar Association and it means that I'm seeing law around the world and I'm seeing law as failures in so many parts of the world. And by keeping our systems strong, protecting them, they're so precious in a good society that to let them wither is something that we mustn't, as alert citizens, we mustn't let that happen. In the 70s there was an American philosopher called John Rawls. And John Rawls teaches a lesson to us all. He used to speak about something called the veil of ignorance. And he used to say that when we come to serious decision making, we've got to be alert to the ways in which we might put our own interests first. And he said you have to put yourself behind a veil of ignorance and act as though you don't know whether you're male or female. You don't know whether you're black or white. You don't know whether you're a gay person or a straight person or whether you are old or young or whether you're able-bodied or disabled. And if you make law and make decisions behind that veil of ignorance, you're more likely to create fair and just outcomes. And it's something to carry with you that idea of imagining you are not enjoying the kind of privileges that we might enjoy because of our class or because of our gender or because of who we are or how we're placed in society. I've seen it up close recently and it's been so painful to watch people being denied their sense of who they are in a society. When the Taliban took over in Kabul last year, I started receiving these horrendous messages from women, lawyers and judges in Afghanistan because of what I had done in relation to the setting up of the Bar Association there and also really encouraging during the period when they were going through reform that the law school should open up to women and that women should be becoming judges. And they have a system where women could become judges straight from studying law. They would take a trajectory that took them into the judiciary. And I was a part of a group of people advocating that the system should at this moment where they had an opportunity for change, introduce women into the system. And that women then should, there could be women's courts because it was, they were having to make such a leap from women never having been part of it, never expecting much justice in the courts. That they could be protected from violence, that they could be protected from child marriage and forced marriage and terrible domestic violence and sexual violation and the taking of their children from them to punish them for things. And so to create courts where women could comfortably go and put their cases in front of women judges would be a huge step forward. And so over the years from 2019, from 2008, nine, we were doing that work in Afghanistan. It was one of the things that I was involved with. And so many of those women who had become judges were then in terror for their lives because the prisons had been emptied of men that they had imprisoned, that they jailed because they ran also the anti-terrorism courts because of the continuing problems they had with terrorism there. But also the exporting of terrorism. They were also dealing with the trading in heroin. So they were, they were jailing people who had, who were involved in the heroin trade that ends up on our streets. And so they were involved in these serious issues of law. And here they were, the doors of the jails had been opened, people turned out and they were on kill lists. They were, they were, they were all targeted by, by the Taliban. And, and so they were not a few, a few women judges managed to get out on the military evacuations. And then the period immediately afterwards with help from young women lawyers from a very good man who helped us with connecting us to the army and people who'd been trained there in the Afghani special forces. We managed to get 103 women out. I chartered three planes to do that. But the horrible thing was that our country, our nation, it's the home office in, in, down in, in Westminster that decides on, on asylum and on humanitarian offerings to people. And only six of my judges, my women judges, got into this country. And, and to our shame, really. And, and to see what happens to people when they lose the thing that made their life so worthwhile, when they lose their status, when they lose their identity and who they are. And so of course they've been living in hostels and hotels, and they've got their children with them. In total, we evacuated 500 people because their husbands who were wonderful men who were also often lawyers and judges and at health positions in the civil service and so on came out with them. And we got them to Greece because the president of Greece had been a woman judge before she became before she became the president. And I contacted her and she made it possible, but it was temporary. And if it hadn't been for Canada, I have to tell you, if it hadn't been for Canada, those women would still be living in limbo. And the majority of them get into Canada, Ireland took 20, Australia took 15, Britain took six. And, and so all I want you to know is that, you know, we have to, we have to create a just world. It doesn't mean that we can take everybody of course, but we have to be having conversations about our responsibilities to each other, our responsibilities to the poor nations of the world, to the people who are fleeing persecution. This was a sort of Schindler's List moment, and these women are wonderful, wonderful women who undoubtedly will make great contribution to whatever country they go to. But it was a shocking, shocking reflection on what happened at that time. So the struggle for justice is not an easy one, but I do believe is what speaks to our humanity. It speaks to us as human beings concerned about the humanity for others. And, and when our governments forget to do that, our governments speak on our behalf, forget to do that. I'm afraid they're always very, very negative consequences. Our world is not in a great place at the moment, but I do retain my optimism. I do believe the pendulum swing. I do believe that justice is that great phrase of Obama's, that the pendulum of justice will swing, or I think it was actually Martin Luther King, but I heard it being said by Obama, that the pendulum of history will swing towards justice, and I do believe it will. So I want to thank you all for coming tonight. I hope it hasn't been off, you know, depressing about the state of our world. But I do believe, I do believe that the pendulum will swing, but our voices have to be heard to make that happen. Thank you. Thank you, Helena. We've got a couple of minutes for people to leave if they have to leave, and then we'll have a short question and answer session. Okay, we have a short opportunity to ask questions of Helena and I will take, if you raise your hand then a microphone can be brought to you. There's the gentleman halfway up on the right. And then the lady over there. You mentioned legal aid. Can we afford justice? I, I, I do believe that you get you have to get your priorities right of course. But if you if you really do value justice in a society, then you have to make it possible for people to be represented in the cases where their liberty might be at stake, their reputations ruined for life. You know, I do believe that the legal aid system that operated in this country until not that long ago was a good system. And I actually think it has been eroded in the most incredible way. We were told, let's remember that we were told in when the coalition government came came came together. One of the shocking things was the drive to austerity. And let me tell you, if you look at the, the, the, that was a deliberate campaign to reduce the size of the state and what the state spent money on in terms of, you know, social social projects. And I think justice is an important project that should never have been subjected to that. And what happened was, Christopher Greiling was the Lord Chancellor down in England and I can't, I mean, these things spill across borders because although you have a different legal system up here, they do. And what happened was that Christopher Greiling and went to the cabinet meetings and when everybody was putting their hand up saying that they would take that, you know, take a certain amount of cutting. The biggest cut of all in the Justice Department of 40%. Just think about that 40% was taken out of the Justice Department, they closed courts. You know, so it doesn't matter that people have to travel miles in order to get to hearings, they closed down courts, they made it more difficult for people to get there, and they took away legal aid in the most incredible way. And so we recently had young barristers and young solicitors demonstrating about the fact that there had been no increases in their pay for 16 years. So, it's no wonder that the system is falling down around our years. And it was, let's be clear that austerity campaign was about an ideological position which was to shrink the state. And that was actually all those things that actually make life in a country good, you know, because you have a good justice system, because we have a good justice system across the United Kingdom from Scotland as well as in England. Because of that, people would choose to do the litigation here you know big companies, and so I would would choose that they would have the matter resolved in in British courts. And that was because there was a recognition that the judiciary is not corrupt, that you know you don't get people bringing brown envelopes to the back of the court. So that is something that we have to cherish and look after. And it's a week is a is a sort of, I see it as a sort of fabric which once you start tearing at one end of it for the poor, it affects the whole thing. We mustn't forget people in back. Thank you so much for a wonderful talk. But could you explain to me where the justice is in Scotland with a not proven verdict. You know, it's so interesting. I have all my life avoided expressing a view on that. And it's partly because it's sort of by an accident of fate, you know, I decided that I wanted to sort of, you know, spread my wings and and go and study in England. And I imagined that I was not going to become the kind of lawyer that I became. I thought that in studying law that I was going to sort of, you know, become a kind of lawyer that would probably work in a big NGO or something like that. I would not imagine that I would end up at the English bar and so on your life takes you down roads and you don't you don't know that and you fall in love with people and all kinds of things happen that dictate what happens in your own life. So but and so I've always been very sensitive about commenting on the Scottish legal system when I haven't practiced in it. And I always think that the not proven verdict is a sort of middle ground that is a kind of let out for a jury and I think that one should try to drive towards a real decision. But I wouldn't say that on the radio. What justice is sort of global concepts, especially relating to like international law. But what sort of role then does the individual play and what can like we as individuals do if we aren't international legal workers. Let me just let me just talk about that. I spent my life as a lawyer in the domestic courts, you know, I started as I described doing going up through the system as most young lawyers do and then ending up being a lawyer who did very high level criminal cases, big conspiracy trials, homicide, you know, terrorism. And espionage cases. I, you know, I've done all of that kind of stuff. And I know I'm involved in the international terrain, which was not my area of practice originally. And I really believe very strongly that as our worlds in some ways is shrunk, having law that crosses borders because everything else does, you know the internet does, you know, the television does. And even more decision making has to be done collectively, except that of course, these, the rise of authoritarian governments has tended to involve a kind of inward looking rather than an outward looking. We need to be collaborative with other nations if we're going to try and deal with the problems that are confronting this world from climate change to to all the other kinds of problems, I think that we're facing. But, but if the United States doesn't recognize the International Criminal Court, if China doesn't recognize the International Criminal Court, that you know that these are the courts where where which you need the big nations of the world to be committed to and behind. It's so interesting because you see when I mean Clinton was involved in the creation of the International Criminal Court, but he couldn't get his, his nation to, you know, because of the divisions within such a, it's a continent to really commit to it. But, but when Obama was in was president, he created an ambassador who really worked very closely with International Criminal Court, and he's now on the advisory council of the, the Institute that I run Steven rap ambassador rap as an current ambassador. And I'm going to go back to Jeff and shake, who's in the back again, working closely with international courts, sort of bringing America in and and and America's quite involved in fact, although they would never allow any of their own people ever to appear before the International Criminal Court. But I do think that we have to be making the claim for the importance of international courts. And for example, our involvement with the European Court of Human Rights. We're not bound in the way that you get the far right claiming that we are the we have a great deal of license and the interpretation of the rights that are there embedded in the European Convention on Human Rights. But it gives us a template as I was saying about the Universal Declaration. It reminds us of the values that we're trying to impart into our legal systems and into our law. So we have to keep advocating for the European Convention of Human Rights on the European Court. That's for an enjoyable talk. Could I, I've listened to your talk and I am surprised at the influence, the undue influence of both the English language and British law, and what you consider to be international law. We, the Brits are a very small proportion of the world, but commercial law, we are big, big players. We are is this correct. And should we be in criminal law. It's just in the nature of the nature of all kinds of things that that some people are good at particular things. I mean, I think that law has been something that has been highly developed in in the UK. And it's true to say that we have played a huge role in laws creation around the world. Now that's not to say that countries don't learn when they become independent across Africa. Law develops in particular ways as an African convention which tries to embody human rights into courts across Africa. But yes, the nature of colonize, you know, colonization imperialism has brought English law, Scott's law, all those different features of our legal systems, you know, as transported them around the world. And I think, personally, to reason to read no to reasonably good effect. It's not about being superior. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not created by English lawyers or Scottish lawyers. It was created by the coming together of lawyers from around the world. There was a Confucian Chinese lawyer there. There was a, there were lawyers from the Latin system of South America. There were lots of lawyers from across Europe. There was a Russian lawyer, a Soviet lawyer. There was a Lebanese lawyer from the Sharia tradition. And, funnily enough, you'll find that all the values that are embodied in it are values that come out of the religions, the great religions of the world in a way. Thank you. Do you see any way that the erosion of the European Convention on Human Rights that you told us about and be reversed or barring anything unforeseen? Are we basically just stuck with it? Are we stuck with the European Convention on Human Rights? Sorry, stuck with the erosion of it. Well, I mean, there's a, I mean, the courts by and large have shifted because I always remember hearing a great political scientist in the years when I chaired a thing called Charter 88 for many years. And we managed to persuade the Labour government. It's why I ended up in the House of Lords was because we persuaded the Labour government in the 90s to adopt the idea that there should be a Bill of Rights. But we did that by incorporating the European Convention, that there should be devolution, that there should be a Freedom of Information Act, that there should be reform of the House of Lords. You know, it's almost, but I mean, I'd like to see, I mean, I actually think that we're crying out for serious reform of the House of Lords now. It's just, it has to happen. But that charter of change of the architecture of the United Kingdom was a very important piece of work. And I think that it has changed lawyering and judging. And most people to talk to most serious judges and lawyers in the United Kingdom in Scotland and in down south. They all, they all believe that the European Convention works that the Human Rights Act, the Scotland Act works. They're not going to want to give up on all of that. And, and I think that there'll be a big fight over this British Bill of Rights. And I think that it's also being, I mean, disrespectful to the Scottish separate legal system. And I hope that you will all make that your voice is heard on that whatever your political positions that is wrong to be so dismissive of a system that has a different tradition and, and which happily engages with these values. What is, what is your opinion of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism and its failure to be accepted in certain areas? Can you say that to me again? What, what is your opinion of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism and its failure to be accepted in certain places? There, I think there will always be debates about, I mean, like the debate that we're having tonight about what does justice mean. There will always be debates around how do you, you know, anybody who's Jewish knows anti-semitism when they feel it in the air. And, and the whole tragedy of what happened during the carbon years was a shocking thing. And I'm sure that that's what you're alluding to. And I think that I think the anti-semitism is on the rise is what I was describing seeing in Budapest, the depictions of George Soros, where the kind of depictions you saw in Nazi Germany of Jews, you know, of who knows Jews. It was the hideous and horrible. And it shows you the undercurrent that's taking place. Of course, I think we should be we should be concerned about making sure that any of those hostilities towards minorities should be rooted out and pointed out for what they are. But it shouldn't mean that we can't criticize Israel and I'll criticize Israel as much as I want, because I don't like a lot of the things that Israel under Netanyahu and the extreme sections of that society are doing. But, you know, Israel, Israel, you know, has many people who feel the same way I do. I think we could actually go on for quite a long time, but we've been, we've been fortunate to have Elena for an hour and a half. And I don't think she's provided us with neat solutions. She's provided us with lots of things to think about and be concerned about and to be active about. So we have one more bit of business to do before we close this evening when I pass over to Pat. Let me just remind you that the next meeting of the society is in a fortnight back on the Wednesday. It's Professor Neil Adzer, and his title is changing places migration and climate change, which is a very big threat to the pendulum theory, whether it's going to swing back or not. Pat. Thank you very much. It now falls to me to present to Helena one of the society's medals. This is the actually 2021 Minerva medal which Helena should have had during covert but wasn't able to give her talk then. We've had it this evening. Helena began her talk by saying that she wasn't a philosopher. I don't think we really accept that, do we? Of course, we're all philosophers. And while this is the Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow. It's about knowledge. It's about truth. It's about understanding. It's about discussion. And all of that this evening from Helena. She's dealt with some very, very big topics for us, not least of which is human rights. And I'm sure we all agree that society is founded on recognition of human rights. And while it's dispiriting that it's under threat, we can stand up against it, I hope. So I hope you will join with me in thanking Helena and I hope Helena on behalf of the Royal Society, Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow, accepts our Minerva medal. Thank you very much.