In an old episode of Columbo, the ‘baddy’ had trained his dog to kill after hearing a certain word. This reminds me of domestic abusers who use their words to ‘kill’ their victims’ free spirit.
Words are a lawyer’s best friend, used to maintain domestic order. That is the context of one of Shakespeare’s most famous quotes – ‘the first thing we do is kill all the lawyers.’ Often seen as a disparaging witticism against crooked lawyers, the real sentiment is that lawyers are Guardians of the Peace, so they should be the first to be exterminated, if anarchy is to prevail. Lawyers, at that time, were more available to the wealthy. That’s pretty much the situation nowadays, especially as money for family law legal aid has been drastically curtailed. Unfortunately, this provides an opportunity for domestic abusers to engage in litigation abuse, what one judge aptly described as ‘lawfare,’ or unnecessary litigation.
One Judge described the word ‘necessary’ as ‘Lying somewhere between indispensable on the one hand and useful, reasonable or desirable on the other hand,’ having ‘the connotation of the imperative, what is demanded rather than what is merely optional or reasonable or desirable.’ That’s not what the Oxford English Dictionary says it means! I still look back fondly, nearly 60 years later, on the days when I used to regularly read Alice in Wonderland – ‘When I use a word… it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less!’
Going back to lawyers’ words, I recently got a shock upon reading an article by a Family Court Judge which contained the word ‘niggardly.’ Happily, upon further analysis, I learned that the word had nothing at all to do with the cowardly racial slur. The Oxford Dictionary tells me that it is an adjective, first used in approximately 1549, which means ‘having a miserly nature; mean; parsimonious; sparing.’ I agree, Learned Judge! When it comes to family law legal aid, the government is indeed niggardly!
Sticking to our quartet of themes – words, Shakespeare, the law and the family – I was interested to note that Shakespeare’s quotes about family relations often reflect love, wisdom and familial bonds. A typical example of this is ‘the voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven’s lieutenants.’ The Children Act makes it very clear that children mostly benefit from both parents having input into their lives, whether they remain in a relationship with each other or not.
Bastian Lloyd Morris
Indeed, parental responsibility is largely seen as a set of benefits for the child, rather than as a set of rights for the parents. I was once involved in a case where an unrepresented parent tried to characterise parental responsibility as being a quid pro quo. ‘Well actually it’s not’ came the testy response fromthebench;‘It’sarightinpersonam.’TheLatinscholars who are among you, will know that technically the learned judge was wrong, but those of us who have never been ‘technically wrong,’ well let him cast the first stone! Mea culpa!
Incidentally, it’s just as well that recently lawyers have heeded the clarion call for legal language to be made simpler. Thus, for example, decree nisi is now simply a conditional order.Also, thankfully, confusing tautologies like ‘let, allow and permit’ have become a thing of the past.
All’s Well That Ends Well I hear you cry!
Indeed! The status quo would simply have been unsustainable, unsupportable and untenable!
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