The Pace of Change

Dear Dean Brand,

Of all our living Presidents, I think my favorite by far is President Bartlet. Of what genius was that man possessed what imbued such empirical wisdom though he served only seven years in the West Wing. To paraphrase our greatest living President, all positive change happens only slowly.

Indeed as I sat swatting flies at the Extraordinary Chambers a few weeks ago, awaiting the signature of a judge to grant me top secret access to the case files - and therefore validate my existence - I had ample time (five hours in fact) to contemplate those words.

History proves (if it proves anything) that hastily drawn plans or quick, zealous prosecution of even the most articulate plans leads to naught but disaster. Please see, The Great Leap Forward, the Patriot Act and The Producers - though not the producers of The Producers.

Many weeks ago now I was asked by some guy who claimed to be a Dean of a law school what I thought to be the crime of the Khmer Rouge. I didn't have a cogent answer then....and don't have one now, but perhaps an attempt can be made. In fact, I find the individual crimes committed by the CPK cadres to be of nothing but the most mundane kind.

Murder, torture, rape, slavery, and humiliation are but typical expedient brutalities - the too-oft sought refuges of Mankind's imaginations.

Even if we are to compile those small acts into larger transgressions of a general morality, turning them into, say, something we might call genocide or crimes against humanity, we are amply supplied of heroes and demons who prove the supposedly exceptional to be anything but.

That our most celebrated forebears - Scipio, Alexander, Elizabeth, Peter, Karl, etc. - are for their parts guilty of sanctioning murder, torture, forced marriage, and slavery; that men are yet boiled alive and suffer other horrors in obscure political corners; that the efficacy of torture is today debated within even humanity's most enlightened, and law-abiding societies is that irascible stain upon Mankind's hand which renders our greenest histories red.

If then, the individualizing title, "The Crime of the Khmer Rouge" cannot be supported by even widespread and state-sanctioned terror, what can it be supported by, if anything?

It is my ironically ill-contemplated belief that the one thing that best creates a crime deservedly preceded by the agnominal "the" is the abandonment of a patient civil society in favor of unthinkingly zealous pursuits of machinations based on arbitrariness, cliquishness, and invented revenge.

If such a thing sounds undramatic, you're right. But often the most innocuous sounding phraseology has marked the most terrible of crimes: Xeres' "discovery of Peru", Stalin's abhorrence of "silk gloves" and that phrase which now belongs to the ages, "Arbeit macht frei." I would argue similarly, that the crimes which these phrases denote are made salient not because of murder and mayhem of whatever scale, but because they mark points where men otherwise of conscience and dignity made the innocuous turn to expedient machinations predicated upon irrational notions - the antitheses of the patience of civilization.

In this way, they are properly discussed as extraordinary examples of crimes "contre la société civile."

Ignoring the basic begged question of what Justice is (and, of course, the question of whether it is possible to find), the smaller yet equally natural proceeding question is what type of justice the Extraordinary Chambers will mete to counter these extraordinary crimes.

That justice is, I think, the creation of a legal apparatus in total opposition to that of Democratic Kampuchea. It is the insistence on due process; the requirements of evidence; the preservation of the fundamental rights of the accused to face his accusers and the evidence before him. It is the time taken to ensure these things hold true in the face of the pressing desire for action and result.

In short, it is the creation and preservation of those things upon which men and women can rely to mount rational defenses against the anti-social.

To borrow from and add to a statement of that man who claimed to be the Dean of a law school: It is the salvation of humaneness, humanity and, civilization.

The Court must, therefore, eschew to the largest extent possible the characteristics which mark the opposite and most especially therefore, that thing which informs it: haste.

Gotta run,

-J

The Choices Men Make

Dear Dean Brand,

As others have said before, Cambodia is both familiar and unfamiliar. More so than anywhere I've been, the people here are simply genuinely polite. I'm sure the choice to smile and laugh (sometimes nervously) can be attributed in part to the mask the poor and the weak don to placate the rich and the strong but unlike with other peoples I've encountered, when the membrane of societally obligated niceties is ruptured I find myself confronted with simply more kindness and warmth - leading me to believe it's really just rather genuine.

I have to admit it is completely disarming and, therefore, unnerving. Normal people aren't nice and welcoming. Normal people are suspicious, cliquish and protect their psyches, their family dinners, and their motos with phobic vigor.

While I like it here, I will much more enjoy this country when someone instructs them in the propriety of social paranoia. I noticed the other day that "24" and "CSI" have been exported here. The developmental road which terminates at a properly atomized modern society begins, as always, with one step. I'm glad to see they've had theirs pushed in front of their feet for them.

Our primer course on the Cambodian "genocide", as it is popularly termed (the quotes are a necessity, I'm afraid, as I'm a member of the defense team for next week's moot court exercise), is almost over. It's been a great course, both as an introduction to the issues surrounding the founding and functioning of Democratic Kampuchea and as an object lesson in understanding these seemingly endless and inevitable incidents of terrible human devolution - I mean, those that happen in other countries and which have been unjustly compared to the heroic nation building in which my clients engaged.

Hey, listen, you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs right? As such, Pol Pot and his cohorts are no different than Emeril Legasi: They took all their years of training and learning and endeavored to make something wonderful. Unfortunately they found themselves woefully under-prepared and while their creation languished, they turned to gimmicks and inane and ill-conceived additions to their creation to hopefully obfuscate their missteps. If their omelet then turned unpalatable, it wasn't for a lack of trying.

So I ask you, is Emeril Lagasi a war criminal? Please don't answer that due to the potentially devastating effects it might have on my clients' case.

In any event, and divorced from my role as Defense Counsel, I'm very much looking forward to taking what I've learned and applying it during my upcoming internship with Legal Aid Cambodia, helping further their work with the Extraordinary Chambers and promoting general justice for the many, many, aggrieved here.

I can think of no better way to guard against partisan conflict than the promotion of an integrated and just pluralistic society.

Truly, I can think of no better application of the Law than in the pursuit of that goal.

Yours,

DJC

P.S. Okay yeah, you got me, application of the Law to celebrity drug charges and international debt transactions leads to something nice too - undue and very very enjoyable wealth. As Commander Maddox said while attempting to deprive Commander Data of his status as a living thing (See: Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 2, Episode 9, "The Measure of a Man"), what about what I want, what about my rights to pursue what I want?

Good Charlotte once sang in their proper deconstruction of American society, "Boys and Girls" - "Girls don't like boys, girls like cars and money."

I'm the product of the self-obsessed first-world (and also, humanity in general). The choice between justice for distant Others and the existence of a lingerie model in the back of my Maybach is, in truth, not entirely an easy one.

I think if we're true, then we must admit that basic human selfishness, if not to destroy it, then at least to engage it knowingly - only that way can it be tempered.