The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law

This weekend, I started reading Justice Albie Sachs' book The Strange Alchemy of Life and Law. I'm absolutely in love with it and it's no surprise, considering that the first line of the preface is: "This book should be of huge interest to the international judicial community and everyone else who is interested in justice."

Albie Sachs is an absolutely brilliant, courageous, and remarkable individual. He's been through it all, having been detained in solitary confinement, tortured by sleep deprivation, exiled and eventually blown up by a car bomb which cost him his right arm and the sight of an eye...all ironically because of his dedication to justice and commitment to protecting human dignity and rights in South Africa. After serving on the drafting committee for the post-apartheid Constitution, Sachs was appointed by President Mandela to be a member of the country's first Constitutional Court. His book is about his experience with the Court and how his extraordinary life has influenced his approach to the cases before him, and his views on the nature of justice and its achievement through law. To quote directly from the inside cover of the book, "Rejecting purely formal notions of the judicial role he shows how both reason and passion are required for law to work in the service of justice."

I thought for this post that I would quote some of the most meaningful passages from the book thus far. I'm only 100 pages in but already, Sachs has seriously impacted my thoughts about justice, equality, human dignity, and most importantly, forgiveness.

"Years later when I was writing about the experience of being the target of a car bomb and losing an arm, I found myself repeatedly using the phrase 'and that would be my soft vengeance': if the person accused in a Mozambique Court of being responsible for placing the bomb in my car is put on trial and the evidence is insufficient and his is acquitted - I wrote - that will be my soft vengeance, because we will be living under the rule of law. To gain freedom was a much more powerful vengeance than to impose solitary confinement and torture on the people who done these things to us" (14-15).


"To those who would trivialize the judicial process, representing it as a flabby subjective reponse dressed up in the false guise of objectivity, I offer the following: while one should always be sceptical about the law's pretensions, one should never be cynical about the law's possibilities" (50).

The following quotes are form Sachs' minority opinion in the Jordan case in which the Court dealt with the constitutionality of a law that penalised the offering of sex for reward. Ultimately, the Court majority decided that this was a question of policy to be determined by the legislature and did not raise an issue of fundamental constitutional rights. But here's Justice Sachs (joined by Justice Kate O'Regan's) opinion on why this case involved constitutional rights, namely gender equality rights, and why the statute discriminated unfairly against women by identifying as candidates for prosecution females rather than males:

"The distinctions is, indeed, one which for years has been espoused both as a matter of law and social practice. The female prostitute has been the social outcast, the male patron has been accepted or ignored. She is visible and denounced, her existence tainted by her activity. He is faceless, a mere ingredient in her offence rather than a criminal in his own right, who returns to respectability after the encounter...Thus, a man visiting a prostitute is not considered by many to have acted in a morally reprehensible fashion. A woman who is a prostitute is considered by most to be beyond the pale" (61-62).

"The salient feature of the differentiation in the present matter is that it tracks and reinforces in a profound way double standards regarding the expression of male and female sexuality. The differential impact is accordingly not accidental, just as the failure of the authorities to prosecute male customers as accomplices is entirely unsurprising. They both stem from the same defect in our justice system which would hold women to one standard of conduct and men to another" (62).

Upon meeting Henri, a former Captain in the South African Defence Force, who was involved with planning Justice Sachs' car bombing, including taking photos and preparing a dossier for the persons who were ultimately to place the bomb in the car:

"Henri, normally if someone comes to my office, when I say goodbye I shake that person's hand, but I can't shake your hand. I can't now. Go to the Truth Commission, tell your story, help the country, do something for South Africa and then perhaps we can meet again" (65).

Henri and Sachs did meet again at a party. And this time, Justice Sachs openly shook Henri's hand.

In the section about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission:
"Dialogue is the foundation of repair. The dignity that goes with dialogue is the basis for achieving common citizenship. It is the equality of voice that marks a decisive start, the beginning of a sense of shared morality and responsibility" (85).