Lifting the veil of silk

Do not believe that the Senior Counsel noise will easily lead to change. The Law Association was pushed here before and nothing came out of it. The AG may wish to provide the data to show whether taxpayers are the ones paying out the bulk of fees earned by senior counsel and their juniors. That may answer the question of why the legal profession has, despite many urgings and Commonwealth precedent, failed to resolve the antiquity of the appointment of silk and the political control of it. What we may find out is that it is not the Senior Counsel earning the oversized fees but the juniors whose selection is entirely a matter of politics.

The Senior Counsel issue jolted former chief justices and eminent seniors but found the Law Association asleep: at best the Association was scheduled to meet one week later in emergency session.

The Law Association's flat-footedness on the senior counsel issue brought to mind then Chief Justice Sharma's speech at the opening of the 2003 law term. Sharma cited the work of writer John Mortimer and "a general decrease in the awe and wonder with which the population looks at its established institutions". If, as people believe, the country has been set upon by pessimists, cynics and doomsayers, many of them have just cause.

When a country's legal profession equivocates while the reasonable man takes the fight to the politicians, what else is left to fall apart?