(9) EXHIBITION : JUSTICE AND ITS DOUBLE - FROM JUSTICE TO NUDES, an essay, by Pierre Alain GOURION (part 1) Translation C. Orgeret and D. Sarran

Justice is going through a crisis. The Outreau case, the various political trials and scandals call it into question. Admittedly it has always been questioned: judging and defending are not simple, straightforward, innocent acts.

The exhibition « Justice and its Double » is a serious game which presents

the portraits of twenty-four lawyers in their gowns, and confronts them with twenty- four naked male and female characters, in their human verity and variety, but wearing masks.

Indeed the courtroom setting is a tough stage for real, in which the players are judges and barristers, politicians and immigrants, prostitutes and pimps, entrepreneurs and wheeler dealers, merry widows and sad children.

Justice has its attire, its symbols, its grammar. Its clerical attitudes too. As to the stage, whether for tragedy or comedy, the paper or flash masks express

the symptoms of the most common ailments of the soul.

The recourse to nudity, an age-old tradition in painting and photography, is linked with the necessary quest for truth and the balance to strike, which Justice pursues through its shadow play, its crude or deceptive lights, its impossible management.

Gilles VERNERET is a photographer and an Artistic Director. He is the author of the portraits of lawyers.

Pierre Alain GOURION is a photographer and a lawyer ; he conceived the project and photographed the nudes. Just after the photo shoot, he asked his fellow lawyers the following question :

- How would you imagine your naked double, representing someone who has to appear in court?

In the projective game, their improvised answers - recorded on tape-, are paired with the diptychs Lawyers - Nudes.

From Justice to Nudes

An essay, by Pierre Alain GOURION (translation French-English by Christiane Orgeret and Diana Sarran)

I have always taken photographs. Since I was twelve years old. It started in Oran, where I was born; my older cousin Albert, an engineer, had given me a little round black box, with a red rod which stirred the films inside the developer: he no longer used it. I had also fallen heir to an enlarger, an enlarging easel and two trays in which to develop and fix the prints.

I used to take over the family bathroom, seal off all the openings with black paper to keep the light out, and shut myself up - for hours on end - in the mysterious darkness; in the dark red light of the developing lamp, I was steeped in peace, dreams and projections. It was magic.

My first photo, it seems like yesterday, was a white photo sensitive printing paper which I slid under the door, thus exposing it to the light in the corridor. I developed it and - what a miracle! -, two parts appeared in the fixing bath: one black, which had been exposed to light, the other white, which had stayed in my makeshift laboratory.

Such a time gap, such a sacred play of light.

I had the bathroom to myself, nobody could violate the secret sanctuary where the kid?s imaginary world was being built. The family respected that, I think, Alain is making photographs, he's a bit of a nuisance because you can't have even a shower these days, but never mind, it keeps him busy!

The world can be grasped in many ways. Photography is one of them. It entails meeting people, looking at them, getting out of yourself and building your own identity from an outside viewpoint. Shots, memories and smells blend together. A photograph freezes the moment but it also grants the eye a free choice of frame , it means focussing, playing with distance, sharpness, mind, watch the birdie!

Watch the birdie!

Look, the birdie's out, he's flying on his own, pilfering crumbs of reality. He feeds on them and many years later, he'll give back to others the digested result of today's plundering.

The still camera is an object, like the painter's brush, the writer's pen, the Internet surfer's mouse. The words of my mother tongue, the images stored in my retina, the colours on my palette are nothing but techniques invented to allow us to talk and listen to one another. Birds talk as well, I'm told and so do dolphin, bats and fish. Just like us. We, little men, have added technology, loads of brilliant inventions, which become cumbersome when the end and the means become blurred.

The camera is a means. The end is the joy of the encounter when it occurs. When it doesn't, you can encourage it, let it develop slowly. Take your time with the people whose picture you? re taking, just the contrary of obnoxious paparazzi who violate them. With a knife, I can cut my bread and share it. I can also kill. The same applies to a Kodak. The birdie can kill. It can also love, enhance, entertain.

Many years later, after studying and practising law, I went to Hungary, to SEBEZVITZ, near LILAFURED and MISKOLC, near the Ukrainian border, to attend a photography workshop, which has been held there for twenty years; the teacher was Janos EIFFERT, the chairman of the Society of Hungarian Art Photographers (in the photographs in this book, he's the man holding a megaphone). The Hungarians have kept a purely artistic view of photography as is the case in many East European societies. As if in this high-tech, media-oriented world of ours, overflowing with cheap images which sell ratings and commercials, pictorial art was still fresh and meaningful. There, we could rediscover the taste of what photography was in the thirties, when people were still marvelling at this new means of reproducing images which appeared, through chemical magic, to be the projection of our dreams.

 

Fourteen hours a day making photos with other photographers or experienced amateurs, the models being paid by the organizing society, attending lectures, exchanging images and projects. A real holiday after fourteen hours a day working as a lawyer.

The project

What, then, was this project ? (1) What was written in the note of intention ?

(1) The title of the project was chosen by analogy with The Theatre and its Double, by Antonin ARTAUD

Justice is going through a crisis. The Outreau case, political trials and various scandals have caused French citizens and their representatives to call it into question. Admittedly it has always been questioned: judging and defending are not simple, straightforward, innocent acts.

The exhibition and the book  Justice and its Double is a serious game which presents

the portraits of twenty-four lawyers in their gowns, and confronts them with twenty-four naked male and female characters, in their human verity and variety, but wearing masks.

Indeed the courtroom setting is a tough stage for real, in which the players are judges and barristers, politicians and immigrants, prostitutes and pimps, entrepreneurs and wheeler dealers, merry widows and sad children.

Justice has its attire, its symbols, its grammar. Its clerical attitudes too. As to the stage, whether for tragedy or comedy, the paper or flesh masks express the symptoms of the most common ailments of the soul.

The recourse to nudity, an age-old tradition in painting and photography, is linked with the necessary quest for truth and the balance to strike, which Justice pursues through its shadow play, its crude or deceptive lights, its impossible management.

Gilles VERNERET is a photographer and the Artistic Director. He is the author of the portraits of lawyers.

Pierre Alain GOURION is a photographer and a lawyer; he conceived the project and photographed the nudes. Just after the photo shoot, he asked his fellow lawyers the following question :

- How would you imagine your naked double, representing someone who has to appear in court??

In the projective game, their improvised answers -recorded on tape-, are paired with the diptychs Lawyers - Nudes.

Azouz BEGAG, writer and scientist, is also Minister of State for the Promotion of Equal Opportunities. The edges of this game have been adorned with the embroidery of his words.

A game?

Was it actually only a game ? Through and only through such a playful and aesthetic approach, could I tackle a material which my experience had shown me to be transpierced by tragedies, horrors, lies from men and institutions, heinous murders, dilemmas in judging and being judged?

Veronica's dead

Veronica's dead

And he is alive

The bastard

Her murderer is alive

Who kicked her to death

Petrified her destiny

With his boots.

 

Veronica's dead

Veronica's dead

And here he is the hero

On that vile stage

Where he dares to be handsome

Veronica was dead

Veronica was dead

And the humanist judges

And the expert shrinks

The shimmering lawyers and the sanctimonious witnesses

Don't know how to cry

They can only find

Politically correct legal words

And quavering voices

For her passing on

Veronica my daughter

Veronica my daughter

Torn apart by the will

Of a leechlike monster

They were two naked children

But Veronica's dead

But Veronica's dead

A murderous rage

Felled her like a bird shot on the wing

(2) A poem written for Véronique Ainay, a sixteen year old girl, savagely murdered and raped by young X, after a tough criminal hearing where I joined her parents' court action with the Public Prosecutor

When I talked about the project, I suppose I managed to be quite convincing most of the time. With my learned friends, whom I had asked to sit for me because I felt like portraying their challenging male looks, their feminine grace or ,sorry, ladies- AND personalities, it was not too difficult: I had always been welcome and could count on old friendships and mutual interest; the venture was flattering for their egos, their robes were recognized outside the courtroom But with those who were not in the legal professions, I sometimes met more obstacles, especially with the younger ones, who fired questions at me and showed a pretty worrying ignorance of all things judicial. My own daughter Marie Rachel, who is an actress and a playwright, amazed me when she didn't understand, at age twenty seven, that the witnesses must swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but not the defendants, the accused:

- But Marie, we no longer live at the time of the Holy Inquisition, this is France, Europe, the Western world, as far as I know!

The truth, which truth?

I recalled an anecdote for her: as a client of mine was being rather economical with the truth, a certain Presiding Judge of the Criminal Court (3), pretending to address me, and speaking about my client, whispered to the jurors :

- Mr. Gourion, lying is as good a defence system as any, your client has the right to lie and we have the right not to believe him!

Beyond the fearsome and calculated wit, that excellent magistrate was reminding us of two truths: a defendant?s lie is annoying, especially if it's gross (he must think I?m stupid), but it doesn't constitute a punishable crime; whereas a witness's lie is a breach of the law.

I also remembered my son Emmanuel asking me, when he was about twelve:

- Dad, I have a question for you, but you must answer by yes or no, OK ?

I had felt it was a trap but accepted his game.

-          What's your question?

-          Dad, do lawyers have the right to lie?

A good question all right, but one which requires an answer that can be understood by a kid, not an easy task ?

(3) Mr. ROBIN, Presiding Judge of the Rhône Criminal Court

-          Er, the lawyer is bound by professional secrecy, the law sometimes forbids him to reveal what his client tells him ; so your question , it's beside the point - or if you prefer, it's better if he can avoid lying but, well, sometimes, he has to keep quiet ?

-          You didn't answer by yes or no, so now I understand!

He had understood nothing at all, or perhaps what is understood and rumoured by the vox populi: that lawyers are liars and blabbermouths, that they produce red herrings when it suits them. But the people and the child are wrong here (it could be argued they are politically right and legally wrong): a lawyer is not looking for the truth, he is neither an examining judge* nor a police inspector. He is looking for a line of defence. Full stop. End of story. Now I've put you in the picture!

* translator's note: in France at the moment, the juge d'instruction examines the case, decides whether it will be tried and can remand the accused in custody ; it is translated by examining judge in this book

Line of defence, did you say?

What a strange and wonderful profession it is to be a lawyer.

First you must listen, dive into the miasma of conflicts and psyches, select, examine, classify. Get the gist of what the client is explaining, spot and avoid traps, hunt for the evidence the judge will demand and base his decision on, make your brief readable at first sight.

Then you must compare the subjective facts as told by your client, to the relevant existing laws (French, Spanish, American or Nigerian, European or community law, elements of international law), decide on a strategy and one or several tactics, give some thought to the adversaries?, look up previous similar cases (jurisprudence).

You must be the bearer of someone else's words, let his emotions, inhibitions, claims fill you. Translate them so that they can be digested by the system. Gradually build up the role with the client, step by step, write it, say it ; then play the part convincingly. You must play the score in tune with the other musicians of that weird, complex institutional orchestra, the court. Speak up, whisper, insinuate, flare up, argue. Win or lose.

You must draft writs setting up a contract between the parties or developing your client?s claims, back them up with applicable legal texts, even and above all if they are contradictory and abundant, overabundant, overflowing, we live in a crazy inflation of rules, too much law kills the law, the basic principles learnt in university are often smashed to pieces. That?s how it is.

Another chap, across there, is going to do the same thing, another lawyer, a learned friend, or perhaps a Public or Crown Prosecutor or District Attorney. That person opposite you is most unpleasant, you'd like punch them on the nose, especially if they're good at what they're doing, if you feel respect for them. For them, but not necessarily

for their case, their position, their client, or the society which they say they are appointed to defend.

At the hearing, you can be sure that they will oppose you, that they will skilfully handle irony and wit, that the women will develop their arguments with manly aplomb and the men with frightfully efficient charm.

If you win, your client will be pleased with you, well, he?s paid your fees and you?ve done a good job but above all he was bound to win since he was right from the start !

If you lose, you're an ass, or you've sold yourself to the enemy, anyway he's heard you having a friendly chat with your colleague, you forgot this or that, your mind was elsewhere, the judge was bribed, he didn't understand a thing. What's more, the whole rigmarole has cost him an arm and a leg, all that to be sent packing, it ain't fair !

Not fair

No Madam, no Sir, it is not fair, even if you have won. Fairness doesn?t exist. What does exist is your craving for a fair judgment, your need to be recognized, your wishes ; wishes are always legitimate. You can assert them, hint at them, splash them all over the earth; you'll no doubt find lots of people - shrinks, rabbis, priests, vicars, muftis, social workers, screws, street singers, smooth talkers, even lawyers- who will listen to you and try to help.

No Madam, no Sir, nothing's fair. For opposite you there is another claim by definition different or conflicting, trying to oppose yours. And there's also an administrative way of dealing with things judicial. A complex machinery, it?s not easy for a State to channel passions. Civil servants. Magistrates. Cops. Paper, lots of paper, deforestation is running high on this planet, for red tape purposes. Computers, lots of computers, lots of hard and soft ware, different and incompatible, just like the laws, the more there are, the less well things work. Connections, an unbelievable jungle, straight out of a sci-fi movie. A nightmare scenario, a planet where men are endangered. Curtain !

***

What a strange and wonderful job it is to be a photographer.

You watch, in peace and quiet, you look for the right angle, the right light, the wonderful light.

The light of life. The light which has a constant speed of three hundred thousand kilometres per second, sorry one hundred and eighty six thousand two hundred and eighty two point forty miles per second, thank you Mr. EINSTEIN (5). The light of a chiaroscuro when, in the depths of a courtroom sticky with emotions, at the very end of a long day, of a tiring hearing,

5. Riad CHAMSEDINE, La Relativité d'EINSTEIN racontée aux Non-scientifiques, Lyon, ALEAS, 2004

the scene was suddenly lit by a mysterious beam. The light of the cops, brutally projected onto the suspect's face, as if the light could make him bring forth the truth. The dull wan light of the examining magistrate's office in which five hours of questioning had been held on a drizzly afternoon: we were all exhausted, the judge and the police inspectors, the suspect held in custody, the clerk of the court, the lawyer and the photocopier; at that point, we avoided looking at one another, we had long been beyond boredom, almost out of time.

His name was Fabrigo. He was a fifty-year-old man, built like a tank, a crane driver by trade. He had come to see me because his daughter, who was out of her mind, claimed he had raped her. He, rape his daughter! He was a good father, a good husband, a good crane driver, he?d had three occupational injuries which had left him physically disabled. It wasn't easy to climb up four hundred and fifty feet and to move building materials on sites from the sky . In short, a responsible man, not someone who would take advantage of a situation? The trouble was that the examining judge had just notified him of the result of a test comparing bloods which he had requested for the criminal procedure; just to make sure, because even he didn?t believe my client was guilty, the judge had my Fabrigo's blood compared with his daughter's child's blood. And, according to the forensic Expert there was one chance in thirty million that Fabrigo was not the father of his grandson. A mere trifle!

And Fabrigo kept on denying against the near certainty of such scientific evidence. One chance in thirty million. As the years went by, he had built up his own truth, a truth which allowed him to live with himself. Then he began, painfully, slowly, inconsistently, to tell the truth to the judge.

As we were coming out of the court, intoxicated with his new-found guilt, he told me :

-          I have to pray Mr. Gourion, take me to the cathedral ?

He, pray ? It was raining. I, the wandering Jew, left him at Saint-Jean Cathedral, with the memory of his daughter and of his son-grandson, with men?s laws and his God?s law, and his burning incest, in the bright darkness of the consecrated stained-glass windows, in the terrible night, in the biblical light of rape.

The photographs which do not get shot

The best pictures are those you don't take, those you could have taken, those you dream of and cannot show.

Knowing your technique is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one: you need to forget it or master it enough so that the client or the model is not aware of the problems you encounter in your field of expertise, except when an exchange of views may help to find a solution. Although it is sometimes useful to explain what you are doing, it may also be counter-productive or inopportune to expatiate upon photographic ? or legal issues. The doctor I'm consulting owes me the truth about my state of health but would do me a disservice if he caused me to worry or panic: this would create extra problems which I cannot solve on my own anyway.

In the lawyer-client relationship, the professional must explain the content of the relevant law and the procedural maze he?ll have to go through ; agree with his client on the tactics that will best serve his interests (the client?s, preferably !) and that he will be mandated to implement. But without trust, without proper listening, the finest expertise will get nowhere.

In the photographer-model relationship, ditto. Of course, there are a few stolen pictures. But the main thing remains the close cooperation of the two protagonists: the one who is looking and the one who is being looked at. The one who exhibits him or herself, body and face offered up or reaching out, and the one who captures the right instant, the vivid look, the adapted image. These moments of grace are the salt of both professions.

High angle shot towards the men whose photo you are taking, low angle shot towards the heavens of their illusions or the hell of their lies, of their desire to look good, to show off. I and others. Life in society. General and impersonal rules.

A taste for the portrait, for the singular and dual encounter it implies, the intensity of that moment quite comparable with what happens in the interview between the lawyer and his client: you must put him or her at ease, crack a few jokes, look at them but not too much, not let your technique show, empathize, give and take blows when things go wrong. With one aim in mind: to gain a beautiful significant image, to win or lose a good or bad lawsuit but not if it means stopping at nothing to reach it. You act in the client?s interest. You take photos to bear witness to the fleeting moment, to human beauty, to the toughness of people?s lives. The face is the first nude. What is more significant than a bright eye, a twisted mouth, a new wrinkle ? But the face can also lie, whereas body language is more in tune with the unconscious.

We often control our face and forget about our body. It suffers in silence, for it?s not endowed with eyes, or a mouth which could voice the true words to talk of the weight it's carrying, the conflicts it endures. Our face wears the mask of our intended feelings.

At Carnival time, people put a cardboard face on their masks (6)

The body finds it hard to lie. It can?t. It speaks of itself: the beauty of its youth or maturity, the mute tension between its contradictory impulses, the social attitudes it is caught in, conventional in many ways but also incredibly eloquent; look at the defendant, hunched on a bench, the silent, powerless witness of a trial which only concerns him at odd moments; how prone the legal system is to orchestrating and staging nothing but its own continuity in a kind of strange, out of tune concerto !

 The legal system is here first and foremost to signify that it exists ; that it shall be feared. That the reign of Law and order on Earth has begun; that its messiah is among us. Amen.

It (often) does take into account the man or woman who is being tried since it was (has always been) conceived by righteous men, and could in no way disown the values it is officially based on. But we, humanrighters (what else could we be ?) have no end of bother convincing jurors, users, defendants (what a dirty word !) that they are at the centre of the circle. And for a good reason: they're

abiding by professional ethics, by a deontology

not. It's the institution which is at the centre: created by the political body, it stages ITSELF for justice to be dispensed.

And you will exercise justice

And you will exercise justice, is what lawyers write at the foot of their conclusions: an appeal to the judge to let their client?s claim be examined in a contrary debate or in the name of the texts or, if the latter are scarce, in view of the actuality of the brief ? or of innocent Equity.

***

The nude is a portrait, with or without the face. Skin, flesh, feelings behind. Casting light on a face or a body to shoot a photograph is one and the same thing. You are the other person?s sun. It?'s up to you to warm them, make them appear in the light that seems to you to suit them best.

As for Roland BARTHES, he writes that ? a kind of umbilical cord links the body of the photographed object to my eye: the light, though impalpable is now a carnal environment, a skin that I?m gazing at in the company of the person whose photograph has been taken.?

Being a model not at the top

What a strange and wonderful job it is to be a model. You show yourself off, people look at you, you are the centre of the world, your beauty shines out in the glare of well-adjusted spotlights, you become a media star, you don?t exist nowadays if you're not in the media. What a futile world !

Narcissus on your Sunday best or dressed casually to appear working class, made up, worshipped, you are also fair game for pretty nasty shooters. They usually don?t like to sit. Not at all. They like to lie in wait in a hide, voyeurs that they are, voyeurs to the core, watching your emotions.

This young woman had come to see me, sent by a friend, a photographer:

-          Gilbert has told me you're shooting nudes ?

-          That?s right, I?m preparing an exhibition on gowns and nudes.

-          Super ! Well, I'm also a photographer, but I?d like to be your sitter, as I wish to experience what a model feels when undressing in front of the lens. I'm working on male nudes myself, I'd love to be your model, I trust you.

What a bright idea ! And a brave endeavour at that! We worked together in total respect for her privacy; shooting a naked person is quite a delicate exercise. You?re not there to chat the person up, each thing in its proper time. I didn?t court her, I swear, and yet? No, when I took her hand to find the right position for the light and the lens, it was with two fingers: not a caress, but a neutral, technical suggestion. All the same, the relationship must be good and full of trust, and if the case arises, of charm ? or violence, or whatever else is required for the effect you?re seeking.

The sessions were lots of fun for she was indeed a photographer, and she didn?t mind swapping her role as a nude model for that of technical assistant (just as naked), advisedly pointing out that? my lens was blocked by its cover! She is part of this exhibition, but don?t look for her: she is hiding behind a mask and an assumed name?

 

She also suggested I play nude sitters for her, but I was still a practising lawyer at the time; though I felt obliged to accept out of principle or bravado, I asked her to postpone the shooting session: wouldn?t the president of my Bar and his respectable Bar Council have been right in judging that a stark-naked lawyer brings discredit to the noble profession and offends its dignity? I recalled the story of that lawyer, from Strasbourg I think, who was struck off the Bar for showing his bum to a camera. And the one about a female colleague who was reprimanded for playing music in the street and collecting money, in the South West of France. Dignity, dear Madam ? And what about hypocrisy, my learned friends ?

Justice and nudes

Why on earth does nudity shock people ? The infant is born in his or her birthday suit and if we are dressed up in our coffins en route to the family vault, it?s mere social convention. Naked I was born, naked I will die. Naked I am in God?s eyes. I?m dressed in front of the judges and here they are, stripping me of my intentions, acts and thoughts. They'll try anyway, it's their job. Same thing with the lawyer, but he's doing it in my own interest, he says. That remains to be seen. How many renowned lawyers give you the feeling they are pleading for themselves and their egos rather than for their client ? just an alibi to vent their incomparable talent ! When pleading for Klaus BARBIE wasn't Jacques VERGES showing off his unquestionable and impressive verbal skills more than actually defending a man condemned in advance ?

7. P.A. GOURION, Le Système VERBIE, in Les Dossiers du MRAP, Le Nazisme, Paris, 1987

What is this artful trick ? Is the fig leaf that conceals the sexual organ consubstantial with the meaning of our common history ? Does being well dressed mean you respect other people ? Why has art always used the nude to reveal men, women and their time ? I have willingly put an end -slightly early- to a career into which I had put a lot of effort because I want time to write and sing and am fed up with stress: what do I have to pass on apart from a few beautiful prints on glossy paper ?

Then came the thought, after all this had developed in my mind, that I could tackle most of what had made up my little life with my photographic equipment: the beauty of women, that of a furtive glance, the lawyer's jet-black robe, and nudity alone to return to my roots. I could oppose black, white and colour, roll-film and digital, the pleader's gown and his client's nudity, the devil and the good Lord, the wrong and the right side, light and shadows, reality and fantasy, man and woman, man and man, woman and woman, the conscious and the unconscious.

And, you might object, why not form and substance, raw and cooked, cops and robbers, the language of law and that of poetry, whatsit and his opposite, thingummy and her double ?

Indeed, why not ? In the pseudo-legal balance of this series of oppositions, the institution wouldn't have to decide, it would be up to each of us, for once, to choose in our heart of hearts, after a debate opposing physical and visual emotions to the unavoidable stiffness of texts.

In poetry, in painting, in all the arts which appeal to our imagination and aim to please and instruct, it's always through veiled allegories that morality offers men comforting truths, useful precepts; history often resorts to the same language ?  (8.)

Outrageous Outreau

I would make a book about it, and an exhibition, show the bodies of those who stand in court opposite their briefs' gowns. I'd collate the formal attire of the law (the judge's, the lawyer's) and its other side, that of the defendant, the accused, whose innermost self is violated. All in a good cause of course, living together implies basic rules, which are essential for the smooth running of society: a fair judgment and a fair punishment, acquittal for lack of evidence, a light sentence when there is a slight doubt (according to the awful saying: a mild sentence for a mild doubt?), anything's possible, even and more particularly the worst. Human justice is imperfect, so they say. Poor little Judge BURGAUD lynched by the media for doing the same as everybody else, nothing more, nothing less, the good-looking scapegoat of a sick society. But the goat here is a man, not an animal as in the Bible, where the sacrificial rite used to remove the burden of

8. GRAVELOT et COCHIN, Iconologie, Paris, 1797.

their iniquities from our ancestors. 

(9). No smaller than the others, Mr. BURGAUD, just young and probably conformist, but why wouldn't you expect most judges to be conformists ? What are they asked to do if not to conform to the law and the social codes of the moment, to acquired habits ? Let's hope that his sacrifice on the altar of righteousness, his near-suicide organized by our Members of Parliament and journalists have not broken him, may even have made a better human being out of him (10). One wishes he started writing his story as a media martyr, settling his scores even if he got his fingers burnt. Let him defend himself, take the initiative at last. Is it too much to ask him ?

I will make it into a book and an exhibition, which people will come to see, will talk about. That in turn will lead them to debate our pretentious legal systems, often run without the human and financial means that their ambitions would require (i.e. to judge as well as possible). But political men and women don?t care a straw about the legal system except when it opposes them: no votes to be gained there, it?s a lost cause ! (11)

You're saying that passing judgment is a stately function ? Then, let the State pay the price for it.

The huge budgets which are devoted to keeping up an obsolete nuclear force and an atom bomb could with great advantage to us all, be transferred to social and judicial objects. Young people who get involved in humanitarian causes or work placements could also take an active part in our courts, jails and social centres: with judges and lawyers, youth workers and policemen, clerks of court and ushers; with social workers and prison shrinks, with doctors who prescribe suppressants and prison visitors. If, from time to time, a sabbatical year or month was devoted by all citizens and their

9. La Bible, traduction d'André CHOURAQUI, Paris, Desclée de Brouwer, 1989.

10. Judge BURGAUD was a very young French examining judge ; an apparently serious case of paedophilia was submitted to him. With the backing of his superiors, he charged a large number of suspects and remanded them in custody, after they had been accused by some children and adults. Following a press campaign and a discharge of all the accused by the public prosecutor himself, the judge was heard by a parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, in the presence of the media. All television channels showed non stop a contrite judge flanked by two silent lawyers ; this remains etched on my memory, not as a picture of democratic health, but as evidence that our society is seriously ill and the quacks at its bedside pretend to heal it with some magic media cure-all. If that Committee of Inquiry implements an in-depth reform of our criminal police and justice, I pledge to become a monk.

11. The French legal system is fairly modern but disgracefully poor. We have ten judges for ten thousand inhabitants when there are twenty-five in Germany. In relation to the gross domestic product (GDP), France?s budget for the public legal system, with fifty one euros per person per year is number twenty-nine in Europe, half what our German neighbours spend. While legal aid (provided by the state to people who can?t pay to be defended in court) gets a fairly generous endowment, the lawyers? fees for it are notoriously low, which means that those of them who are least well off bear the weight of this public service. Non professional judges are very few compared to Great Britain where most disputes are settled on a voluntary basis. The European Convention for Human Rights proclaims: ?Everyone shall be entitled to have their case heard fairly, publicly and within a reasonable time limit: the dismissal proceedings at the industrial tribunal and proceedings at the divorce court are among the longest in Europe. Not only should the State budget be at least doubled in the middle term, but a culture of evaluation could be developed to great advantage: users could fill in questionnaires and answer satisfaction surveys after hearings, disciplinary sanctions against judges could be reinforced (in the case of professional misconduct or inadequacy) and their independence guaranteed as in the Netherlands, Belgium or Spain. (Sources: Le Monde 6th October 2006, an inquiry of the European Commission into the efficiency of legal systems and an interview of Jean-Paul JEAN, Judge, President of the group of CEPEJ experts.)

elected representatives to rubbing shoulders with those strange worlds, the increasing gap between the governed and those who govern them might be bridged.

Might a portion of truth arise from these bare bodies on the left-hand page, facing the robed lawyers on the right, from this iconoclastic contrast, verging on a rather too clear-cut opposition perhaps ? In actual fact, there is room for doubt, truth is like justice and like God, it?s there to be sought, it's an endless quest.

Besides, your lawyer is not looking for the truth after all. He wants yours, first of all, the truth you have experienced, or built up, or lied to yourself, whatever !

At you my trophy ears and tail

I'll hurl from the severed dragons of your heads

At you my trophy ears and tail

I'll hurl from the severed dragons of your heads

At us my trophy ears and sap

I'll hurl from the severed dragons of our dreams

On you my sweet lies of shining poetry

I'll brightly scatter and musty smell remains

For you my guilty plea for mercy

Will sink into oblivion condemned by black-robed judges

For you aiding and abetting the pale executioners

I'll watch when your head rolls

And yet you were so beautiful in your illusions

Your perfumed lies nothing but diversion

Of you the memory shines bright in my nights

For you my life my dragons I'll slay

I wish I had whispered in your ear

And reaped from your lips such marvellous rewards

I wish I could see the sparkle in your eyes

And feel the iridescent dimples of your skin

For you the devil in conquering mood

I'll emasculate and pluck the dragons from your heads

At you my trophy ears and tail

I'll hurl from the severed dragons of your heads

You were a bull whose awesome petticoat

Fluttered in the wind, and the devil take the hindmost

You were a bull whose awesome petticoat

My sword pierced your impenetrable heart

You are dead gone bewitched done

Your delicate body brings me back into life

A matador in the night, cowardice of the day

I court at night, you incense my days

You are dead gone bewitched done

For you my sweet life?s dragons I'll slay

A matador in the night, cowardice of the day

I court at night, you incense my days (12)

Of course we need to confront what the client tells us in his file (it's difficult, unwise to plead against the file, though sometimes inescapable) with testimonies, plausibility. I remember -shame on me- organising once a reversed miscarriage of justice: in the classic miscarriage of justice, the innocent is unfairly condemned. In this case, the innocent was fairly but lightly condemned, after confessing a lie !

Nicolas was a young guy, open and candid. He was going before the magistrate's court. The complicated story he was telling me was improbable. Although I believed him, believed he was telling me the truth, I was certain too that this improbable truth would not be believed by the judges, they would think he was lying and consequently would pass a heavy sentence on him. In my opinion, he was innocent of the charges laid against him. And yet he confessed what he was expected to confess, i.e. a lie in which he was guilty, a lie that was compatible with his file. He was given a three month suspended sentence, nothing as it were for a false first offender, when his truth would have cost him six months? imprisonment at the very least.

Judges don't like to get the impression that the defendant is lying, even if the best of them admit that lying is as good a line of defence as any. They don?t like to be taken for fools, which they usually aren?t. But they tend to forget that all too often truth can be stranger than fiction.

12. P.A. GOURION, Poèmes et Chansons, Editions ALEAS, Lyon, to be published in 2007

(see next part 2)