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A Legal Challenge

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A Legal Challenge

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Just by way of another brief interlude in my self-imposed blog silence while I am upgrading software and design, I wanted to mention the wonderful speech I heard yesterday. One of the nice things about being one of the university's governors is that I can get to choose to go to pretty well any number of graduation ceremonies. I don't avail myself of the privilege terribly often, but I went yesterday evening to the graduation ceremony for most of our law students.

The honorary graduand was Clive Stafford Smith, the British born US based death-row lawyer and campaigner against the death penalty and torture and all things Guantanamo. As I understand it, he is, like many passionate campaigners, if not many lawyers, not terribly well remunerated, to put it mildly. His clients tend, almost by definition, to be amongst the poorest, often least educated in US society, and they have no legal right to representation once the sentence is handed down. There's not a lot of money in death penalty appeals or sticking up for the disappeared in America's network of secret GTMO-like prisons.

So he was appealing for these bright young starry eyed graduates to come and be exploited by his charity, Reprieve, for a few months, or more precisely, their parents to fund them while they are there. He promised an experience the like of which they are unlikely to find in a whole career at the Old Bailey or the corridors of corporate power. While they may dream of millionaire partnerships at Clifford Chance, he does it because it is fun! You cannot imagine the fantastic feeling you get, he says, when you "whip George Bush's ass in the Supreme Court" and defeat the world's only super-power in their own courts.

And when you think about it, how do we measure success? Is it the money? Or perhaps the satisfaction of a David victorious against Goliath.

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