The right to a fair trial

Abstract

"If ......If ...... We didn't have freedom enough. And even more - we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure; we purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward". These poignent words written by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in "The Gulag Archipelago" to explain why his people had to suffer so much under Stalin would seem to be a fit opening to a thesis on an aspect of human rights - the right to a fair trial which is the rock on which freedom from oppression and tyranny have been established in democratic countries and the best guarantee against the inequities and the travesties of justice so very rampant in dictatorial regimes. It has been suggested by some that the right to a fair hearing constitutes the fifth freedom, supplementing freedom of speech and religion, freedom from want and fear. Justice Robert Jackson reminded us that "Procedural fairness and regularity are of the indispensable essence of liberty". His colleague Justice Frankfurter opined: "The history of liberty has largely been the history of procedural safeguards". Professor A. L. Goodhart commented: "In three words 'the fair trial' we can sum up the outstanding contribution that the common law has made to civilization''· Fair hearings by no means guarantee that other rights are respected. Without fair hearings, however, other rights at best are in peril.