Epistemology, deconstruction and “any other fit and proper person”

Jan 20, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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I always wonder if society would ever allow for a person other than a trained lawyer to enter a courtroom and argue on behalf of a litigant or an accused. The anarchist trait in me tells me that society should allow that freedom. I have been questioned on the witness stand only twice in my life – in the libel case brought by Bharrat Jagdeo and the assault case against Kwame McCoy and company.
In both cases, I made epistemological objections to the questions put to me by lawyers for Jagdeo and McCoy. Research through Google, in both cases, would show that such disagreements were reported in the press. The reason for my action was because the use of words by these lawyers was contextually non-existent. One example should suffice. Within the space of seconds, a man threw a miasmic substance on me and left. I didn’t see when he was coming to my car window.
In the McCoy trial, his lawyer asked me if I noticed anything about his behaviour as he came to the car. I objected to the word, ‘behaviour,” because contextually or to put it in simpler terms, in such circumstances, behaviour has no meaning. The relevant word should have been, “action.” In the circumstances of the assailant’s movement and within the time frame of his movement, the word, “action,” or “antics” would be the decisive term to use not “behaviour.” Such misuse of words dominated their questions in both cases when I was on the stand. I could not answer questions whose derivatives existed in an epistemological void.
When you deconstruct words, the story becomes another story, and contexts other than the existing ones come into play. Against this background, let’s examine the argument by law professor, Duke Pollard, to support the contention that the article of the Constitution that defines the eligibility of the GECOM chairman, stipulates that the person must be a judge or had been a judge.
Let’s quote the professor; “Concerning the matter at hand, reference may be made to the authoritative perception of Professor HLA Hart that definitions are not solely concerned with the employment of words but, even more importantly, with the realities words are intended to portray. The same applies to legal language! For present purposes Article 161(2) of our Constitution is not only concerned with the employment of words but, more importantly, with the enhanced awareness of words to sharpen the perception of relevant phenomena.” (End of quote).
Unfortunately, in introducing Professor Hart to support his polemic, Professor Pollard has walked straight into the minefield of deconstruction and epistemology, thereby removing any prospect of an agreement of what Article 161 (2) could mean. Two nuances are important in the outline of Professor Pollard and both are enemies of Dr. Pollard. If definitions of words are intricately tied to the realities in which they exist, then there cannot be a conclusive definition of words, because reality is always subject to endless interpretations.
A simply example should suffice; Trump is an indication that the US is becoming a racist country. Is that the reality of the US? But a Black man, who was President for eight years in the US, Barack Obama said that if he had run again, he would have won. Surely, there is a huge gulf here in interpretation of the reality of the US.
The second enemy of Professor Pollard is his position that it is not only the employment of words that matter but “the enhanced awareness of words to sharpen the perception of relevant phenomena.” Obviously two questions poke you in the eye – who is doing the enhancement and who is doing the sharpening?
The answer is Dr. Pollard himself. It means another person can do like the professor – do their own enhancement and sharpening. The Constitution says a judge “or any other fit and proper person.” Dr. Duke enhances and sharpens the word “other.” Let’s quote him; “The employment of the pronoun “other” speaks volumes and must be interpreted to mean that such “other fit and proper person” must possess the characteristics of (a judge).”
If “other” speaks volumes, who is it speaking for? In this case it is the professor. But “other” by the professor’s own polemical reasoning should be situated into two circumstances – the realities that words exist in, and the enhanced awareness that we must subject them to.
Space has run out, but I would say using the professor’s own polemical methodology, “other” speaks volumes of what it means – that if you cannot find a past or present judge, then, find “other” persons. For me, “other” does not mean a judge.

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