Granger depended on a lawyer to deconstruct language for him; both failed

Jul 20, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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Lawyers cannot deconstruct words. It is not part of their profession; it doesn’t come within their legal interest. What lawyers do is to interpret words with a narrow purpose in mind – win cases for their clients. Lawyers do not have a professional fascination with epistemology. It is not a subject that attracts them. Their task in quite simple – put their own meaning on language to strengthen their clients’ cases
A lawyer is going to interpret a passage in a book with one purpose in mind – to offer what he/she thinks is the meaning commensurate with the argument that upholds his/her client’s contentions. If one offers to deconstruct the passage and in so doing its meaning will affect his/her client’s prospects in court, the lawyer will refuse it and for practical reasons.
Academia operates with diametrically opposite purposes. An academic will deconstruct a text for intellectual purposes only. There is no client that is paying him/her to do that.
President Granger, in my opinion, relied on the judgement of a lawyer or a group of attorneys that advised him that the words in the constitution; “and any other fit and proper person” also denote person with judge-like qualities. With this in mind, President Granger used the following words; “I am going to choose someone who is fit and proper to be a judge.” From there on the meaning of words took over the debate. In fact, when the president rejected the first list from the Opposition Leader he said that none among the six was a former judge or eligible to be a judge.
Professor Duke Pollard, formerly of the Caribbean Court of Justice and currently a law professor at UG may have influenced the President’s insistence on “judge like qualities,” when he wrote the following words in a letter to the newspapers; “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 the two-named preceding persons. In effect, such person must possess the generally accepted distinctive characteristics of a judge….”
From here on, the President became adamant on the question of “judge-like qualities” and maybe the following words of the professor are what convinced the president; “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).
I replied to that adumbration by Professor Pollard because I thought in that very pronouncement above, the professor contradicted himself and opened the door to a defeat of his thesis by bringing in extraneous factors such as the interpretation of reality.
In my column, “Epistemology, Deconstruction and any other fit and proper person” of January 20, 2017, I rejected the professor’s use of reality to bolster his point that “any other fit and proper person” means judge like qualities.
I quote from that column; “When you deconstruct words, the story becomes another story, and contexts other than the existing ones come into play…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.
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 story of what “any other fit and proper person” means ended in the court two days ago. We all know how the judge ruled. But it may not be the end. The Attorney-General could appeal and the climax could take place in the CCJ. The President should not take that route simply because life is not as complex as the president believes – a highly educated computer expert or surgeon can be GECOM’s Chairman.

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