Deaf Justice?

MSN NEWS

Posted : 2013/09/17 10:52 am

Court ruling fires British debate on Muslim veils

 

(Reuters) - A British judge ruled on Monday that a Muslim woman could not give evidence at her trial wearing a full-face veil, sparking debate about whether Britain should follow other European countries and ban Islamic veils in schools and public places.

But in a significant ruling on Monday, a Muslim woman, who argued that removing her veil in court breached her human rights, was told she could not wear it when giving evidence.

"ELEPHANT IN THE COURTROOM"

"The niqab has become the elephant in the courtroom," said Judge Peter Murphy, who also made the compromise that she could wear her veil at all other times during a trial later this year over accusations she had intimidated a witness in another case.

The woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons and who only started wearing a niqab in May 2012, had argued it was against her beliefs to uncover her face in front of men who were not members of her close family.

But Murphy said it would "drive a coach and horses through the way in which justice has been administered in the courts of England and Wales for centuries" if jurors could not observe her reactions.

"No tradition or practice, whether religious or otherwise, can claim to occupy such a privileged position that the rule of law, open justice and the adversarial trial process are sacrificed to accommodate it," he said.

"That is not a discrimination against religion. It is a matter of upholding the rule of law in a democratic society."

Murphy, whose ruling will serve as a precedent, said he hoped parliament or a higher court would provide a definitive verdict "sooner rather than later", while the woman's lawyer said it was too early to say whether she would appeal.

The above clippings from MSN news are shattering for someone who believed that courts of justice relied on material evidence and content of the statements of the witnesses. But unfortunately, judge Murphy in his cliché riddled exhortations seems to give the impression that British justice relies too heavily on facial expressions and nuances. I wonder what sort of training judges and jurists receive before being entrusted with venerable positions.

Without insinuating anything it seems that there is also room for suspicion that some judges or members of jury who may have a weak hearing might be relying on lip-reading in the pursuit of their duties. In such a case, indeed, their right to lip-read comes into direct conflict with a witness’s right to practice personal privacy in her own way. But an order to strip the niqab is hardly any different from an order to strip any other piece of clothing, although it seems to make sense if there is no other way of establishing an individual’s identity. There seems to be no such issue in this case.

This leads to the obvious question whether or not judges and members of jury need to be periodically certified to have soundness of vision and hearing assuming that their reasoning is guaranteed. At the moment I am reading a book called “Blind Spot” by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald (Publisher Delacorte Press) which lists a number of simple tests for establishing an individual’s hidden biases. It would be a good idea if judges and jurists all over the world took these tests voluntarily and made allowances for the results they achieve.