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Abstract: When legal niceties get in the way of justice, which should give? The answer might seem obvious: how could it be appropriate to insist on upholding legal technicalities when justice is at stake? But legal “technicalities” such as jurisdiction and standing are at least part of what makes law a distinctive enterprise, separate from morality. So, if we think the legal enterprise has value, then to what extent are legalisms worth upholding, even when they lead to injustice in an individual case?
These familiar questions about the relationship of law and equity, procedure and substance, occurred to me as I read Philippe Sands' beautifully written new book, The Last Colony. The book movingly describes the grave injustice done to the people of the Chagos Archipelago by Great Britain, which forcibly removed them from their homes in the late 1960s and early 1970s and--shamefully-- continues to deny them the right to return. In Sands' inimitable, highly personal style, he tells the story of the quest to use international law to remedy this injustice--a story in which he himself played a key role.
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