A Legal System That Cannot Invalidate Corrupt Judgments Does Not Fail, It Deceives -By Malakh Joy Barak Sucipto, SH, MH

At the heart of many legal systems there is a terrible myth, that justice finality, It does not. For a judgment corruptly obtained, is no law but only transaction masquerading as justice. And a system that allows such judgments to remain does not break; it is doing its job. It deceives.

The principle of finality, res judicata is revered among competing jurisdictions. A decision that has reached its terminal point is a binding one. It stabilizes expectations. It closes disputes. But what if the very process that led to that judgment, is foul with corruption? When verdicts are purchased, bought off or constructed through illicit payoffs finality becomes a protection not for justice but the pretense of injustice.

The problem is not theoretical. Judges accepting bribes or otherwise improper benefits have led to scandals in courts around the world. Criminal liability would then follow, in such cases. Judges may be prosecuted. Officials may be disgraced. But the judgment, the crux of a corrupted process tend to live on. It remains binding. It still is the basis of rights, duties and lives.

This is not a gap. It is a structural failure. Even worse, it is a wilful one.

This is precisely because legal systems are fastidious when it comes to procedure, evidence and appellate review. They say when a case can be re-opened, what is admissible as new evidence and they state the need for extraordinary remediations. But few deal head on with perhaps the most toxic situation of all: a verdict that is legally valid but morally invalid because it was arrived at by corrupt means. In these systems, there is no straightforward and automatic way to invalidate such decisions. The act is protected; the actor punished.

This contradiction is indefensible.

A system that prosecutes a corrupt judge yet preserves the corrupt judgement is simply sending us an alarming message: integrity is optional, outcomes are not. It advises citizens that corruption is reprehensible in the abstract but its effects will be overlooked in nature. It turns law into performanceCue; an elaborate ceremonial, which outwardly resembles justice while surreptitiously evading it.

The implications are profound.

To achieve this, it brings about the collapse of the difference between legality and legitimacy. But if bribed judgment can bind, then legalimerality separates from any notion of truth or justice. The law became a record of procedure, no longer justice.

Secondly, at the very least it undermines public trust. Courts are more than simply dispute-resolution bodies, they are entities of moral authority. Nuance not seen by the public when their outputs of power reveal themselves as corrupt and yet produce beneficial outcomes. It sees betrayal.

It breaches core human rights on a third point. Ang formellt förfarande uppfyller inte rätten till en rättvis prövning. It needs a fair jury, absent of corruption. Bribery can not simply lead to an imperfect judgment, no such judgment is a denial of justice. To enforce it is to carry on that denial.

Finality will sound like an apocalyptic vision: reopening those cases, the defenders of finality say, would drive us into a legal chaos. Endless litigation. Uncertainty. Abuse of process. This argument confuses convenience for justice, however. For stability that upholds injustice is not a virtue, it is complicity.

It is not a radical or unattainable solution. Working legal systems should create procedures to nullify judgments shown to have been generated corruptly. Not ad hoc remedies at the discretion of some official but visible paths, enforceable. A high bar: documented bribery, net influence [or] demonstrable corruption. Once this threshold is passed however, the punishment must be clear-cut: it descends.

Anything short of that is a compromise with inequity.

This is not about compromising finality. It’s about returning its meaning. Deservedness of a judgment to be final is itself dependent on its deservedness to trust. Finality that lacks integrity is not stability, but steady state calumny.

In principle, the international human rights framework is already clear. Rights to a fair trial, an independent judiciary and equality before the law are not simply aspirational slogans. They are binding obligations. It lacks enforcement where these principles are most obviously undermined–the judgment itself.

We need to wrangle with an unpalatable fact. It is a problem of which not all legal systems are blind but one they seem very reluctant to fix. The reason is because to void a rigged judgment means acknowledging the existence of that very system which allowed said judgement to take place. It is an institutional confession.

But silence is worse.

A legal system that may not, or will not respond to its own corrupt output does more than just fail in justice delivery. It does injustice and pretends to do otherwise. It disguises the illegitimate in legalese.

And that is the greatest deception of all.

If justice cannot be discerned from a reasoned judgment to bribery, then the law has lost its moral compass. And, if it enforces both with equal force going forward then its authority may not hold up.

Justice is something other than ultimate.

It is what being right signifies.

And a system that cannot disavow the wrong is not a justice, it is illusion.

Malakh Joy Barak Sucipto, SH, MH

Alumni of The Faculty of Law University 17 August 1945 Surabaya and Member of Law Firm Victorious Indonesia