H. V. Evatt

📖 The Scoop

This iconoclastic essay argues that:Evatt's profound and enduring (but largely ignored) legacy was his exposition of how the law can be an instrument, not only of justice, but also injustice. This insight was based on his trail-blazing analysis of the trial and sentencing of the Tolpuddle Martyrs in 1834 -- six English rural workers who were framed on trumped-up charges and sent as convicts to Australia for seven years for starting a trade union. Evatt's radical interpretation challenged the entrenched Labour myth -- that they were victims of a conspiracy of landowners, clerics, judges, bureaucrats and parliamentarians who feared 'dangerous' unions. Evatt's conclusion was far more shocking. The Tolpuddle Martyrs were, he argued, victims of cruel injustice embedded within the law.His book -- Injustice Within the Law: a study of the case of the Dorsetshire labourers was published in 1937. It is the leitmotif to the career that followed. Evatt believed that a state's sovereignty (i.e. its monopoly power) -- whether democratic, fascist or communist -- was always capable of forcing cruel laws on its citizens if the state was unchecked by a higher authority.This insight guided Evatt's thinking on human rights which he envisaged as universal moral principles -- transnational and eternal. His well honed political skills allowed him to put theory into practice on the world stage. He became an architect of the United Nations. His wisdom is present in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Genocide Convention and the Geneva Conventions as well as in the European Court of Human Rights and the International Criminal Court.Robertson describes Evatt as -- an intellectual giant and a genius. He nominates Evatt as the Australian who contributed the most to human progress. Robertson claims that Evatt's massive contribution to 'putting Australia on the map' relegates Gallipoli to second place.

Genre: History / Australia & New Zealand (fancy, right?)