RS 27

alain wijffels ruler or councillor could acquire an insight in those virtues through a thorough education in classical studies and Christian religion. An educated jurist, whether acting as a judge or as a political counsel, was expected to have cultivated that insight. The second element, justice, referred to both the substantive justice which public policies were supposed to tend to, and the administration of justice in the more narrow sense of adjudicating in cases of litigation.36 Here, the university-educated lawyer (on the continent) was regarded as the specialist in the ars boni et aequi, and was therefore credited with a unique expertise because of his professional training. On both counts, lawyers have lost ground as experts of public governance since the nineteenth century. For assessing the efficiency of public governance, the classical and Christian values are no longer the yardstick.Government will rather rely on the social sciences than on the ideals expressed in classical Greek-Roman literature or in the Bible. The lawyers’ expertise in social sciences is now far less perceived to contribute to the political decision-making process.37 Hence the tendency of marginalising lawyers to the more technical task of translating the policies decided by the rulers and their advisors from the social sciences into legal texts such as statutes and regulations. Moreover, justice in its political dimension has now also largely eluded the lawyers’ expertise, because it is much less than before regarded as a matter of expertise, but instead as a matter of policy.38 And in polities where the people have become sovereign, only the people’s representatives have the legitimacy to decide what is just, and what policies are most adequate in order to achieve substantive justice. Thears boni et aequi has been replaced in our days by the democratic legitimacy to decide how justice should be achieved in seeking the general interest. That leaves the administration of justice in its more narrow sense, i.e. the judicial task of handling litigation and deciding cases. That is still the province where 36 Wijffels, Alain forthcoming, pp. 119-132. 37 Supiot, Alain 2015. 38 This is of course less true in the realm of constitutional courts or courts which will uphold constitutional principles and values, cf. Rosenfeld, Michel – Sajó, András (eds.) 2012 chapters 38-40. 47

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