Not Just Numbers View from the west

Lexpert looks at numbers and stories. The 9/11 attacks in the US and the 26/11 attacks in India. He believes that restoring order in Mumbai is the sincerest tribute we could pay to the dead. And zero is his favorite number. Zero attacks, zero victims, zero-tolerance for terrorism..9/11, 26/11, 2993 dead, 24 missing, 195 dead, 308 injured – numbers can sometimes have an oddly numbing effect. In Mumbai, as in New York, the dead included Jews and Christians, Hindus, Muslims and atheists, investment bankers, janitors, policemen and firefighters and lawyers..Even amidst the numbers, some stories stand out. Prominent solicitor and philanthropist Anand Bhatt of Wadia Ghandy & Co. was amongst those who never returned home. He had become a grandfather a few months earlier. Some news reports stated that true to his legal training, he had tried to reason with the killers till the very end..Other lawyers have been involved in other ways. Following the Twin Towers tragedy, Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington D.C. attorney, was appointed Special Master in charge of the U.S Government’s September 11th Victims Compensation Fund. To him fell the difficult and painful task of administering payments based on estimates of the victim’s earning capacity and the number of dependents..Feinberg worked for 33 months, entirely pro bono. It was a thankless job which resulted in the payment of $7 billion to 97 per cent of the victims. As Feinberg later put it, “There is not one family member I’ve met who wouldn’t gladly give back the check, or, in many cases, their own lives to have that loved one back. ‘Happy’ never enters into this equation.”.Consider Glenn Winuk. A Partner in the New York office of the well-known firm of Holland & Knight, Winuk, aged 40 in 2001, also doubled as a volunteer firefighter. When the towers were hit, he grabbed a medical bag and raced to join the relief effort. They later found him buried in the rubble of the skyscrapers, still wearing his stethoscope and surgical gloves..While the 9/11 attacks unified the United States of America, both at a community level and politically, the same has not yet been reflected in India. While the community came together against the attacks, for politicians, it became a matter of gaining political mileage. One senses an intrinsic lack of political will to admit or address the circumstances that led to the 26/11 attacks. Kasab’s trial still continues, and be assured, the end is far away. The Pradhan Commission Report, which identifies issues surrounding the terrorist attack is still hidden from the public eye. In stark contrast, the 9/11 committee report is out in the open for all public, across countries to see. India surely can learn a thing or two in transparency..The attacks of 9/11 and 26/11 threw up a barrage of new legal questions. Should terrorists be treated as a particular species of criminal or was terrorism something sui generis? What civil liberties were we prepared to sacrifice to combat terror? How should nations respond to terror without violating international law? Did we need to change the laws of evidence, the laws of criminal procedure? Did we need to create a whole new category of offences?.The questions haven’t been confined to criminal law and international law. Nor have they been abstract inquiries about due process and human rights. Banking lawyers have had to deal with a raft of new legislations designed to combat terrorist financing, international mergers and acquisitions have been affected by security concerns – CNOOC and Dubai Ports World, for instance. Immigration requirements have been significantly tightened, air travel is regulated on levels that appear to rival the nuclear industry..Here’s one brief reason why the terror attacks make the work of lawyers so much more important. The attacks represented a profound attempt to disrupt the rule of law, to replace order with chaos. The answer to the lawlessness of terrorism is more laws and more law-enforcement. In the wake of 9/11, government officials and community leaders stressed the importance of maintaining normality, of continuing civic engagement. The ideal of a functioning society which resorts to the law to resolve its differences is not only what lawyers strive for every day, it is the precise opposite of the dystopia that the terrorists sought to create..In your mind’s eye, it’s not hard to remember the madness of 26/11, police jeeps racing along empty roads, people scrambling for cover, a red glow all along the skyline. Mumbai is often chaotic but it has always had an internal order, a code followed and acknowledged by everyone. Restoring that order is the sincerest tribute we could pay to the dead. And as for numbers, zero is my favorite. Zero attacks, zero victims, zero-tolerance for terrorism..Lexpert is an Indian lawyer currently based out of the United States.