Helen Wood described in last week’s Spectator how she ‘escorted’ a wealthy footballer, Wayne Rooney. He applied for, and got, a super-injunction. So did she, and was refused. What is going on here? The Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes (384-322 bc) knew.
Helen Wood described in last week’s Spectator how she ‘escorted’ a wealthy footballer, Wayne Rooney. He applied for, and got, a super-injunction. So did she, and was refused. What is going on here? The Athenian orator and statesman Demosthenes (384-322 bc) knew.
In 348 BC Demosthenes brought a case against a personal enemy, one Meidias, for punching him while on duty at a religious festival. Demosthenes did not argue on the grounds that this violated a ritual or even just himself. He saw a much larger issue at stake.
Meidias, he argued, confident in his contacts, wealth and reputation, had committed a crime that struck at the very heart of the safety, security and well-being of each and every citizen, whoever they were, rich or poor, great or small, footballers (had they had them then) or escorts; and if that sort of behaviour were ever to be passed over as unimportant, no one, whatever their status, would be safe.
For wrongful acts in violation of the laws were public acts against everyone. If the jurors agreed with him, he went on, ‘the instant this court rises, each of you will walk home, one quicker, another more leisurely, not anxious, not glancing behind him, not fearing whether he is going to run up against a friend or an enemy, a big man or a little one, a strong man or a weak one, or anything of that sort. And why? Because in his heart he knows, and is confident, and has learned to trust the state, that no one shall seize or insult or strike him.’
It is clear that the ‘super-injunction’ is a law for the rich and (in)famous and them alone, as if Wood’s reputation were somehow less valuable to her than Rooney’s to him, and in a case where both were sharing the same, legal, activity.
But on what legal grounds is the reputation of struggling proles less important than footballers’? Demosthenes was right. The Athenians knew that one rule for the rich, one for the poor, made nonsense of the law. One might have thought our judiciary would have noticed. Apparently not. Super-injunctions for all, please — or none.
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