Couple weeks ago I attended the 2nd National Conference on systemic justice in Argentina. A colleague from Latin America, also a Systemic / Family Constellations Facilitator, sent me the link with a note that it might be interesting. In our unusual times some things that are normally difficult to reach for geographical reasons are on the contrary, quite accessible thanks to online options.
To clarify the context, Systemic Justice is widely acknowledged in Brasil — briefly, an adaptation of Bert Hellinger’s family constellations to the civil dispute. Services of the trained systemic lawyers who use constellations tools are provided in almost all regions of the vast country for such cases as property disputes, or with whom a child should stay after the divorce of the parents, etc. The general message of the conference was “we need it to be developed same way in Argentina”. Reports of the participants from Brazil, naturally sounded mostly very interesting.
What attracted my attention
A general question: What kind of law do we really need?
Law enforcement oriented on punishment and, at limit, imprisonment, is aimed at condemnation; it is, at increasing the gap between the person found ‘guilty’ and others. In Hellinger’s terms, it’s equal to exclude, to deprive a person of an inherent right to belong. Ann Ancelin Schutzenberger noted that an ancestor’s stay in prison is often passed on from generation to generation as a family secret, constituting the core of transgenerational trauma.
Adversarial trial: a concept of modern justice, where one side must ‘win’ and another therefore is doomed to ‘lose’, leads to circumstances where lawyers are rarely satisfied with the result of their work. A civil conflict cannot be fully resolved this way, the result will always lack some balance if the ‘winner’ takes it all. This in turn leads to exhaust and dissatisfaction with the practice among many of the lawyers.
Whereas the use of constellations in the civil process makes it possible to settle conflicts, and to settle in the most profound meaning of the word. The parties to the trial really do resolve contradictions. There is no sense in continuing the dispute if a constellation work is successful. In addition, and I would draw attention to this — the parties fully experience profound feelings, presence in the moment and deep involvement that marks the way to the solution. It’s the process where instead of ’showing’ some emotions the parties are living their presence that leads to the proper alignment of the positions and seeing the solution most welcomed by everyone involved.
Historical Similarities
This reminded me of a lecture about peasantry by Teodor Shanin, a magnificent researcher of pre-revolutionary Russia. Settlements in Russia used to have elected community courts at that time, before 1917. He describes a case when the community court finds a person guilty in misappropriation of land. According to the decision of jury that person still received a part of what he had misappropriated. The jury said: he’s one of us, and he still needs land, so this would be fair if he receives a part of what he acquired illegally. Interestingly enough, the right to be acknowledged, to belong and to be a part of the community was, therefore, preserved.
