Many people today are cynical about justice and see court proceedings as "a sophisticated game", the Catholic Bishop of Dromore, Dr John McAreavey, said yesterday.
Addressing a Mass in St Michan's Church, Halston Street, Dublin, to mark the start of the new legal year, he said there were some who maintained the principal beneficiaries of law were lawyers themselves.
"However, it seems to me that what redeems the practice of law from a purely technical or mercenary exercise is a commitment to the common good or a desire to do justice. Those involved in the administration of justice must, above all, be men and women who hunger and thirst for what is just."
The bishop told a congregation of judges, barristers and solicitors that, while most of their work would involve citizens in conflict with each other, vindicating the rights of society against those who broke the law and so on, a number of recent developments pointed to ways in which lawyers could contribute to the making of peace at international level.
He noted the decision taken in July 1998 to establish an International Court of Criminal Justice, an institution accepted into Irish law by a referendum earlier this year.
There was also what a commentator had recently called "a growing public awareness that the granting of the de facto acceptance of impunity for those holding political, military or economic power erodes the very basis of the social order and helped to nurture a culture of violence".
While it was the responsibility of all members of society to promote the common good, those who were skilled in law and worked in that area contributed to the common good in a special way.
The history of Northern Ireland showed what happened when a large section of society felt aggrieved by the application of the law and lost confidence in the capacity of the law to protect them and their interests. Crises of society were nearly always crises of law, the bishop said.