On Tuesday, attorney-general Mohamed Apandi Ali was reported to have said: “I am a law man. Tell the whole world that I am a law man. I decide according to the law. Nobody puts pressure on me.”

With due respects, every law man would say something similar - but we have seen that not all law men see or interpret the law in the same way.

The law does not work by itself - like the sun that never fails to rise in the East every morning - but is like the weather, which is never constant.

The law is born of human minds and it is worked by human minds. This is where the problem lies, for no two minds are exactly 100 percent the same, and some are even at extremes like the sky and the earth.

In the Low Yat case for instance, some legal minds felt that Ali Tinju had committed an offence and charged him. However, another legal mind felt there was not enough evidence to charge him, and so the charge was withdrawn . Both were legal minds on the law enforcement side.

Those on the public side, meanwhile, felt there was enough evidence since recordings of the incident had been given to the police as irrefutable evidence.

Going back a few years, there had been lawmen hearing a sensational murder and body disappearing case, who made a ruling that it was not necessary for them to uncover the motive for the killing.

But ask any level-headed law man, or even a law student, and you will be told that motive is very important to determine the sentence to be pronounced - whether it is the gallows, life imprisonment, or freedom.

Then we have law men who find it just to impose a very harsh term of imprisonment on some petty thief (who may have stolen food to eat), and a slap on the wrist for a corporate thief who stole millions.

Not infallible

One could write volumes on the vagaries of the minds of law men. So, it is not for said individuals to claim, by virtue of being law men, that they are infallible.

Minds being what they are, are influenced by things happening in their society and the world at large. E.g. if crimes are increasing, legal minds would be influenced or motivated to mete out stiffer penalties as a deterrent.

Legal minds are not only evaluated by other legal minds, but also by laymen and 'men-on-the-street' minds.

Fairness and justice are not the private domain of legal minds, but also very much the concern of the non-legal minds of the public who also have a sense of right and wrong, a sense of fairness or unfairness.

So, if the public at some point in time loses faith in the legal minds who should be protecting them, they should not be blamed.

Rather, these legal minds should take stock of the public feedback and voices of dissatisfaction and search their own souls to see what has brought about such a situation.

Should the remedy be to use laws to silence the voices of dissatisfaction so that a perception is created to show that everything is fine, or to be humble and admit that things are not quite right and make the necessary improvements in earnest?