Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio died last week. I have two direct debts to him, spaced a decade apart. The most recent, when I asked him, and he immediately agreed, to give me the privilege of writing a preface for a book that I published in 2015. He did so with the immediacy and generosity that I already knew him and he was, a few months later, at his Center for Judicial Studies, where he also honored me with his words in the public presentation of that work. My oldest debt memory is the moment I met him: on a trip we both had to Brussels, in the aftermath of the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2007. We only met on the plane. Or rather, I recognized him and sat down next to him. We had a role to play – he, that of the prudent sage, who would represent Portugal, at the invitation of the Minister of Justice at the time, Alberto Costa, in an event that was not the easiest; I, the role of his “wing”, who carried the most factual knowledge of the current history at stake. And we started talking. And I believe this conversation lasted at least 48 hours, until we landed back in Lisbon. We talked on the plane, in the hotel, at dinner, in meetings, on the streets of Brussels escaping the rain, even in the Grand Place in the early morning, when no one else was there.
He wasn’t my friend, but I feel like I lost a friendship. Because, despite the almost forty years that separated us, his integrity, attention to others and intelligence captivated him in a short time and forever.
He has always held public functions: prosecutor, judge, director of the Center for Judicial Studies, Secretary of State and Minister of Justice, member of the Superior Council of the Judiciary, deputy to the Assembly of the Republic. He was involved in the creation and promotion of civic associations that were decisive in building a living body of citizens. He was an actor and author of law books and books on more important things. What a life, what a life!
He was Minister of Justice between 1990 and 1995, in a particularly ungrateful time for Portuguese justice. It was the time when the fullest effects of democratization, the creation of an integrated economy in Europe and the explosion of hiring and consumption were felt. With consequences also for the explosion of credit and, consequently, also for non-compliance, which was quickly felt in the courts. It was also a time of the drug consumption epidemic, with repercussions on crime and imprisonment. But, after this period of office, he continued to think and intervene, without fanfare and without a desire for express and spectacular fame.
Just look around us, and above and below, to recognize the differences. In these days, when lies, foolishness and selfishness take hold and climb frontiers, internal and external, when shame in the face of stupidity disappears, it is good to remember that it was not always like this. It doesn’t even need to be.
Professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lisbon