THE incident in a courtroom in Lahore where lawyers roughed up a family court judge is a sad reflection on their sense of discipline and propriety. The lawyers' version that the judge, while hearing a marriage case, had recorded the statement of the plaintiff woman in the absence of her husband from whom she wanted divorce is a thing apart, but the way the black coats resorted to violence is a negation of the system of justice they had campaigned for, and the discipline they are supposed to maintain. This incident, in addition to a host of other occasions when members of the legal fraternity had been taking the path of violence, inevitably tarnishes the image they created as an agent for the restoration of democracy and the deposed judiciary through a hard and long campaign. Strangely, a leader of the Lahore Bar Association is saying that the matter has been resolved but this appears to be an attempt to hush up the case because the civil judge still complains that no disciplinary action has been taken against the lawyers involved. The fact remains that those who take the law into their hands must be brought to justice.