Curiouser and Curiouser! on justice http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic justice Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb The Global War on Justice Sun, 18 Jan 2004 08:21:33 +0000 <blockquote><a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/01/17/military/index.html">"A legal black hole"</a>. In an extraordinary Supreme Court filing, five military lawyers equate Bush's denial of legal rights to the Guantanamo Bay detainees to King George's oppression of the American colonists. [<a href="http://www.salon.com">Salon.com</a>]</blockquote> <p>This piece adequately sums up my fears about what is happening in the US legal system (and what may come our way too in the near future):</p> <blockquote>Amicus embraces the principles affirmed in Reid v. Covert: Slight encroachments create new boundaries from which legions of power can seek new territory to capture. It may be that it is the obnoxious thing in its mildest and least repulsive form; but illegitimate and unconstitutional practices get their first footing in that way, namely, by silent approaches and slight deviations from legal modes of procedure ... We should not break faith with this nation's tradition of keeping military power subservient to civilian authority, a tradition which we believe is firmly embodied in the Constitution. The country has remained true to that faith for almost one hundred seventy years. Perhaps no group in the Nation has been truer than military men themselves.</blockquote> And, further: <blockquote>Unlike earlier wars, the struggle against terrorism is potentially never-ending. The Constitution cannot countenance an open-ended Presidential power, with no civilian review whatsoever, to try anyone the President deems subject to a military tribunal, whose rules and judges have been selected by the prosecuting authority itself.</blockquote> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001828.html A long ramble about law & terrorism Wed, 23 Jun 2004 09:17:53 +0100 <p>My thoughts this morning were triggered by a piece about the <a href="http://www.lewrockwell.com/roberts/roberts53.html">dissolution of attorney-client privilege in the US</a>.</p><blockquote><p>Faced with the threat of being declared uncooperative, KPMG announced that it would pay its employees legal fees only if they waived the attorney-client privilege and "cooperated" with the investigation. Invariably, "cooperation" requires self-incrimination and negotiation of a guilty plea. By making it impossible for a defendant to defend, the government never has to have a real case.</p></blockquote><p>I think I've said before that I don't trust my government. It's not that I think the government is <i>actively</i> hostile towards me, but that I think it has no regard for my life, liberty, or prosperity whilst persuing its own agenda. The state, as an entity, is becoming more important than the individuals it's supposed to serve. I think that the way my government has acquiesced to America's actions in Guantanamo Bay clearly demonstrates that.</p><blockquote><p>There may be trouble ahead <br>But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance <br>Let's face the music and dance</p></blockquote><p>So what is my fear? My fear is to wake up one day in a fascist country. Fascism places the state foremost. The country does not serve the citizen; the citizen serves the country. Fascism does not recognize the idea of the independence of the common man. Now I am not suggesting that the US or UK is a fascist country now or that it's just around the corner. What I am suggesting is that the legal system is a good barometer for detecting this sort of change and I see stormy weather ahead.</p><p>In the last 12 months I've read a lot about how the American legal system is, and has been, deteriorating. About the ways that "Department of Justice" (sic) with the complicity of the rest of the government has made the USA into a prosecutors paradise. A prime example is the use of the RICO legislation.&nbsp; Passed in the 1970 the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act was intended to destroy the Mafia. And for about a decade it was used for that purpose. However by the 1990's prosecutors were using RICO against individuals, businesses, political protest groups, and terrorist organizations. Because so-called Mafiosos were considered to be murderous and ruthless, RICO was created to be equally ruthless. Those accused under RICO could find their assets seized and be unable to pay for their defence. Used this way RICO is the prosecutorial equivalent of the Hydrogen bomb.</p><blockquote><p>There may be teardrops to shed<br>So while there's moonlight and music and love and romance<br>Let's face the music and dance</p></blockquote><p>What concerns me is how, in both the US and the UK, the "War on Terror" is being used to hand more power, with less accountability, to the state. "The law is too soft" is the constant refrain from government ministers seeking new, and ever more draconian, powers. Powers which, sooner or later, get pointed at the rest of us. Meanwhile the state continues to act in a way that seems almost calculated to extend the threat of terrorism forever. But anyone who suggests that terrorism is the new communism (i.e. the most direct way of funnelling money to people in the arms industry) must, of course, be parnaoid.</p><p>I think there needs to ba full debate about what it means to be a citizen in our society. A debate which spells out the freedoms and protections we enjoy and attempts to understand how those can be balanced with the responsibilites we bear. That includes responsibility for the actions of the state. I believe that a sane outcome would be a re-establishment of fairness in law and a severe curtailment of the power of the state to meddle in the affairs of others.&nbsp; Maybe if we poked less sticks in their hives, we would annoy less hornets.</p> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002354.html