Nearly ten years ago I wrote a book called The Rule of Law: the common sense of global politics... which I thought was marking/noting the ascendance of the rule of law as a global norm...
(As I've said before) I now see that really I was recognising its high water mark, and since we have seen the norm slowly recede... confirmed (again) by this report on an assessment of the rule of law in Europe.
A new front may be opening in the fight to get corporations to take their climate impact responsibilities seriously; taking UK company directors to court for failing to consider their firms' activities' impact on the environment.
While Client Earth are currently appealing the dismissal of their groundbreaking case, legal opinion is moving towards a recognition that this could be a way forward; it will be interesting to see how this plays out
Will the bill to exonerate victims of the Post Office Horizon IT programme of malicious prosecution(s), be a worrying precedent?
Many of the Judiciary are worried about this violation of the principle of independence of the Courts... while supporters think the Courts brought this upon themselves by not realising they were being duped by Fujitsu & the PO.
The key will be how the bill is framed & whether future Govt.s can resist the temptation to do it again - I'm not optimistic!
The fed judiciary’s administrative arm said that it’s approved a new policy aimed at curbing litigants who seek to file lawsuits before specific judges.
The issue of “judge shopping” has repeatedly come up in TX in recent years, where R AGs & conservative litigants have filed challenges to Biden admin actions in divisions where one judge is automatically assigned all cases, with an eye toward getting a favorable decision in their favor.
Not only does my forthcoming Hurst book PROTECTING DEMOCRACY IN EUROPE have a cover, but you can now also pre-order it from one of my favourite bookshops!
A week or so back I posted on the fate of Ibrahima Bah who was convicted of culpability in the deaths of migrants drowned from the boat he was forced to pilot by people traffickers.
The prosecution of a victim of people traffickers was unjust but revealed much about the Tories attitude to migrants.
Here is Diane Taylor's longer contextualisation of the case which is worth a read, if also depressing.
Zuheir Mohsen was a #Palestinian leader of the pro-Syria As-Sa'iqa Ba'athist faction of the Palestine Liberation Organization #PLO between 1971 & 1979.
"Failed Justice." The ballot box: ineffective in 2021, #TFG attempted a coup. 2025?
"We haven’t reckoned with the failure of democratic institutions to hold powerful elites accountable & protect democracy. After SCOTUS overruled CO, elite opinion seemed to be it's good to let the voters decide whether TFG is an insurrectionist. It's not good. It's a failure of justice. SCOTUS made us all vigilantes. It put democracy on a collision course with the rule of law." #RuleOfLaw https://www.editorialboard.com/the-supreme-court-just-turned-us-all-into-vigilante-voters/
Despite the unanimity of the justices, I disagree with the Supreme Court’s judgment that states may not enforce section 3 of the 14th A. That judgment is the bottom line. But far more dangerous is the majority opinion, which includes discussion that goes beyond this bottom line. Five justices have tried to prospectively prescribe two requirements irrelevant to the Colorado case. First, they claim that only Congress, not the judiciary or executive branch may enforce section 3. 1/ #LawFedi
The justices in the five person majority in #TrumpVAnderson show, once again, their utter disdain for the most elementary features of U.S. rule of law. They disregard text and precedent and trample separation of powers. Unsurprisingly then, their decision is primarily a piece of partisanship only masquerading as judicial work. 5/ #RuleOfLaw
If #TFG's #J6 trial is delayed until after the election, when will Americans fill the streets in DC & demand that the treasonous SC Justices be impeached?
"This. If the court can push the trial or the verdict until after the election and Trump is elected then then what we are watching is the conservative justices on the court doing just what the January 6 rioters did, could someday be seen as a judicial coup."
-D Rothkopf
This week marks the 90th birthday of Liberty, established at the National Council for Civil Liberties in 1934.
Liberty continue to do lots of work to protect our rights (some of which is easy to support & popular, some of which ends up being contentious) and for their birthday, if you are not a member why not join & support their every more vital work to maintain the #ruleoflaw in its widest (moral) sense.
[full disclosure: like my parents before me I'm a member]
Good: "Alexander SMIRNOV, the former FBI informant charged with feeding false info about the Bidens, has been rearrested despite a magistrate's release order.
His lawyers say he was arrested while at their offices for a legal consultation."
-Kyle Cheney
I'm sympathetic to blanket exonerations via legislation for #PostOffice#Horizon erroneous prosecutions, but I'm a little queasy about a Govt. legislating to quash convictions en-masse.
The Govt. will say that 'this will not create a precedent' in the very act of creating a precedent - Its not hard to see a temptation to do it again in a less clear-cut case.
it would be better for the #ruleoflaw, as the judiciary suggested, to have been fast-tracked batched appeals through the court system!
Now that Trump has moved for an emergency stay of the criminal trial of the election interference criminal charges against him, we are quickly going to find out which Supreme Court Justices are in the tank for Trump. Reporting on Trump’s emergency motion from The Hill at https://thehill.com/homenews/4463356-trump-supreme-court-jan-6-immunity-appeal/ 1/ #LawFedi
So, what the Supreme Court does with Trump’s emergency motion to stay his criminal trial in DC Circuit Court straightforwardly tests each Justice’s commitment to rule of law when it comes to Trump. 5/5 #LawFedi#RuleOfLaw
On Independence Day July 4, 1987 Trump (& Ivana) flew to Moscow, on invitation from USSR ambassador Dubinin (& the KGB), lured by the prospect of building a big hotel in Moscow (30+ years later the illusion of building big in Moscow would still be haunting Donald's clan!).
Only two months after that (recruitment?) trip Trump had a full-page declaration of his published in the New York Times, Washington Post & the Boston Globe, for the first time publicly pursuing the goal to drive wedges between the U.S. & their international allies, pretending worries about financial imbalances.
Then serving the Soviet Union (& indirectly then-communist KGB-janitor Vladimir Putin), today serving Russia & fascist Eurasianism-imperialist Vladimir Putin.
He warned National Rifle Association members Friday that Democrats would change the name of Pennsylvania if their party wins at the polls in November. 😂 😂
He also ranted about taking the names of historical figures off schools as he warned about Democrats winning in November.
He is totally delusional.....
VOTE VOTE VOTE at every level of government and keep this crackpot out.
@maddad Like before the 2020, mentally most seriously illTrump is willing & trying to do literally anything legal & illegal to regain presidential DOJ protection against prosecution & indictment.
Trump is running against the laws.
But hey, there could be a solution sweeping his bonkers fantasies away:
The DOJ's notorious & corrupt OLC opinion on "A Sitting President's Amenability to Indictment and Criminal Prosecution" could:
• officially be declared void due to violating the precious & fundamental principle of the Rule of Law, that No one is above the law
• be flushed down the toilet (check water pressure first!😉)
• accidentally fall into a bucket of black paint
• be used to warm freezing DOJ employees for a couple of minutes.
What disturbed me most about listening to the Supreme Court questions in yesterday's hearing was the repeated demands for responses to the threat that other states could kick other candidates off ballots willy-nilly. The case is before the SC BECAUSE the highest court in CO found Trump guilty of insurrection and - because of this - kicked him off the ballot
Those questions contain in their essence an implication that the rule of law no longer holds sway in the US.
Since when does any Justice of the Supreme Court predicate their rulings on the possible misuse of a law?
This is the era of Trump and a GOP, and a significant proportion of the US public having decided that, in effect, they are no longer a country under the rule of law and must make rulings out of fear of misrule.
Kavanaugh is too intellectually deficient to understand his questions underscored his own powerlessness and ineffectiveness #SupremeCourt#RuleOfLaw
Don't get me wrong, I am not under the misconception that there is absolute and fair application of the law in the US.
But once the highest court in the land uses as their premise for a ruling an absence of law as a generality, as a premise for a ruling, they have made themselves an absurdity.