Home » Posts tagged 'rule of law' (Page 2)

Tag Archives: rule of law

Erosion of the rule of law and various civil liberties are causing the world to be a less free, less prosperous place.

The Cato Institute has, in cooperation with the Canadian Fraser Institute and the German “Friedrich-Naumann Stiftung für die Freiheit,” assembled a comprehensive 396-page report on human freedom in the world. Overall, governments worldwide have reduced the level of freedom in recent years.

The Link between Individual Liberty and Prosperity

Freedom of movement, expression, and information, as well as the rule of law, have seen the largest decreases since 2008.

Since 2008, the global Human Freedom Index (HFI) has gone down to 6.93/10 from 7.05/10. According to Ian Vasquez and Tanja Porčnik, who drafted the report, important factors for the score were performances in the categories regarding individual and civil liberties, as well as economic liberty. When it comes to the latter, the researchers point out that the individual liberty is very much linked to economic prosperity: the freest countries show a higher GDP per capita ratio compared to those with very low levels of individual freedom. Hong Kong, which ranks second in Cato’s Human Freedom Index, is a noticeable exception on this point.In total, twelve major categories determined the overall freedom score of a country. The Cato Institute found that particularly in the area of freedom of movement, expression, and information, as well as the rule of law, have seen the largest decreases since 2008. “In many parts of the world, freedom is under assault, with nationalism, populism, and hybrid forms of authoritarianism being sold as viable alternatives. As such, the largest deteriorations in freedom have occurred in Syria, Egypt, Venezuela, Belize, and Greece,” says Tanja Porčnik.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

100+ Respected Academics Slam EU in Letter to Juncker Citing “Rule of Law”

November 4, 2017

100+ Respected Academics Slam EU in Letter to Juncker Citing “Rule of Law”

On Thursday, over 100 well-respected academics slammed the EU in a letter sent a letter to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council president Donald Tusk. The academics cited the rule of law.

The open letter , signed by highly-respected academics and members of the European Parliament, cited Spain’s “undisputable abuse of power”.

We are deeply concerned that the EU’s governing bodies are condoning the systematic violation of the Rule of Law in Spain, in particular regarding the Spanish central authorities’ approach to the 1 October referendum on Catalan independence. We do not take political sides on the substance of the dispute on territorial sovereignty and we are cognizant of procedural deficiencies in the organization of the referendum. Our concern is with the Rule of Law as practised by an EU Member State.

The Spanish government has justified its actions on grounds of upholding or restoring the constitutional order.

The Tribunal has violated Constitutional provisions on freedom of peaceful assembly and of speech – the two principles which are embodied by referendums and parliamentary deliberations irrespective of their subject matter. Without interfering in Spanish constitutional disputes or in Spain’s penal code, we note that it is a travesty of justice to enforce one constitutional provision by violating fundamental rights. Thus, the Tribunal’s judgments and the Spanish government’s actions for which these judgments provided a legal basis violate both the spirit and letter of the Rule of Law.

In the days preceding the referendum, the Spanish authorities undertook a series of repressive actions against civil servants, MPS, mayors, media, companies and citizens. The shutdown of Internet and other telecom networks during and after the referendum campaign had severe consequences on exercising freedom of expression.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why the Rule of Law Matters, Even If It Doesn’t Exist

October 26, 2017

Why the Rule of Law Matters, Even If It Doesn’t Exist

Hayek uses the sixth chapter of The Road to Serfdom to discuss the concept of the rule of law.

Young Americans like myself have come of age in a climate where arbitrary rule has steadily become the norm. Civil liberties, once guaranteed by the Bill of Rights, are now conditional; they are regularly disregarded in the pursuit of a specific end.

The war on terror, for example, ushered in an era where the government was given the power, or rather gave itself the power, to do anything it needed in order to keep the country secure. As long as the state’s violations against our inalienable rights were done in the name of national security, or prosperity, they were considered just, necessary even.

The Constitution that was specifically intended to protect the American people against this kind of rule has now just become a list of suggestions. President Bush is even rumored to have referred to it as a “goddamn piece of paper,” when confronted about his refusal to act within its bounds during the height of the War on Terror.

And in the wake of this “anything goes” rhetoric, the War on Terror was and continues to be used to suspend free speech, restrict travel, detain American citizens indefinitely, and even defend the American President’s use of a “secret kill list.”

Hayek and the rest of the world watched Hitler rise to power through legal means.

It was with this jaded view of government restraint that I began reading the Sixth Chapter of The Road to Serfdom. Hayek uses this chapter to dig into the concept of the rule of law.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“The Rule of Law Such As Ours” (And as Imposed in Catalonia)

September 29, 2017

“The Rule of Law Such As Ours” (And as Imposed in Catalonia)

Photo by thierry ehrmann

The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, referring to the “illegal” Catalan referendum on independence slated to take place on October 1, opined, “This illegal plan of rupture has no place in a democratic state under the rule of law such as ours.” Not famous for intellectual agility, Mr Rajoy has cack-handedly drawn attention to what his government calls “rule of law”, a key issue in the present situation and one that affects not just Catalonia but the whole of Spain.

The Spanish government is playing hardball. Whatever post-Franco party has been in power, Madrid has always done everything possible to suppress Catalonia’s attempts to claim the right to self-determination but, this time, as October 1 looms, the response against a peaceful citizen movement has been much rougher than anyone imagined, including measures like police and Guardia Civil ships in the harbor, water-cannon trucks roaring along the highways, helicopters clattering overhead, taking control of Catalan finances, raiding the offices of the government’s IT center, the Foreign Affairs Ministry and Catalan government offices, detaining fourteen officials, impounding close to ten million ballot papers (so activists took printers into the streets to make off new ones), shutting down websites about the election (swiftly restored with mirror sites), and placing the Catalan police (Mossos) under the command of a colonel from the Guardia Civil (who, from a long lineage of Franco supporters, was charged with torture in 1992).

When Spanish police trained to hunt down terrorists were sent to guard the Catalan Finance Ministry, the Mossos formed a line in front of them, making it clear that they are in charge of security in the streets of Catalonia (as they had honorably and ably proven with the tragedy of the terrorist attack in Barcelona on August 17).

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Myth of the Rule of Law

May 8, 2017

The Myth of the Rule of Law

Any state, no matter how powerful, cannot not rule solely through the use of brute force. There are too few rulers and too many of us for coercion alone to be an effective means of control. The political class must rely on ideology to achieve popular compliance, masking the iron fist in a velvet glove. Violence is always behind every state action, but the most efficient form of expropriation occurs when the public believes it is in their interest to be extorted.

Mythology is necessary to blunt the violent nature of state power in order to maximize the plunder of property — and, most importantly, provide an aura of legitimacy. The perception of legitimacy “is the only thing distinguishing a tax collector from an extortionist, a police officer from a vigilante, and a soldier from a mercenary. Legitimacy is an illusion in the mind without which the government does not even exist.”1

State authority, and public obedience to it, is manufactured through smokescreens of ideology and deception. These myths sustain the state and offer an illusion of legitimacy, where orders, no matter how immoral or horrific, are followed because they are seen as emanating from a just authority. The state cannot implement violence against everyone everywhere and overwhelm the host, so the battle is waged against the hearts and minds of the public. Fear is exploited, language is distorted, and propaganda is spread, while narratives and history are tightly controlled. The gulag of state power, first and foremost, always exists in the mind.

If the mythology of state power is smashed, then the state is exposed for what it is: institutionalized violence, expropriator of the peaceful and productive, and entirely illegitimate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Keys to Human Prosperity: Individual Liberty and Rule of Law

June 4, 2016

THE KEYS TO HUMAN PROSPERITY: INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY AND RULE OF LAW

We live at time when, increasingly, the U.S. government operates in arbitrary and discretionary ways. Government regulatory agencies seemingly have unrestrained powers over land-use, business manufacturing and enterprise, the workplace and the environment under broad legislative mandates. And proposals are now frequently being made for ad hoc restrictions and prohibitions on freedoms of speech, press, religion and association. The principle and practice of individual liberty, therefore, is under serious attack.

The history of liberty and prosperity is inseparable from the practice of free enterprise and respect for the rule of law. Both are products of the spirit of classical liberalism. But a correct understanding of free enterprise, the rule of law, and liberalism (rightly understood) is greatly lacking in the world today.

Historically, liberalism is the political philosophy of individual liberty. It proclaims and insists that the individual is to be free to think, speak, and write as he wishes; to believe and worship as he wishes; and to peacefully live his life as he wishes. Another way of saying this is to quote from Lord Acton’s definition: “By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and custom, and opinion.” For this reason, he declared that the securing of liberty “is the highest political end.”

Lord Acton did not say, you will notice, that liberty is the highest end, but rather the highest political end. In the wider context of a man’s life, political and economic liberty are means to other ends. What ends? Those that give meaning and purpose to man’s sojourn on earth. Classical liberalism does not deny that there may be or is one ultimate Truth, or one moral “right,” or one correct conception of “the good” and “the beautiful.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Rule Of Law No Longer Exists In Western Civilization

January 5, 2016

The Rule Of Law No Longer Exists In Western Civilization

My work documenting how the law was lost began about a quarter of a century ago. A close friend and distinguished attorney, Dean Booth, first brought to my attention the erosion of the legal principles on which rests the rule of law in the United States. My columns on the subject got the attention of an educational institution that invited me to give a lecture on the subject. Subsequently, I was invited to give a lecture on “How The Law Was Lost” at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law in New York City.

The work coalesced into a book, The Tyranny Of Good Intentions, coauthored with my research associate, Lawrence M. Stratton, published in 2000, with an expanded edition published in 2008. We were able to demonstrate that Sir Thomas More’s warning about prosecutors and courts disregarding law in order to more easily convict undesirables and criminals has had the result of turning law away from being a shield of the people and making it into a weapon in the hands of government. That is what we witness in the saga of the Hammonds, long-time ranchers in the Harney Basin of Oregon.

With the intervention of Ammon Bundy, another rancher who suffered illegal persecution by the Bureau of Land Management but stood them off with help from armed militia, and his supporters, the BLM’s decades long persecution of the innocent Hammonds might have come to a crisis before you read this.

Bundy and militiamen, whose count varies from 15 to 150 in the presstitute media, have seized an Oregon office of the BLM as American liberty’s protest against the frame-up of the Hammonds on false charges. As I write the Oregon National Guard and FBI are on the way.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

September 15, 2015

Who May Use the King’s Forest? The Meaning of Magna Carta, Commons and Law in Our Time

The relationship between law and the commons is very much on my mind these days. I recently posted a four-part serialization of my strategy memo, “Reinventing Law for the Commons.” The following public talk, which I gave at the Heinrich Boell Foundation in Berlin on September 8, is a kind of companion piece. The theme: this year’s celebration of the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta and its significance for commoners today.

Thank you for inviting me to speak tonight about the 800^th anniversary of the Magna Carta and the significance of law for the commons. It’s pretty amazing that anyone is still celebrating something that happened eight centuries ago! Besides our memory of this event, I think it is so interesting what we have chosen to remember about this history, and what we have forgotten.

This anniversary is essentially about the signing of peace treaty on the fields of Runnymede, England, in 1215. The treaty settled a bloody civil war between the much-despised King John and his rebellious barons eight centuries ago. What was intended as an armistice was soon regarded as a larger canonical statement about the proper structure of governance. Amidst a lot of archaic language about medieval ways of life, Magna Carta is now seen as a landmark statement about the limited powers of the sovereign, and the rights and liberties of ordinary people.

The King’s acceptance of Magna Carta after a long civil war seems unbelievably distant and almost forgettable. How could it have anything to do with us moderns? I think its durability and resonance have to do with our wariness about concentrated power, especially of the sovereign.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is the Justice Department Finally Ready to Jail Corporate Criminals?

September 11, 2015

Is the Justice Department Finally Ready to Jail Corporate Criminals?

Screen Shot 2015-09-10 at 3.59.48 PM

The single greatest travesty to afflict American society in the 21st century has been the abandonment of the rule of law and accountability. It’s worse than the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent loss of privacy and civil liberties. It’s even worse than the economic devastation unleashed by the financial crisis.

The reason it’s worse is because dynamic, complex and diverse cultures such as these United States will always be flawed and some of its leaders, both corporate and political, will always fall to the temptation of corruption and criminality. The key to preventing such bad behavior from multiplying and ultimately destroying the entire civilization, is the rule of law.

Edward Snowden leaked the information he did in order to inform the American public of what its government was doing in cahoots with large tech companies. He saw Constitutional violations and he held up his oath to protect the founding document from “enemies foreign and domestic.” Nevertheless, no one in a position of power has been held accountable.

Similarly, the financial crisis came and went (for now), and what’s the biggest lesson learned? Crime pays. Tremendously. We learned that rich and powerful members of society are suddenly somehow above the law. That their corporations merely have to pay a slap on the wrist fine and the perpetrators get to keep their ill gotten gains. That oligarchs are untouchable, and a group of people Larry Summers called “insiders,” never go to jail.

Restoring the rule of law and accountability for the wealthiest and most powerful amongst us is of the upmost importance. It is far more important to hold the powerful accountable than the weak. The weak commit small scale crimes, while big players have the capacity to destroy entire nations with their unethical behavior. And they are well on their way to achieving that here in the U.S., earning billions along the way.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Water Wars Escalate: State Changes Law, Orders Farmers To Stop Pumping

July 17, 2015

California Water Wars Escalate: State Changes Law, Orders Farmers To Stop Pumping

“In the water world, the pre-1914 rights were considered to be gold,” exclaimed one water attorney, but as AP reports, it appears that ‘gold’ is being tested as California water regulators flexed their muscles by ordering a group of farmers to stop pumping from a branch of the San Joaquin River amid an escalating battle over how much power the state has to protect waterways that are drying up in the drought. As usual, governments do what they want with one almond farmer raging “I’ve made investments as a farmer based on the rule of law…Now, somebody’s changing the law that we depend on.” This is not abiout toi get any better as NBCNews reports, this drought is of historic proportions – the worst in over 100 years.

The current drought has averaged a reading of -3.67 over the last three years, nearly twice as bad as the second-driest stretch since 1900, which occurred in 1959.

Other studies using PDSI data drawn from tree-ring observations reaching even further back in time reveal similar findings. One such study from University of Minnesota and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute researchers showed the current drought is California’s worst in at least 1,200 years.

And as AP reports, regulatords are changing the laws to address the problems…

The State Water Resources Control Board issued the cease and desist order Thursday against an irrigation district in California’s agriculture-rich Central Valley that it said had failed to obey a previous warning to stop pumping. Hefty fines could follow.

The action against the West Side Irrigation District in Tracy could be the first of many as farmers, cities and corporations dig in to protect water rights that were secured long before people began flooding the West and have remained all but immune from mandatory curtailments.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

June 13, 2015

Happy Birthday Magna Carta

Monday, June 15, 2015, is the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. In his book, Magna Carta, J.C. Holt, professor of medieval history, University of Cambridge, notes that three of the chapters of this ancient document still stand on the English Stature Book and that so much of what survives of the Great Charter is “concerned with individual liberty,” which “is a reflexion of the quality of the original act of 1215.”

In the 17th century Sir Edward Coke used the Great Charter of the Liberties to establish the supremacy of Parliament, the representative of the people, as the origin of law.

A number of legal scholars have made the irrelevant point that the Magna Carter protected rights of the Church, nobles, and free men who were not enserfed, a small percentage of the population in the early 13th century. We hear the same about the US Constitution–it was something the rich did for themselves. I have no sympathy for debunking human achievements that, in the end, gave ordinary people liberty.

At Runnymede in 1215 no one but the armed barons had the power and audacity to make King John submit to law. The rule of law, not the rule of the sovereign or of the executive branch in Washington acceded to by a cowardly and corrupt Congress and Supreme Court, is a human achievement that grew out of the Magna Carta over the centuries, with ups and downs of course.

Blackstone’s Commentaries in 1759 fed into the American Revolution and gave us the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

‘We the People’ Need to Circle the Wagons: The Government Is on the Warpath

May 16, 2015

‘We the People’ Need to Circle the Wagons: The Government Is on the Warpath

“The government is merely a servant―merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn’t. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.” ― Mark Twain

How many Americans have actually bothered to read the Constitution, let alone the first ten amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights (a quick read at 462 words)?

Take a few minutes and read those words for yourself—rather than having some court or politician translate them for you—and you will be under no illusion about where to draw the line when it comes to speaking your mind, criticizing your government, defending what is yours, doing whatever you want on your own property, and keeping the government’s nose out of your private affairs.

In an age of overcriminalization, where the average citizen unknowingly commits three crimes a day, and even the most mundane activities such as fishing and gardening are regulated, government officials are constantly telling Americans what not to do. Yet it was not always this way. It used to be “we the people” telling the government what it could and could not do. Indeed, the three words used most frequently throughout the Bill of Rights in regards to the government are “no,” “not” and “nor.”

Compare the following list of “don’ts” the government is prohibited from doing with the growing list of abuses to which “we the people” are subjected on a daily basis, and you will find that we have reached a state of crisis wherein the government is routinely breaking the law and violating its contractual obligations.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Seizing an alternative: Obviously unlawful US/UK wars of the present (2 of 7)

May 10, 2015

Seizing an alternative: Obviously unlawful US/UK wars of the present (2 of 7)

The following is my paper for the Claremont Colleges’ conference, Seizing an Alternative Toward an Ecological Civilization, with open registration to the public on June 4-7, 2015.Paper title:

‘Emperor’s New Clothes’ political collapse: Seizing an alternative to OBVIOUS unlawful wars, bankster looting, lying corporate media

I’ve divided the paper into sections:

Recognizing The Emperor’s New Clothes as THE STORY of today (1 of 7)

Obviously unlawful US/UK wars of the present (2 of 7)

Obviously unlawful Israel wars on Gaza (3 of 7)

War lies to hide obviously unlawful wars: propaganda as usual (4 of 7)

Bankster looting: fundamental fraud that “debt” is “money” (5 of 7)

Lying corporate media: required propaganda trying to hide naked empire (6 of 7)

Integrity for the whole truth, and nothing but the truth (7 of 7)

This section is: Obviously unlawful US/UK wars of the present (2 of 7)

US/UK/Israel unlawful wars all started with lies:

“No treaty, however much it may be to the advantage of all, however tightly it may be worded, can provide absolute security against the risks of deception and evasion.” – President Kennedy, June 10, 1963

Unlawful Wars of Aggression: The US/UK/Israel “official story” is that current wars are lawful because they are “self-defense.” The Emperor’s New Clothes fact here is that “self-defense” means something quite narrow and specific in war law, and US/UK/Israel armed attacks on so many nations in current and past wars are not even close to the definition of “self-defense.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Yes it is Scary – But Necessary

February 3, 2015

Yes it is Scary – But Necessary

COMMENT: Hi Martin,

Once again, thank you for all the information you provide on a daily basis. It is informative as well as scary at the same time. I’m afraid you are preaching to the hard headed. Here in Canada, people truly believe in government and socialist ideologies. It is amazing to see that they do not understand that government incompetence and debt is the real problem. They blame the corporations and the “1%” for not “paying their fair share.” No matter what is said, we here in Canada, want more social assistance and government to help us out. Consider the Liberal party in Ontario was re-elected, even though they wasted billions of dollars on boondoggles, and now they want to implement an Ontario pension plan where they take 1.4% from your paycheck and another 1.4% from the employer to put into a government run pension. We only know where that will end up.

Anyway, I would like to thank you for what you are doing but I’m afraid it is too late as socialism has been ingrained from birth through education.

REPLY: This is the source of the civil unrest. The bankers should sleep with armed guards because this is the type of people who will drag them from their beds in the middle of the night when they realize all is lost in their pensions as they listen to politicians blame the 1% for their failures. The politicians will NEVER admit they do not know how to manage anything. It is always that 1% who do not pay enough rather than their lack of management skills. Society has been rising up against the bankers in every society as government. Even looking at the rule of law, in China they dragged the chief justice out in his robs and killed him on the sport for always ruling in favor of the government many years ago. Riots against bankers even go back to ancient time as well as in the Middle Ages as the people burned the bankers homes in Florence during the 14th century.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2015: The War on Our Intuition That Something Is Fundamentally Amiss

January 9, 2015

2015: The War on Our Intuition That Something Is Fundamentally Amiss

In 1967, the rock group Buffalo Springfield recorded a song titled For What It’s Worthwhich speaks not just to the late 1960s but to the present.

Consider the opening lines:

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear

The ambiguity is not coincidental.When the song was recorded in December 1966, America was in the beginning throes of a full-blown national nervous breakdown that would endure for 15 years until 1981.

The fundamental narratives that had sustained the previous 20 years of apparently limitless prosperity and moral certitude were breaking down.The primary narrative of American foreign policy–that the U.S. defended liberty and always won its foreign wars over evil totalitarianism/ fascism/ colonialism was being destroyed on a daily basis in Vietnam, an intrinsically political (and thus unwinnable by military means) war defending a hopelessly corrupt state created by quasi-colonial Great Powers fiat.

The primary political narrative–that democracy and the rule of law were sacrosanct–were undermined by the Watergate affair a few years later.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Tag Archives: rule of law

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Post navigation

Latest Posts