Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Thought and Expression: For political democracy

1988 ◽  
Vol 17 (5) ◽  
pp. 35-36

The unofficial Committee for the Defence of Freedom of Thought and Expression, whose proposal is published below, was formed in Belgrade on 10 November 1984 on the initiative of Dobrica Cosic, one of the most popular Serbian novelists. The committee represent the whole spectrum of Belgrade opinion from Marxist philosophers of the Praxis group (Mihailo Marković, Ljubomir Tadić, Zagorka Golubović), ‘nationalists’ (Mića Popović, Matija Bećković), pre-war party veterans (Gojko Nikolis, Tanasije Mladenović), advocates of a pluralistic socialist democracy (Kosta Cavoski, Ivan Janković) to public figures affirming the rule of law. Twelve are members of the prestigious Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts and all of them are leading figures. The Committee has issued over 50 protests against human rights abuse involving not only Serbs but also Croats, Bosnian Moslems, Slovenes, ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo and members of the Hungarian minority in the Vojvodina. In October 1986 the Committee put forward an eleven-point plan for the establishment of the rule of law in Yugoslavia (see Index on Censorship, 2/87) and recommended the abolition of the tenure of monopoly power by any single political party. The next step came in November 1987 when the Committee released a petition for the introduction of political democracy in the SFRY (Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia). The text of the petition, addressed to the Federal Assembly and the Yugoslav public, follows. The translation comes from the London-based South Slav Journal.

Author(s):  
Harish Narasappa

Rule of law is the foundation of modern democracies. It envisages, inter alia, participatory lawmaking, just and certain laws, a bouquet of human rights, certainty and equality in the application of law, accountability to law, an impartial and non-arbitrary government, and an accessible and fair dispute resolution mechanism. This work’s primary goal is to understand and explain the obvious dichotomy that exists between theory and practice in India’s rule of law structure. The book discusses the contours of the rule of law in India, the values and aspirations in its evolution, and its meaning as understood by the various institutions, identifying reason as the primary element in the rule of law mechanism. It later examines the institutional, political, and social challenges to the concepts of equality and certainty, through which it evaluates the status of the rule of law in India.


ICL Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-69
Author(s):  
Eszter Polgári

AbstractThe present article maps the explicit references to the rule of law in the jurisprudence of the ECtHR by examining the judgments of the Grand Chamber and the Plenary Court. On the basis of the structured analysis it seeks to identify the constitutive elements of the Court’s rule of law concept and contrast it with the author’s working definition and the position of other Council of Europe organs. The review of the case-law indicates that the Court primarily associates the rule of law with access to court, judicial safeguards, legality and democracy, and it follows a moderately thick definition of the concept including formal, procedural and some substantive elements. The rule of law references are predominantly ancillary arguments giving weight to other Convention-based considerations and it is not applied as a self-standing standard.


Author(s):  
Kent Roach

This chapter examines the distinct operational and ethical challenges that prosecutors face in national security and especially terrorism cases. The second part of this chapter focuses on the operational challenges that prosecutors face. These include demands for specialization that may be difficult to fulfill given the relative rarity of national security prosecutions; the availability of special investigative powers not normally available in other criminal cases; exceptionally broad and complex offenses; and the demands of federalism and international cooperation. The third part examines ethical and normative challenges that run throughout the many operational aspects of the prosecutorial role in national security cases. These include the challenges of ensuring that often exceptional national security laws are enforced in a manner consistent with the rule of law and human rights. There are also challenges of maintaining an appropriate balance between legitimate claims of secrecy and legitimate demands for disclosure and between maintaining prosecutorial independence and discretion while recognizing the whole of government and whole of society effects of the many difficult decisions that prosecutors must make in national security cases.


1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 70-74
Author(s):  
Korwa G. Adar

There is nothing more fundamental to Africans who are concerned with the future of the African continent than the issues of democracy, human rights, good governance, and the rule of law. These basic human liberties, among other concerns, constitute the central driving force behind what is often referred to as Africa’s “second liberation.” The primary purpose of this article is to assess the Clinton administration’s role in this second liberation, particularly in terms of its involvement in issues of democracy and human rights. This assessment is offered from the perspective of an individual who has been directly involved in the prodemocracy and human rights movement in Kenya. This article focuses on whether the Clinton administration’s policies are still heavily influenced by classic U.S. conceptions of realpolitik, or if enlightened leadership more in line with a neo-Wilsonian idealpolitik—as official rhetoric suggests—has permitted a fundamental departure in favor of a more coherent and tangible democracy and human rights foreign policy stance in the post-Cold War era.


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