The 'Torture Memos' and Their Legacy: Sacrificing Human Dignity and the Rule of Law for National Security

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Moore
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Torture Memos

Prosecutors and National Security

2021 ◽  
pp. 538-558
Author(s):  
Kent Roach
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Ethical Challenges ◽  
Criminal Cases ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Third ◽  
Relative Rarity ◽  
The Many ◽  
Operational Aspects

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.

scholarly journals Obama's National Security Exceptionalism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sudha N. Setty
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Norms ◽  
Global Community ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
War Criminals ◽  
The World ◽  
International Obligations

Published: Sudha Setty, Obama's National Security Exceptionalism, 91 CHI.-KENT L. REV. 91 (2016).This Article discusses how continued national security exceptionalism engenders a view of the United States as considering itself to be above international obligations to investigate and prosecute torturers and war criminals, and the view by the global community that the United States is willing to apply one standard for itself, and another for the rest of the world. Exceptionalism not only poses real challenges in terms of law, morality, and building useful relationships with allied nations, but acts as a step backward for the creation of enforceable international norms and standards, and in efforts to restore a balance in the rule of law when it comes to national security matters.

scholarly journals RELEVANT PRINCIPLES IN THE ECHR AND CJEU JURISPRUDENCE REGARDING NATIONAL SECURITY

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-95
Author(s):  
Sorina Ana Manea
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Intelligence Services ◽  
European System ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
And Storage ◽  
Mass Surveillance

The European system ensuring the protection of human rights is nowadays one of the most advanced in the world. However, there are also areas of activity where clarification and improvement are constant demands. Counter-terrorism measures considered or adopted in Europe, in particular those that increase mass surveillance, the collection and storage of electronic information or the protection of personal data are such areas. Some of these measures give more intrusive powers to the intelligence services to channel decisions in the direction of the executive branch, without the necessary judicial guarantees being established in a state governed by the rule of law.   Keywords: community law; ECHR; CJUE; national security.

scholarly journals The Rule of Law and National Security in Nigerian Democracy: A Contemporary Issue under the Aegis of International Law

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-168
Author(s):  
Isaac O. C. Igwe
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
International Law ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Freedom Of Speech ◽  
Limiting Factor ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
It Impacts ◽  
Contemporary Issue ◽  
The People ◽  
The Government

Although brutality can repress a society, it never assures the sustainability of that conquest. Tyranny steers the hopeless to despair, edges to rebellion, and could open the door for a new tyrant to rise. Law becomes a limiting factor that must act as a stopgap to the avaricious intentions of a dictator. A democratic leader must incorporate the supremacy of the law and honest officials into his government. He shall also create courts of law, treat the poorest citizens with fairness and build a hall of justice to bring the society to modernity with the operation of the rule of law enshrined in the constitution. Legislation is nothing without enforcement and Law is no law if not accepted and respected by the people. The rule of law cannot be said to be working in a country where the government continues to violate the orders of the court, unlawfully detain its citizens, abuse human rights including arbitrary and extra-judicial executions, unlawful arrests and detentions, embargo on freedom of speech and press, impunity and inhumane torture, degradation of people or exterminations. This treatise will argue on the supremacy of the “Rule of Law” as it impacts Nigerian democracy. Keywords: Rule of Law; Democracy; Judiciary; Supremacy; Government; Tyranny; Nigerian Constitution

Should the Law Condone Unauthorized Disclosures?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rahul Sagar
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Regulatory Mechanism ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Law ◽  
Unauthorized Disclosure

This chapter examines whether the law ought to condone unauthorized disclosures of classified information. The features that make the unauthorized disclosure of classified information an effective and credible regulatory mechanism are the very same ones that raise concerns about its lawfulness and legitimacy. Because such disclosures override the classification decisions made by officials responsible for national security, our reliance on them seems to conflict with our commitment to the rule of law and the norms of democracy. The chapter explains what the law has to say about unauthorized disclosures of classified information and shows that the law is not favorably disposed toward the official responsible for making the unauthorized disclosure. It also argues against revising the law to take account of the fact that unauthorized disclosures can allow lawmakers and citizens to become aware of misconduct that would otherwise be shielded by state secrecy.

Doing Justice Better

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-194
Author(s):  
Michael Tonry
Keyword(s):  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Life Without Parole ◽  
Three Strikes ◽  
Main Ideas ◽  
Selection Of

The main ideas in this book are simple. Treat people charged with and convicted of crimes justly, fairly, and even-handedly, as anyone would want done for themselves or their children. Take sympathetic account of the circumstances of peoples’ lives. Punish no one more severely than he or she deserves. Those propositions are implicit in the rule of law and its requirement that the human dignity of every person be respected. Three major structural changes are needed. First, selection of judges and prosecutors, and their day-to-day work, must be insulated from political influence. Second, mandatory minimum sentence, three-strikes, life without parole, truth in sentencing, and similar laws must be repealed. Third, correctional and prosecution systems must be centralized in unified state agencies.

The Constitution of Law: Legality in a Time of Emergency by David Dyzenhaus, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 250pp. Page numbers in text are to this book.

2008 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 477-483
Author(s):  
Jamie Cameron
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Common Law ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
Legislative Action ◽  
The Common ◽  
Constitutive Properties ◽  
Principle Of Legality

What the rule of law means and how it constrains the exercise of state power raise issues which have been debated-without resolution-over the ages. Times of emergency bring fresh energy to the discussion, and David Dyzenhaus is one of many who have entered the fray to debate the balance between liberty and national security in the post 9/11 period. It has not been easy for those who place their trust in written constitutions to account for the way textual guarantees are diluted when the state is under threat. Rather than address that dilemma, Dyzenhaus sets his ideas apart by proposing a theory which maximizes the protection of rights in emergency circumstances, without straining the institutional capacities or legitimacy of the judiciary. This theory invokes the pedigree of the common law-and “common law constitutionalism”-and is grounded in the constitutive properties of the rule of law, or principle of legality. Dyzenhaus may not have answered the questions readers will want to ask, but he has opened up the middle ground between the competing supremacies yet more, by drawing common law constitutionalism and its rule-of-law pedigree into constitutional theories of review. More to the point, he has challenged the judiciary to draw on the moral resources of the law to make executive and legislative action as accountable as possible at all times, in emergencies as well as in normal times. Readers can and should engage, at many levels, with the complexity of his thought in this important book.

Appointment With Destiny

2006 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-120
Author(s):  
Mihajlo Mihajlov ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Ethnic Conflict ◽  
Rule Of Law ◽  
Human Dignity ◽  
The Rule Of Law ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Independent Path ◽  
Political Persuasion

Apart from Mukovan Djilas, Mihajlo Mihajlov is considered as the most famous dissident in the Balkans--a former prisoner-of-conscience in Tito's Yugoslavia. This brief but comprehensive, autobiographical retrospective recounts some major hilights in Mihajlov's odyssey ushered in by his intellectual travelogue, Moscow Sunmer 1964, first published in full in The New Leader. Mihajlov became an embarrassment not only to Josip Broz Tito and the Soviet leaders, but also to those in die West who landed Tito's "independent path to socialism." Yet others correctly perceived Mihajlov's quest for freedom of thought, speech, press, association, religious, philosophical and political persuasion as a classic benchmark of basic human rights and freedoms characterizing open, pluralistic, democratic polities. Indeed, the Westem press contributed to the pressure of world public opinion, which helped free Mihajlov, and, as he claims, even kept him alive. In a region divided by inter-ethnic conflict and civil war, Mihajlov's struggle for the rule of law and human dignity epitomizes hopes for a better future.

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