The Supreme Court’s Most Impressive Achievement

by Stephen L. Carter

Bloomberg
June 29, 2012

The most fascinating aspect of the Supreme Court’s anticlimactic decision to uphold the Affordable Care Act isn’t the outcome. It’s that until the ruling was handed down, nobody outside the court knew what the outcome was going to be.

Imagine that. Smack in the middle of a city where leaks are a way of life, here was a pending action that pundits were proclaiming would determine President Barack Obama’s legacy, and the capital’s legion of political reporters was unable to ferret out the smallest advance hint of the court’s intentions -- even though the initial vote probably came three months ago. The justices themselves, their law clerks and all the personnel of the court cooperate in maintaining the veil.

In an era when we have become accustomed to a government that can’t keep its secrets, an institution whose members know how to keep their mouths shut is refreshing. The recent cascade of disclosures of national-security information from the Obama administration is both embarrassing and destructive. It is not, however, atypical. The old cliche is wrong: Washington doesn’t leak like a sieve. It leaks like a flood.

The current contretemps isn’t even the administration’s first episode of national-security leakage. Shortly before Obama decided on the Afghanistan surge, his consideration of one was leaked to the press. As analysts pointed out, the leak was almost certainly a device to pressure the White House to go ahead with the surge.

“Wires climb with secrets,” Carl Sandburg wrote in his poem “Skyscraper.” Had he been writing about Washington, he might have said instead that wires buzz with secrets -- because, for too many people who possess them, the great joy of having a secret seems to be the sharing. One reason to admire the court, even when one disagrees with it, is its ability to withstand the temptation to which other government bodies regularly yield.

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The Decline of Democracy

by Bret Stephens

Wall Street Journal
June 18, 2012

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time. Everyone knows who said this, and everyone thinks it's true. But is it, really?

After last weekend I've begun to have my doubts. In Egypt, the ruling military junta reacted to the apparent victory of Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate Mohammed Morsi by stripping the presidential office of its powers. That came just days after Egypt's top court dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament, which had been freely elected only a few months ago.

How arbitrary. What an affront to the Egyptian people. Now let's hope it works.

Then there's Greece, which also had an election over the weekend. The Greeks are supposed to have made the "responsible" choice in the person of Antonis Samaras, the Amherst- and Harvard-educated leader of the center-right New Democracy party. Responsible in this case means trying to stay in the euro zone by again renegotiating the terms of a bailout that Greeks cannot possibly repay and will not likely honor.

Yet the more depressing fact about the election is that Mr. Samaras didn't even get 30% of the vote. The rest was divided among the radical-left Syriza (27%), the socialist Pasok (12.3%), the anti-German Independent Greeks (7.5%), the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn (7%), the center-left Democratic Left (6.2%) and, finally, the good old Communist Party (4.5%).

In other words, the Greeks gave a solid 46% of their vote to parties that are evil, crazy or both, even while erring on the side of "sanity" with parties that are merely foolish and discredited. Imagine that in 1980 Jimmy Carter had eked out a slim victory over a Gus Hall-Lyndon LaRouche ticket, and you have the American equivalent to what just happened in Greece.

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Fixing Citizens United

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Huffington Post
June 12, 2012

Any intelligent person following American politics these days should be deeply distressed by the ever-growing role of big money in our electoral process. The extraordinary concentration of wealth in the hands of relatively few Americans has completely distorted the nature of political discourse. As multi-millionaires, billionaires and powerful corporations are now free to spend unlimited amounts in order to dominate public debate, we have moved from a political system founded on the aspiration of one person/one vote to one increasingly founded on money/money/money.

Of course, there are those who say that money doesn't really matter. What matters, they say, is the quality of the candidates and the strength of their ideas. Unfortunately, in a world of high-stakes and high-cost media, this is nonsense. Speech matters. It shapes people's perceptions, knowledge and attitudes. Why else would businesses spend billions of dollars each year on commercial advertising? Corporations and billionaires are not stupid. They would not waste millions of dollars to fund an endless flood of political ads if those ads didn't pay off. They do. Money may not guarantee victory, but it definitely helps.

Imagine a presidential debate in which the candidates were invited to buy debate time. Instead of the debate time being allocated equally, each candidate would bid for minutes, so the candidate with the most money would buy the most minutes in the debate. What would we think of that? That is effectively what has happened to our political system. This is a disaster for our nation. It alienates voters, enables a coterie of highly-self-interested millionaires and corporations to distort our national political discourse, and causes elected officials desperately to curry favor with wealthy supporters, often at the expense of the public interest.

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The Harm in Free Speech

by Stanley Fish

New York Times
June 4, 2012

Jeremy Waldron’s new book, The Harm in Hate Speech, might well be called “The Harm in Free Speech”; for Waldron, a professor of law and political theory at New York University and Oxford, argues that the expansive First Amendment we now possess allows the flourishing of harms a well-ordered society ought not permit.

Waldron is especially concerned with the harm done by hate speech to the dignity of those who are its object. He is careful to distinguish “dignity harms” from the hurt feelings one might experience in the face of speech that offends. Offense can be given by almost any speech act — in particular circumstances one might offend by saying “hello” — and Waldron agrees with those who say that regulating offensive speech is a bad and unworkable idea.

But harms to dignity, he contends, involve more than the giving of offense. They involve undermining a public good, which he identifies as the “implicit assurance” extended to every citizen that while his beliefs and allegiance may be criticized and rejected by some of his fellow citizens, he will nevertheless be viewed, even by his polemical opponents, as someone who has an equal right to membership in the society. It is the assurance — not given explicitly at the beginning of each day but built into the community’s mode of self-presentation — that he belongs, that he is the undoubted bearer of a dignity he doesn’t have to struggle for.

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Δικαιοσύνη, Κράτος Δικαίου, Δημοκρατία, Φιλελευθερισμός, Ελευθερία της Έκφρασης

radiobubble.gr
retrospectiva / episode 73
2 Ιουνίου 2012

Mια συζήτηση του Βασίλη Σωτηρόπουλου με τον καθηγητή φιλοσοφίας δικαίου κ. Αριστείδη Χατζή.

Εξακολουθεί να υπάρχει απόσταση ανάμεσα στην ουσιαστική δικαιοσύνη και το θετό δίκαιο; Νομιμοποιείται η πλειοψηφία να αποφασίζει για τα πάντα σε μια δημοκρατία; Η ενσωμάτωση του φιλελευθερισμού στο ισχύον δίκαιο αφήνει περαιτέρω χώρο για περαιτέρω φιλελεύθερη πολιτική διεκδίκηση; Η άμεση δημοκρατία είναι συμβατή με το κράτος δικαίου; Είναι θεμιτό να είναι υποψήφιοι βουλευτές άτομα που έχουν καταδικαστεί για ποινικά αδικήματα; Νοείται η δημοκρατία να αποκλείει από τις εκλογές πολιτικά κόμματα; Είναι αποτελεσματική η ποινικοποίηση των ρατσιστικών απόψεων;

Μαζί με τον Χρήστο Γραμματίδη θέτουμε αυτά και άλλα ερωτήματα και συζητάμε τις πιθανές απαντήσεις με τον Aριστείδη Χατζή.



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Judges Should Write Their Own Opinions

by William Domnarski

New York Times
May 31, 2012

There is a crisis in the federal appellate judiciary. No, I’m not referring to the high number of judicial vacancies or overloaded case dockets — though those are real problems. The crisis I have in mind rarely is discussed because it raises too many embarrassing questions. I’m talking about the longstanding and well-established practice of having law clerks ghostwrite judges’ legal opinions. We have become too comfortable with the troubling idea that judging does not require that judges do their own work.

With so much news and controversy about what federal appellate judges say in their opinions, it would be natural for a layperson to assume that such opinions actually come from judges’ own pens (or keyboards). But ever since the beginning of the law-clerk age, which dates back at least 70 years, most judges have been content to cast their vote in a case and then merely outline the shape of their argument — while leaving it to their clerks to do the hard work of shaping the language, researching the relevant precedents and so on. Almost all federal appellate judges today follow this procedure.

There are, of course, understandable reasons for this arrangement. For one thing, it’s efficient: it helps judges manage the ever increasing flow of cases to be decided. It’s also familiar: it resembles the modern law-firm model (known to many judges from earlier stages in their careers) in which associates draft documents and senior partners edit them. Furthermore, the law is not a literary pursuit but a system of rules, principles and arguments: in a legal opinion the fine points of language can seem less important than the underlying logic of the decision.

But in truth, much of importance is lost when judges outsource the writing of their opinions to their less experienced assistants. Judge-written opinions require greater intellectual rigor, exhibit more personal style and lend themselves to more honest and transparent conclusions.

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Our Imbecilic Constitution

by Sanford Levinson

New York Times
May 28, 2012

Advocating the adoption of the new Constitution drafted in Philadelphia, the authors of The Federalist Papers mocked the “imbecility” of the weak central government created by the Articles of Confederation.

Nearly 225 years later, critics across the spectrum call the American political system dysfunctional, even pathological. What they don’t mention, though, is the role of the Constitution itself in generating the pathology.

Ignore, for discussion’s sake, the clauses that helped to entrench chattel slavery until it was eliminated by a brutal Civil War. Begin with the Senate and its assignment of equal voting power to California and Wyoming; Vermont and Texas; New York and North Dakota. Consider that, although a majority of Americans since World War II have registered opposition to the Electoral College, we will participate this year in yet another election that “battleground states” will dominate while the three largest states will be largely ignored.

Our vaunted system of “separation of powers” and “checks and balances” — a legacy of the founders’ mistrust of “factions” — means that we rarely have anything that can truly be described as a “government.” Save for those rare instances when one party has hefty control over four branches — the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House and the Supreme Court — gridlock threatens. Elections are increasingly meaningless, at least in terms of producing results commensurate with the challenges facing the country.

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An ever-deeper democratic deficit

Economist
May 26, 2012

For the past six decades, steps forward to greater European union have taken place at moments of incipient crisis. None, though, has been taken in a time of disaster. The next leap in integration looks set to change that. All the plausible solutions to the self-inflicted mess of the euro crisis require a significant new level of fiscal and potentially political union, not least because some countries, such as Germany, actively want greater political union and see it as the price of their co-operation. In order to make any such solution work, Europe’s elites will have to address a problem they have long shirked: that of the democratic deficit at the heart of integration. And they will have to do so under the worst of conditions.

The past week’s near-continuous high-level summitry has done little to reduce the risk of a Greek exit from the euro, which rose to higher levels than ever after the inconclusive results of the country’s election on May 6th. The risk shows no signs of receding before the next vote, on June 17th. After that, risk may become reality (see article).

A consensus is slowly emerging that, whether a Greek exit is to be averted or weathered, there will have to be a greater level of integration in the euro zone, with tighter constraints on the freedom of national governments. Some countries, under some conditions, may put up with seeing their governments so constrained for a while: Italy and Greece (until recently) have had unelected, technocratic prime ministers, in large part as a result of pressure from outside creditors. But elsewhere, and in the long run, people seem likely to want to do the constraining they think proper by means of the ballot box, rather than having it forced upon them.

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Οι «δημοκρατικοί» αντίπαλοι της Δημοκρατίας

του Πάσχου Μανδραβέλη

Καθημερινή
13 Μαΐου 2012

Η Δημοκρατία δεν ευλογεί την παραβίαση των κανόνων συμβίωσης, απλώς επιτρέπει σε όλους να συμμετάσχουν στον ορισμό αυτών των κανόνων.

«Σε μια δημοκρατία», έγραψε ο Αμερικανός δικαστής Φίλιξ Φρανκφούρτερ, «το υψηλότερο αξίωμα είναι αυτό του πολίτη». Αυτό είναι μια άλλη ανάγνωση του πρώτου άρθρου στα συντάγματα όλων των χωρών, που περίπου λένε ό,τι και το ελληνικό: «Θεμέλιο του πολιτεύματος είναι η λαϊκή κυριαρχία. Ολες οι εξουσίες πηγάζουν από τον λαό...». Αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι κάθε πολίτης από μόνος, κατέχοντας το υψηλότερο αξίωμα, μπορεί να κάνει ό,τι γουστάρει, αλλά οι περισσότεροι πολίτες μαζί ορίζουν την τύχη μιας χώρας· είτε προς το καλύτερο είτε προς το χειρότερο.

Την περασμένη Κυριακή, οι Ελληνες άσκησαν την ύψιστη εξουσία τους και ίσως πρέπει να ξεκαθαρίσουμε μερικά πράγματα. Και αυτό, διότι όπως συμβαίνει και με όλα τα άλλα πράγματα, στην Ελλάδα και η έννοια της δημοκρατίας έχει κακοποιηθεί τόσο πολύ ώστε τα πάντα κατέληξαν πολτός. Τα πολιτικά δικαιώματα συγχέονται με τα ατομικά· ο νόμος της πλειοψηφίας με το «δίκιο» μιας τάξης· η υποχρέωση τήρησης των νόμων με το δικαίωμα (υπό όρους) της πολιτικής ανυπακοής· η δημοκρατία με την οχλοκρατία· η πολιτική με τον χουλιγκανισμό· το δικαίωμα της ελευθερίας του λόγου με τις βιαιότητες· το δικαίωμα της συνάθροισης με τις καταλήψεις· η νόμιμη βία, που οφείλει να ασκεί τηρώντας τους κανόνες το κράτος, με την παράνομη βία εκείνου που θεωρεί ότι αδικείται.

Το αποτέλεσμα αυτής της ιδεολογικής θολούρας αποτυπώνεται στην καθημερινότητά μας και στην κατάσταση που βρίσκεται η χώρα σήμερα. Υμνώντας τη δημοκρατία, φτάσαμε στην τυραννία των μειοψηφιών, που αποτρέπουν βιαίως την εφαρμογή των νόμων, στο όνομα ενός «ανώτερου» και αυτοπροσδιοριζόμενου «δίκιου» το οποίο ορίζεται ανάλογα με τα γούστα ή τις ιδεοληψίες καθενός κι αδιαφορώντας για τις προτεραιότητες των άλλων.

Ομως, η δημοκρατία δεν είναι ένα σύστημα απόλυτης ελευθερίας· είναι το πιο ελεύθερο σύστημα που έχουμε γνωρίσει μέχρι τώρα. Δεν ευλογεί την παραβίαση των κανόνων συμβίωσης, απλώς επιτρέπει σε όλους να συμμετάσχουν στον ορισμό αυτών των κανόνων. Δεν είναι ένα σύστημα που επιτρέπει στις μειοψηφίες να κάνουν ό,τι θέλουν· είναι ένα σύστημα που επιτρέπει στις μειοψηφίες να λένε ό,τι θέλουν, έτσι ώστε να πείσουν και να γίνουν με τη σειρά τους κάποια στιγμή πλειοψηφία για να ορίσουν τους κανόνες. Δεν επιτρέπει καν στην πλειοψηφία να κάνει ό,τι θέλει. Υπάρχουν τα θεμελιώδη δικαιώματα κάθε ατόμου, που δεν μπορεί να καταπατήσει ούτε το 99,9% του υπόλοιπου λαού.

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Does the Law Matter in China?

by Nicholas Bequelin

New York Times
May 13, 2012

Does the law matter in China? A cursory look at the two crises that have hit the Chinese government in recent weeks — one at the very top, with the purge of Bo Xilai, and one at the grassroots, with the escape from unlawful house arrest of the blind activist Chen Guangcheng — suggests not.

The two cases have in common an overt and blatant disregard for legality, an unwillingness of the central government to correct manifest injustices, and the notion that only U.S. diplomatic compounds are safe-havens in China.

Bo, the maverick princeling, turned a brutal anti-mafia campaign in the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing into an instrument of personal power designed to garner popularity through swift “justice” and to eliminate political rivals. His suspension by the Party’s Central Committee came only after his police chief took refuge in the United States Consulate.

Chen, the dauntless rural activist from Shandong province, had attempted to use the existing legal system to expose wide-ranging abuses of power by local officials, only to be sentenced in 2006 to more than four years in prison on trumped-up charges by a local court. Upon his release in September 2010, local officials and hired thugs unlawfully kept him confined in his home. He too, after dramatically escaping his captors, sought refuge in a U.S. diplomatic enclave.

Both cases are widely seen as emblematic. Bo’s embodies the corruption of an unchecked political elite: Communist Party members are investigated by the party’s own disciplinary committee, and not by the courts. Chen’s case is rife with the predatory behavior of local officials whose conduct is more reminiscent of China’s feudal past than of the “new socialist countryside” Beijing leaders claim to be building.

Yet it would be a mistake to conclude that the law doesn't matter in China.

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Unleash the Judges: The libertarian case for judicial activism

by Damon W. Root

Reason
July 2005

Speaking to the Heritage Foundation in 1996 on the topic of "judicial activism," the conservative commentator Pat Buchanan denounced the Supreme Court as a "judicial dictatorship"; the Court's beneficiaries, he said, were "criminals, atheists, homosexuals, flag burners, illegal immigrants (including terrorists), convicts, and pornographers." In his influential 1996 book Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline, former federal appeals court judge Robert H. Bork declared that "the Supreme Court has usurped the powers of the people and their elected representatives." Dissenting from the majority in Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which nullified that state's anti-sodomy law, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that the Texas legislature's "hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new 'constitutional right' by a Court that is impatient of democratic change."

Such views are widely shared on the right, where few subjects produce greater outrage than judicial activism, which conservatives blame for the forced imposition of liberal values on American society. But libertarians, who have frequently allied with conservatives in the effort to rein in the federal government, should not join their battle against the judiciary. There is no inconsistency between principled judicial activism and limited government.

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The constitutional right to be left alone

by George F. Will

Washington Post
April 19, 2012

Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, is a courtly Virginian who combines a manner as soft as a Shenandoah breeze with a keen intellect. His disapproval of much current thinking about how the Constitution should be construed is explained in his spirited new book — slender and sharp as a stiletto — Cosmic Constitutional Theory: Why Americans Are Losing Their Inalienable Right to Self-Governance.

A “cosmic theory,” Wilkinson says, is any theory purporting to do for constitutional questions what Freud and Einstein tried to do concerning human behavior and the universe, respectively — provide comprehensive and final answers. The three jurisprudential theories Wilkinson criticizes are the “living Constitution,” “originalism” and “constitutional pragmatism.” Each, he says, abets judicial hubris, leading to judicial “activism.”

Those who believe the Constitution is “living” believe, Wilkinson says, that judges should “implement the contemporary values” of society. This leads to “free-wheeling judging.” So Wilkinson apparently agrees somewhat with Justice Antonin Scalia, who stresses the “antievolutionary purpose of a constitution,” which “is to prevent change — to embed certain rights in such a manner that future generations cannot readily take them away.” Future generations or contemporary majorities.

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Προσωπικά δεδομένα και αδιαφάνεια

του Πάσχου Mανδραβέλη

Καθημερινή
11 Μαρτίου 2012

Η προστασία των προσωπικών δεδομένων είναι μεγάλη κατάκτηση. Αφορά τις προηγμένες χώρες, όπου υπάρχει οργάνωση και μηχανοργάνωση, εκεί δηλαδή που κρατικοί και ιδιωτικοί μηχανισμοί μπορούν να απειλήσουν αυτό που οι Αγγλοσάξονες ονομάζουν privacy, μια έννοια τόσο ξένη στην Ελλάδα, που ακόμη δεν έχουμε κοινά αποδεκτή λέξη γι’ αυτή· άλλοι την ονομάζουν «ιδιωτικότητα», άλλοι «προστασία της ιδιωτικής ζωής».

Αλλά και στις αγγλοσαξονικές χώρες η προστασία της ιδιωτικής ζωής είναι σχετικά νέα υπόθεση. Υπάρχει στο εθιμικό δίκαιο (common law) της Βρετανίας αλλά αφορούσε τη φυσική παραβίαση του οικογενειακού ασύλου («το σπίτι μου είναι το κάστρο μου») και όχι τη διάχυση πληροφοριών για τα άτομα. Είναι χαρακτηριστικό ότι το δικαίωμα στην προστασία της ιδιωτικής ζωής δεν υπάρχει στο Σύνταγμα των Ηνωμένων Πολιτειών, που παραμένει το πιο φιλελεύθερο του κόσμου. Υπάρχει μεγάλη συζήτηση που ξεκινά από ένα σημαντικό άρθρο των Samuel D. Warren και Louis D. Brandeis στο Harvard Law Review το 1890, υπάρχουν δικαστικές αποφάσεις, αλλά όχι και συνταγματική διάταξη.

Η προστασία των προσωπικών δεδομένων όμως προβλέπεται από το ελληνικό Σύνταγμα. Με την αναθεώρηση του 2000 τα πράγματα είναι σαφέστατα: «Καθένας έχει δικαίωμα προστασίας από τη συλλογή, επεξεργασία και χρήση, ιδίως με ηλεκτρονικά μέσα, των προσωπικών του δεδομένων, όπως ο νόμος ορίζει. Η προστασία των προσωπικών δεδομένων διασφαλίζεται από ανεξάρτητη αρχή που συγκροτείται και λειτουργεί όπως νόμος ορίζει» (άρθρο 9Α). Είναι μια εξαιρετικά προχωρημένη διάταξη διότι, όπως προείπαμε, η ιδιωτική ζωή απειλείται σοβαρά σε χώρες όπου υπάρχει οργάνωση και μηχανοργάνωση. Ετσι, στην Ελλάδα μπορεί να μην έχουμε π.χ. ηλεκτρονική συνταγογράφηση, αλλά τουλάχιστον έχουμε όλο το νομικό οπλοστάσιο για να προστατευθούμε από την αθέμιτη χρήση της.

Στη χώρα της υπερβολής, και η προστασία των προσωπικών δεδομένων έγινε υπερβολική. Τα πάντα θεωρήθηκαν ιδιωτική ζωή. Υπήρξαν αποφάσεις της Αρχής Προστασίας Δεδομένων Προσωπικού Χαρακτήρα (ΑΠΔΠΧ) που θεωρούσαν παράνομη ακόμη και την οικειοθελή παραχώρηση προσωπικών στοιχείων. Αυτό έγινε τον Φεβρουάριο του 2004 όταν ο τότε πρόεδρος της Αρχής, Δημήτριος Γουργουράκης, απαγόρευε κατ’ ουσίαν στο ΠΑΣΟΚ να πραγματοποιήσει εκλογή αρχηγού από τη βάση, θεωρώντας ότι η εθελοντική καταγραφή των μελών και φίλων του Κινήματος αντίκειται στον νόμο περί προστασίας της ιδιωτικής ζωής.

Από εκεί και πέρα, η Αρχή πήρε φόρα. Επέβαλε πρόστιμο 5.000 ευρώ στην Ενωση Συντακτών Ημερησίων Εφημερίδων Αθηνών (ΕΣΗΕΑ) επειδή δημοσιοποίησε τον κατάλογο των δημοσιογράφων στο Δημόσιο, δηλαδή των δημοσιογράφων που πληρώνει ο ελληνικός λαός. Ετσι εμείς οι φορολογούμενοι πολίτες δεν μπορούμε να μάθουμε ποιοι δημοσιογράφοι εργάζονται στο κράτος (ΕΡΤ, ΑΠΕ, γραφεία Τύπου κ.λπ.) διότι και η ιδιότητα του δημοσίου υπαλλήλου εθεωρήθη προσωπικό δεδομένο!

Στα θολά νερά του «ιδιωτικού» επιχειρήθηκε να πνιγεί και η δημόσια πληροφορία των αμοιβών που έπαιρναν τα στελέχη του δημόσιου τομέα. Το 2007 μάλιστα δεν δόθηκαν στοιχεία στη Βουλή όταν η κυβέρνηση θεώρησε ότι οι μισθοί στις ΔΕΚΟ ήταν δεδομένα προσωπικού χαρακτήρα. Τα χρήματα που οι Ελληνες πολίτες έδιναν στους υπαλλήλους τους εθεωρήθησαν προσωπικά δεδομένα των υπαλλήλων.

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Of Contraceptives and Same-Sex Marriage

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Huffington Post
February 12, 2012

This was an interesting week for religion in America. First, the Council of Catholic Bishops demanded that the president of the United States exempt Catholic hospitals and universities from a general requirement that all employers receiving federal funds must provide health insurance for their employees that includes coverage for contraceptives. On reflection, the president acceded to their demand, explaining that such institutions should not be required to do something that is fundamentally incompatible with their religious beliefs.

While all this was going on, a federal court of appeals ruled that California's Proposition 8, which attempted to strip gays and lesbians of the previously recognized state law right to marry, violated the federal Constitution. The court explained that Proposition 8, which had been aggressively promoted by the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and evangelicals, was unconstitutional because it served "no purpose... other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California."

The juxtaposition of these two events sheds important light on the relationship between religion and government in the United States today.

Our nation's founders sought to shape the basic nature of that relationship in the First Amendment, which contains two distinct but intertwined clauses concerning religion. The Free Exercise Clause forbids government to make any law prohibiting "the free exercise of religion." The Establishment Clause forbids government to make any law "respecting an establishment of religion."

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Live, From the Nation’s Capital, It’s ... the Supreme Court

Bloomberg
Editorial
February 9, 2012

Porcinophobia, fear of hams, is the main thing keeping the justices of the Supreme Court from opening their proceedings to television. They are afraid that showoff lawyers will perform for the cameras, rather than for the court, thereby lowering the tone to the level of, well, television.

This would be an odd way for lawyers to react. After all, the most important consideration -- for themselves and their own futures, as well as for their clients -- will remain winning the case. And if the justices do let the cameras in, it will be with gritted teeth (if not over their dead bodies, as former Justice David Souter described his lack of enthusiasm). They are likely to be more hostile, not less, to any sign of hamming it up.

The question of the Supreme Court allowing cameras in its courtroom is not new -- that Souter quote is from 1996. But it has renewed relevance and urgency thanks to next month’s oral arguments over the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s health-care law, a five-and-a-half-hour marathon scheduled for March 26-28. The court is now considering requests from scores of lawmakers and media organizations, including Bloomberg News, to open its proceedings to TV cameras.

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Dickens v. Lawyers

by Joseph Tartakovsky

New York Times
February 5, 2012

Tuesday is the bicentenary of the birth, in Portsmouth, England, of Charles Dickens, literature’s greatest humanist. We can rejoice that so many of the evils he assailed with his beautiful, ferocious quill — dismal debtors’ prisons, barefoot urchin labor, an indifferent nobility — have happily been reformed into oblivion. But one form of wickedness he decried haunts us still, proud and unrepentant: the lawyer.

Lawyers appear in 11 of his 15 novels. Some of them even resemble humans. Uriah Heep (David Copperfield) is a red-eyed cadaver whose “lank forefinger,” while he reads, makes “clammy tracks along the page ... like a snail.” Mr. Vholes (Bleak House), “so eager, so bloodless and gaunt,” is “always looking at the client, as if he were making a lingering meal of him with his eyes.” Most lawyers infest dimly lighted, moldy offices “like maggots in nuts.” (No, counselor, writers dead since 1870 cannot be sued for libel.)

Dickens knew whereof he spoke. At 15, he was hired as an “attorney’s clerk,” serving subpoenas, registering wills, copying transcripts; later he became a court reporter. For three formative years he was surrounded by law students, law clerks, copying clerks, court clerks, magistrates, barristers and solicitors who (reborn in his fiction) uttered cheerful sentiments like “I hate my profession.” His portraits of nearly every London court — Chancery, Divorce, Probate, Admiralty, etc. — are so accurate that one scholar wrote a lively book called Charles Dickens as a Legal Historian. At 32 he filed his first suit against a pirate publisher. Dickens told a friend afterward that “it is better to suffer a great wrong than to have recourse to the much greater wrong of the law.”

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Politics and the Supreme Court

New York Times
Editorial
February 4, 2012

The Supreme Court underscored its power to shape American life when it took major cases about the health care reform law, Arizona’s anti-immigrant law and the Voting Rights Act in an election year. But this is not simply a case of the court thrusting itself into politics.

The way these cases developed and made their way to the highest court also illustrates the reverse — how politics shape the court. Each case grows out of a struggle between left and right where politics have pushed the law: between a quest for universal coverage and the defense of big health care providers; between an emphasis on openness and hostility toward immigrants; and between a promise of access to the voting booth made nearly 50 years ago and the unyielding opposition to keeping that promise.

Each party has its program and works to turn it into law. The great example of political change through legal change was the long, methodical effort to whittle away at segregation from within the legal mainstream that culminated in the court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. The conservatives’ legal-political strategy draws from Brown, but it is also vastly different in nature and design.

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Live, From the Supreme Court

New York Times
Editorial
February 1, 2012

Since May, the Supreme Court of Britain has allowed its hearings to be broadcast live. On Wednesday and Thursday, the court is hearing arguments on the extradition of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, from Britain to Sweden and whether a Swedish prosecutor had the authority to issue a warrant for his arrest.

The British court, which replaced the Law Lords as the highest court in the land in 2009, has the good sense to see that televising hearings can boost the court’s reputation and confidence in the legal system.

The Supreme Court of the United States, however, still refuses to see these benefits. It does not allow broadcasts of oral arguments out of a misguided worry that cameras would encourage grandstanding by lawyers and might cause the justices to censor their questions.

But the court currently releases transcripts of oral arguments soon after they are finished and audio recordings of arguments the week they occur — all without causing grandstanding or self-censorship. Adding video would further enhance public understanding of the court.

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The Justice of Occupation

by Ra’anan Alexandrowicz

New York Times
January 24, 2012

Israel’s Supreme Court is the body that provides checks and balances to the country’s executive and legislative powers, upholding constitutional standards. Over the years the court has gained a reputation as one of the most judicially active, human rights-oriented courts in the world.

In the four decades since the 1967 Six-Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors, the court has become a stage for an escalating conflict between two very different world views.

Israel is the only modern state that has held territories under military occupation for over four decades. It is also unusual for a nation to allow residents of territories under a military occupation to petition its Supreme Court and request intervention in acts of state.

Since the early years of the occupation, the Supreme Court has unwittingly found itself pushed into a corner time and again. Rather than functioning as the bastion of human rights that it was established to be, it has instead become the entity responsible for balancing the needs of a state engaged in a prolonged occupation with basic principles of democracy.

This Op-Doc expands on one of the themes explored in my new feature documentary, “The Law in These Parts,” and asks about the role of the Supreme Court in the legal underpinnings of the longest military occupation in modern times.

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Η νομιμοποίηση της κυβέρνησης Παπαδήμου

του Νίκου Κ. Αλιβιζάτου

Καθημερινή
15 Ιανουαρίου 2012

Στις 10 του περασμένου Νοεμβρίου, το ένστικτο επιβίωσης, χάρη στο οποίο η Ελλάδα σώθηκε κυριολεκτικά την τελευταία στιγμή, αρκετές φορές στη νεότερη Ιστορία της, λειτούργησε και πάλι. Με αντανακλαστικά που εξέπληξαν ακόμη και τους πιο αισιόδοξους παρατηρητές των πολιτικών μας πραγμάτων, βουλευτές όλων των παρατάξεων -αλλά κυρίως της πλειοψηφίας- επέβαλαν τη «λύση Παπαδήμου». Μια λύση που, όπως φαίνεται, απεύχονταν οι ηγεσίες των δύο μεγάλων κομμάτων, για δικούς της λόγους η καθεμιά. Ετσι, με διόλου αμελητέο κόστος τη συμμετοχή στην κυβέρνηση εκπροσώπων του ΛΑΟΣ, απετράπη το μοιραίο. Δηλαδή η άτακτη χρεοκοπία, στην οποία είναι βέβαιο ότι θα οδηγούσε τη χώρα η διεξαγωγή εκλογών στις αρχές Δεκεμβρίου, ή ο εκ των ενόντων σχηματισμός άλλης μονοκομματικής κυβέρνησης από το ΠΑΣΟΚ.

Ο κ. Λουκάς Παπαδήμος συμπλήρωσε προχθές δύο μήνες στην πρωθυπουργία. Αν και τα δύσκολα βρίσκονται ακόμη μπροστά του, το διάστημα αυτό είναι αρκετό για να βγάλει κανείς μερικά πρώτα συμπεράσματα:

Από τη μια, επικράτησε ένα αίσθημα καταλλαγής, κυρίως στην Αθήνα, αλλά και στις άλλες πόλεις της χώρας. Αν και δεν βρήκε ακόμη τον κανονικό ρυθμό της, η ζωή αρχίζει δειλά δειλά να επανέρχεται στο πολύπαθο Κέντρο. Και θέλω να πιστεύω ότι τα φιλόδοξα μέτρα που ανήγγειλε πρόσφατα ο δήμαρχος Αθηναίων δεν θα αργήσουν να αποδώσουν.

Με την καταλλαγή κατέβηκαν κάπως και οι τόνοι. Ο κόσμος, σε μικρότερες ή μεγαλύτερες παρέες, άρχισε να αναστοχάζεται και να κουβεντιάζει για τα βασικά. Ποτέ άλλοτε, τα τελευταία χρόνια, δεν μπήκαν στο τραπέζι τόσο βαθιά ριζωμένα στερεότυπα και αντιλήψεις. Παλιοί και νέοι έχουν χάσει τις βεβαιότητες άλλων εποχών και, φαινόμενο μοναδικό, ακόμη και οι πολιτικοί διαλέγονται.

Η στροφή αυτή είχε ως αποτέλεσμα μια ψυχραιμότερη αντιμετώπιση της κρίσης και των δεινών της. Η δικαιολογημένη αγανάκτηση την οποία προκάλεσε η μέγιστη αδικία της καλπάζουσας ανεργίας, και η λαίλαπα των περικοπών σε μισθούς και συντάξεις, δεν οδηγούν όπως πέρυσι σε μια καθολική απόρριψη των μέτρων του Μνημονίου. Γιατί συνειδητοποιείται όλο και περισσότερο ότι πολλά από αυτά έπρεπε να έχουν ληφθεί εδώ και χρόνια. Οδηγεί αντίθετα σε κινήσεις αλληλεγγύης για την ανακούφιση αυτών που πάσχουν πραγματικά (απολυμένοι, άστεγοι, άνεργοι προπάντων νέοι) και που, με την κρίση, ο αριθμός τους έχει εκτιναχθεί σε πρωτοφανή ύψη. Για πρώτη φορά από το 2004, το εθελοντικό κίνημα, με τόνο πατριωτικό και όχι ελεημοσύνης, έχει πάρει τέτοιες διαστάσεις.

Σε όλα αυτά, όπως σημείωνε προ ημερών ο Αντώνης Τριφύλλης, ο «δωρικός» λόγος του «αντιπολιτικού» Παπαδήμου, συνέτεινε θετικά, αφού «υπονόμευσε» τον συναισθηματικό και εν τέλει «διχαστικό» λόγο των επαγγελματιών της πολιτικής. Αρκεί βέβαια να αρχίσει να φαίνεται φως στην άκρη του τούνελ.

Η τελευταία αυτή παρατήρηση οδηγεί στο ζήτημα της νομιμοποίησης της κυβέρνησης Παπαδήμου. Ως σήμερα, ήταν δεδομένη για τους παραπάνω λόγους. Τα περί του αντιθέτου υποστηριζόμενα από τα «αντισυστηματικά» άκρα του πολιτικού φάσματος δεν ευσταθούν. Δείχνουν, αντίθετα, κραυγαλέα αποκοπή από την πραγματικότητα (για να μην πω και έλλειψη στοιχειώδους συνταγματικής παιδείας). Από εδώ και πέρα, ωστόσο, η νομιμοποίηση της κυβέρνησης Παπαδήμου θα εξαρτηθεί από την ικανότητά της να φέρει σε πέρας την κύρια αποστολή της: δηλαδή, να συμφωνήσει με τους δανειστές της χώρας για περικοπή του δημόσιου χρέους (PSI) και να συνάψει τη νέα δανειακή σύμβαση. Συνάρτηση της πρώτης, η δεύτερη είναι η αναγκαία προϋπόθεση για να παραμείνουμε στο ευρώ. Και αυτό, την ύστατη τούτη ώρα, αποτελεί τον κεντρικό στόχο του έθνους.

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The Struggle to Give the European Parliament Clout

Spiegel
January 12, 2012

As the weakest of the EU's three major institutions, the European Parliament has often been viewed as little more than a rubber stamp for the others. But Martin Schulz, the German Social Democrat who will become its president next week, plans to change that -- and he's not afraid of ruffling feathers in the process.

Two stars are blinking red on the indicator panel, signaling that the allotted speaking time has run out. Germany's Martin Schulz is already about two minutes over his limit, but he just keeps talking.

It's mid-December, and he's speaking about Europe's debt crisis and the future of the European Union. Schulz is taking advantage of his last appearance as the leader of the center-left Socialist group in the European Parliament to demonstrate to everyone gathered in the assembly hall in Strasbourg that few could come up with verbal zingers as strong as his. "The financial markets are driving a Ferrari, while the governments of Europe are puttering along behind on a bicycle," he says.

Schulz keeps on speaking, but he has nothing to fear as European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, who is from Poland, lets him have his way. Without permission, Schulz has just about reached twice the limit of his speaking time when he finally starts wrapping it up. Then Buzek says into the microphone: "I have really been enormously patient."

On Tuesday, Jan. 17, the 56-year-old Schulz will replace Buzek as the president of the European Parliament. In the parliament, the usual procedure is that the two biggest parliamentary groups each get to choose the president for half of the five-year legislative period, with the office-holder being replaced after two-and-a-half years. Thus, Buzek, a member of the European People's Party (EPP), the alliance of Christian Democratic and conservative parties making up the largest faction in the parliament, will be succeeded by Schulz, the head of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats (S&D), the second-largest faction.

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«Πρέπει να τηρούμε τους νόμους;»

Ξενοφών Ι. Παπαρρηγόπουλος
Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής Φιλοσοφίας, Ιστορίας, Μεθοδολογίας και Θεωρίας του Δικαίου στο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλίας

Αριστοτέλειο Πανεπιστήμιο Θεσσαλονίκης
8 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

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Διαρθρωτικές μεταρρυθμίσεις τώρα, χωρίς αναθεώρηση

του Αντώνη Μανιτάκη

Καθημερινή
7 Ιανουαρίου 2012

Ο τόπος έχει ανάγκη -αποτελεί κοινό τόπο- από αλλαγές, από ριζικές αλλαγές, και κατά πρώτο και κύριο λόγο στις βασικές λειτουργίες του κράτους: στη Διοίκηση και στη Δικαιοσύνη. Απαιτούνται, ακόμη, επειγόντως, και ορισμένες καίριες, άμεσες, ενδεικτικές έστω, βαθιές τομές στο πολιτικό σύστημα, που δεν θα αγγίξουν όμως το πολίτευμα. Για να φανεί, έμπρακτα, ότι οι τωρινές πολιτικές δυνάμεις έχουν συνειδητοποιήσει την κρισιμότητα των περιστάσεων, καθώς και την επιτακτική ανάγκη των διαρθρωτικών μεταρρυθμίσεων. Και ότι είναι έτοιμες να ταπεινωθούν πολιτικά, να θυσιαστούν, προκειμένου να ανακτήσει το πολιτικό σύστημα ένα μέρος της χαμένης αξιοπιστίας του.

Δεν είναι δυνατόν ο ελληνικός λαός να υφίσταται εξαιτίας της κακοδιαχείρισης των δημόσιων οικονομικών τόσες και τέτοιες θυσίες, πρωτοφανείς σε ένταση και έκταση, που ωθούν εκατομμύρια ατόμων κάτω από τα όρια της φτώχειας, με μοναδικό αντάλλαγμα και δέλεαρ την ανάκτηση της εμπιστοσύνης των αγορών, και το κομματικό κατεστημένο να μη δέχεται να θυσιάσει δεσμούς και αρμούς, αιωνόβιους, του πελατειακού συστήματος, που το στηρίζουν. Χωρίς έμπρακτη και εύγλωττη πολιτική ταπείνωση δεν μπορεί να υπάρξει πολιτικός εξαγνισμός ούτε εξιλέωση.

Σε κάθε περίπτωση η ανάγκη των διαρθρωτικών αλλαγών, στο κράτος και στο πολιτικό σύστημα είναι και επιτακτική και άμεση. Δεν επιδέχεται αναβολή. Εχει άλλωστε, ούτως ή άλλως, ξεκινήσει η σχετική διαδικασία για τη Διοίκηση και τη Δικαιοσύνη, με νομοσχέδια που είναι έτοιμα, ορισμένα από καιρό ή είναι υπό ετοιμασία με τη συνδρομή της ομάδας ειδικών που συνέστησε ο Ευρωπαϊκή Επιτροπή.

Η δυναμική των μεταρρυθμίσεων δεν μπορεί, πάντως, να περιμένει την όποια συνταγματική αναθεώρηση ούτε μπορεί να εξαρτά το περιεχόμενο ή την έκβασή της από αυτήν. Για πολλούς, προφανείς λόγους. Πρώτον, διότι η διαδικασία της συνταγματικής αναθεώρησης είναι χρονοβόρα και δυσκίνητη. Απαιτεί πολλούς τύπους, ειδικές πλειοψηφίες, αρκετές ψηφοφορίες, δύο φάσεις και επίπονες συναινέσεις. Και το σημαντικότερο δεν μπορεί, τυπικά, να ξεκινήσει πριν από το 2013 ούτε μπορεί να ολοκληρωθεί πριν μεσολαβήσουν εκλογές και αναδειχθεί, λίγα χρόνια αργότερα, Αναθεωρητική Βουλή. Εν των μεταξύ, μέχρι τότε, η χώρα ίσως και να έχει χρεοκοπήσει ή μόλις θα βγαίνει ασθμαίνοντας από την κρίση. Ποιος θα ενδιαφέρεται τότε για την Αναθεώρηση και τι να περιμένει από αυτήν;

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Calling for a Convention

by Lawrence Lessig

American Prospect
January 4, 2012

To keep money from corrupting our democratic politics, we need constitutional change. No doubt lots can be done by statute alone—meaningful transparency rules, such as the Disclose Act, and small-dollar public funding, such as the Fair Elections Now Act. The Supreme Court, however, has all but guaranteed that these won’t be enough. Transparency by itself won’t build trust; public funding can only be voluntary; and independent expenditures are all but certain to swamp even the best reforms tolerated by the Court. If we’re ever going to get a Congress “dependent,” as James Madison put it in Federalist Paper No. 52, “upon the People alone,” and not “the Funders,” it is clear that Congress will need new constitutional authority.

Yet it is also clear that Congress won’t ask for this authority itself. The chance that this Congress, or any Congress elected in the current environment, could muster 67 votes in the Senate to alter Washington’s economy of influence is zero. Congress is the problem. Fixing itself is just one of the items on a very long list of things that it simply cannot do. A whole industry of influence depends upon preserving the status quo. For that industry, blocking change is child’s play.

At some point, we reformers must consider the one way the framers gave us to revise the Constitution when Congress itself is the problem. This is the Article V convention. If 34 state legislatures apply, then Congress must “call a Convention for proposing Amendments.” The product of such a convention is just that—proposals, not constitutional change. As with amendments proposed by Congress, those put forward by the convention become law only if ratified by 38 states. But the convention is the one path to making such proposals that Congress can’t easily control, and the one path that could create enough of a mandate to force Congress to act.

Liberals and conservatives alike fear a convention. That fear is fair. In the 223 years since our Constitution was ratified, we’ve never had a convention (though we’ve gotten close). It’s not even completely clear how one would be organized or how it would be controlled. But any remaining uncertainty must be viewed practically, with a clear eye to the political constraints that would cabin any amending process.

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'Destroying Democracy': Hungarians Protest Controversial New Constitution

Spiegel
January 3, 2012

Tens of thousands of Hungarians took to the streets of Budapest on Monday night to protest the country's new constitution, which took effect on Jan. 1. The document, in combination with other recent laws, severely curtails the independence of the country's central bank and courts. Religious rights have also been slashed.

"Viktor Orban. Dictator!" read one sign. "Enough!" screamed another. "Hey Europe, sorry about my prime minister," said a third. And there were hundreds more on Monday night in Budapest as tens of thousands of people gathered in front of the city's famous opera house to protest against the country's controversial new constitution, which went into effect on Jan. 1.

"The prime minister took an oath to defend the constitution, but instead he overthrew it," said Laszlo Majtenyi, the former head of the country's media authority, at the rally. "Tonight, the Opera is the home of hypocrisy and the street the home of constitutional virtues."

The crowd gathered outside as inside Prime Minister Viktor Orban and other leading government officials celebrated the new Basic Law inside the opera. Hungarian President Pal Schmitt defended the document, saying that his countrymen should be proud of it. "The constitution was born of a wide consultation, building on national and European values," he said in a speech at the celebration. "Our Basic Law defines the family, order, the home, work and health as the most important, shared scale of values."

The passage of the new constitution marks the crowning achievement of Orban's center-right Fidesz party, 18 months into its rule. The party won 53 percent of the vote in the spring of 2010, resulting in 68 percent of the seats in parliament, enough to radically change Hungary's legal landscape. Since then, according to Kim Lane Scheppele, director of Princeton University's Program in Law and Public Affairs and a long-time observer of Hungary, Fidesz has passed 359 laws.

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In Libya, Building the Rule of Law

by Sarah Leah Whitson

New York Times
December 29, 2011

When I first met Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, now the chairman of Libya’s Transitional National Council, in April 2009, he was the beleaguered justice minister in Muammar el-Qaddafi’s Libya, virtually the sole brave voice among senior officials demanding accountability from the country’s security services.

He had been brought in as a concession to the restive western city of Benghazi, where he was a judge for many years. Abdel-Jalil minced no words in denouncing the corruption of the Interior Ministry, which operated outside the law to detain and abuse Libyans with impunity. Commenting on the fledgling reforms under Qaddafi, he characterized Libya as a country “going through the difficult and painful pangs of birth.” Little did he know how utterly transformed Libya would find itself just over two years later.

Recently in Tripoli, I sat with Abdel-Jalil to discuss new priorities for Libya that would have been unimaginable in 2009. The challenges the new authorities face are daunting, starting with the need to gain control over thousands of men in dozens of independent militias. Libya swiftly needs to have a justice system running that can deal fairly with the crimes of today and of the past, and to rebuild basic institutions, atrophied over many decades of authoritarian rule.

Government officials recognize the need to give the anti-Qaddafi fighters, widely regarded as heroes, a reason to give up their arms.

The transitional council is discussing plans for a massive program of training, jobs, education, loans and compensation. But this commendable initiative will require time and substantial funds. Meanwhile the council shouldn’t wait until it has full command over the militias to assert its authority over the more than 5,000 detainees those militias are holding, outside any jurisdiction of Libya’s laws or justice system.

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The 9th Circuit’s proper call on bone marrow donations

by George Will

Washington Post
December 29, 2011

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit is famously liberal and frequently reversed. Recently, however, a unanimous three-judge panel of this court did something right when it held that bone marrow donors can be compensated. In effect, it revised a law, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA) of 1984, because of a medical technique developed since then.

Was this “judicial activism” — judges acting as legislators, imposing social policies they prefer? Or was it proper judicial engagement — performance of the judicial duty to ensure that the law is applied in conformity with the actual facts of the case? Herewith an example of a court’s conscientious application of law in light of a pertinent change — a technological change — in a medical sphere the law regulates.

NOTA made it a felony to sell human organs for transplants. This codified two moral judgments. One is that there is wisdom in an instinctive repugnance about the commodification of the human body, or at least of body parts that are not renewable. The other judgment is that a market for organs — offering perhaps $50,000 for a kidney — would usually, and troublingly, involve affluent people buying from low-income people whose consent is influenced by their neediness.

Here, however, is another moral dilemma resulting from NOTA’s codification of moral impulses: Potentially deadly blood diseases strike tens of thousands of Americans each year. For example, of the 44,000 who will be diagnosed with leukemia, including 3,500 children, half the adults and 700 of the children will die from it. Nearly 3,000 Americans die of various blood diseases because they cannot find matching bone marrow donors. Compensation would substantially increase the number of lifesaving donors. Unfortunately, NOTA classifies as an organ the bone marrow that is the source of lifesaving stem cells that generate white and red blood cells, and platelets.

The 9th Circuit panel ruled this month that a new medical technique has made the phrase “bone marrow transplant” anachronistic. When NOTA was written, extracting bone marrow involved a protracted, painful and risky semi-surgical procedure in which long needles were inserted into the hip bones of anesthetized donors.

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Interview with Ex-German High Court Justice: 'It Is a Mistake To Pursue a United States of Europe'

Spiegel
December 28, 2011

In an interview conducted as he heads into retirement, German Constitutional Court Judge Udo Di Fabio explains why he believes the high court's recent decisions on the European Union will not necessarily hinder further European integration and how he believes debates over possible changes to Germany's constitution to strip power from Karlsruhe are "phoney."

The Lisbon Treaty, which went into effect on Dec. 1 2009, represents the last major reform of the structures of the European Union. Germany's Federal Constitutional Court subsequently issued a landmark decision on the treaty, authored by Judge Udo Di Fabio, which stated that the Treaty conformed with Germany's constitution. Nevertheless, the court also underscored that the parliament in Berlin must have greater participation in decisions made by the country at the EU level. Many politicians and journalists believe the ruling could hinder a future deepening of European integration.

In an interview with SPIEGEL, Di Fabio discusses why he believes the Lisbon ruling isn't nearly as critical of the EU as some have interpreted and why strong democratic states are essential to a continuing integrated Europe.

SPIEGEL: Professor Di Fabio, you were the German Constitutional Court's expert on Europe and the author of the controversial decision on the Lisbon Treaty, which has governed the workings of the European Union since 2009. Will politicians in Berlin heave a sigh of relief now that you are retiring from the court?

Di Fabio: I can't imagine that they will. A chamber of the Constitutional Court is a collective decision-making body. You shouldn't overestimate the power of a single judge.

SPIEGEL: Does the government still have to fear that the court in Karlsruhe will put the brakes on European integration?

Di Fabio: I don't think that the Constitutional Court stands in the way of integration efforts. In many respects the court has even strengthened Germany's position.

SPIEGEL: But your president, Andreas Vosskuhle, only recently said with regard to further integration steps that the scope of Germany's constitution, the Basic Law, had been "largely exhausted."

Di Fabio: I think such statements concern sweeping transfers of responsibilities that are currently not up for debate.

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Σύνταγμα, δικαιώματα, δημοκρατία, γράμμα κενό

του Χρήστου Ζέρβα

Ελευθεροτυπία
17 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

Η Εθνική Επιτροπή Δικαιωμάτων του Ανθρώπου, ο επίσημος σύμβουλος της κυβέρνησης στα θέματα αυτά, επεσήμανε με πρόσφατη ανακοίνωσή της πως τα ατομικά-κοινωνικά δικαιώματα και η δημοκρατία κινδυνεύουν σοβαρά από τα συνεχή δημοσιονομικά μέτρα των τελευταίων δύο ετών. Πριν ξεσπάσει η θύελλα της οικονομικής κρίσης, όσοι μάχονταν υπέρ των ανθρωπίνων δικαιωμάτων αντιμετωπίζονταν με συγκατάβαση αλλά και διάχυτη δυσφορία. Είχε προηγηθεί η βαριά δεκαετία της αντιτρομοκρατικής σταυροφορίας, όπου οι κυβερνήσεις θυσίαζαν με άνεση στο βωμό της «ασφάλειας» πολλές κατακτήσεις του μεταπολεμικού κράτους δικαίου (τρομονόμοι, εκτεταμένη επιτήρηση και καταστολή).

Τώρα, εν μέσω κρίσης, τα ατομικά και κοινωνικά δικαιώματα αντιμετωπίζονται ως είδος πολυτελείας και μάλιστα εν ανεπαρκεία. Οποιος ασχολείται με τέτοια θέματα, τη στιγμή που απειλείται ευθέως η ίδια η επιβίωση των ανθρώπων, χαρακτηρίζεται σήμερα περίπου «γραφικός». Είναι γεγονός ότι τα δικαιώματα και οι ελευθερίες του νεοτερικού καπιταλισμού δεν έχουν τυπικά καταργηθεί, παραμένουν ουσιαστικά όμως ένα κενό περιεχομένου γράμμα. Δυστυχώς αυτό θεωρείται από τη mainstream καθεστωτική διανόηση ως κάτι φυσιολογικό.

Το ίδιο ακριβώς συμβαίνει και στο σύνολο της εικόνας. Οι θεσμοί λειτουργούν τυπικά μέσα εκεί, όμως η Δημοκρατία είναι απ' έξω. Μια σειρά από «μεταρρυθμίσεις» στην οικονομική και πολιτική ζωή έχουν μετατρέψει τα Συντάγματα, από καταστατικούς χάρτες δημοκρατικής λειτουργίας των ευρωπαϊκών χωρών, σε «λάστιχο» που προσαρμόζεται μόνο στις ανάγκες της «αγοράς».

Η εξέλιξη αυτή επιβεβαιώνει ωστόσο την πάγια κριτική, η οποία «βλέπει» τους θεσμούς ως εργαλεία χειραγώγησης της κοινωνίας και ταύτισής της με τα συμφέροντα μιας μικρής ολιγαρχίας που ασκεί την ηγεμονία. Οι ευρωπαϊκές συνθήκες δικαιωμάτων, τα εθνικά Συντάγματα, τα κοινωνικά δικαιώματα (απόρροια του σοσιαλδημοκρατικού συμβιβασμού) δεν ακυρώνονται στα λόγια, αλλά στην πράξη.

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Mr. Gingrich’s Attack on the Courts

New York Times
Editorial
December 10, 2011

In any campaign season, voters are bound to hear Republican candidates talk about “activist judges” — jurists who rule in ways that the right wing does not like. But Newt Gingrich, who is leading in polls in Iowa, is taking the normal attack on the justice system to a deep new low.

He is using McCarthyist tactics to smear judges. His most outrageous scheme, a plan to challenge “judicial supremacy,” has disturbing racial undertones. If he is serious about his plan, a President Gingrich would break the balance of power that is fundamental to our democracy.

The plan’s centerpiece is an attack on the landmark 1958 ruling in Cooper v. Aaron, in which the Supreme Court reaffirmed that Arkansas had a duty to follow federal law. The governor had contended he was not bound by the court’s call for desegregation in Brown v. Board of Education. He ordered the National Guard to bar nine African-American students from Little Rock’s Central High School, causing violence and disorder.

For the first time in the court’s history, all nine justices individually signed the unanimous opinion. They did so to stress that the “chaos, bedlam and turmoil” caused by the governor’s refusal to obey the law was “intolerable.” Unless the court acted as the final arbiter about the Constitution’s meaning, as Marbury v. Madison instructed, chaos would prevail. It was one of the court’s most important decisions. In Mr. Gingrich’s twisted view, Congress and the executive branch have for too long cowered before the court.

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Who is undermining Israeli democracy?

by Jonathan Rosenblum

Jerusalem Post
December 9, 2011

In order to fully appreciate the absurdity of Court President Dorit Beinisch’s charge that even the most minimal changes in Israel’s method of judicial selection represent an attempt to undermine “the democracy upon which our society rests,” one need only know one fact: Israel’s method of judicial selection is absolutely unique in the democratic world.

No other system gives so much power to sitting Supreme Court justices to choose their future colleagues and successors. Only India among the world’s democracies also gives sitting justices a role in the judicial selection process. Are all the rest, then, not really democratic? Even by Israeli standards the claim of the unique wisdom of our system reflects a remarkable degree of hubris.

In truth, it is the Supreme Court itself that represents the greatest challenge to Israeli democracy. Richard Posner, considered by many the most brilliant living American jurist, defines democracy as “a system of governance in which the key officials stand for election at relatively short intervals and are thus accountable to the citizenry.” Judicial review, in which courts strike down statutes or substitute their policy judgments for those of elected officials or their delegates, is thus in inherent tension with representative democracy so defined.

To minimize that tension, Alexander Hamilton argued in The Federalist Papers that the judiciary must remain “the least dangerous branch,” with no power over the purse or sword. Retaining the status as the least dangerous branch, wrote the great constitutional scholar Alexander Bickel in his seminal book of that name, requires justices to exercise restraint and avoid entering into the realm of politics and making decisions based on their own personal values.

Beinisch’s mentor, former court president Aharon Barak, completely rejected any such restraint. He abandoned traditional doctrines of judicial restraint – standing and justiciability – famously declaring that “everything is justiciable,” including troop deployments in wartime, and permitted any citizen who objected to a particular governmental decision to bring a suit directly to the High Court of Justice. He boldly usurped traditional legislative prerogatives – for instance, appointing a commission to consider the issue of road closings on Shabbat nationwide.

As Prof. Ruth Gavison and many others have argued, the Israeli Supreme Court determines national “norms” to a degree without parallel in the Western world. Former court president Moshe Landau accused the court under Barak of having taken on the role of Platonic Guardians, “a role that they are utterly incapable of fulfilling and for which they have no training.”

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Would You Kill One Person to Save Five? New Research on a Classic Debate

by John Cloud

Time
December 5, 2011

Imagine you are a train-yard operator who sees an out-of-control boxcar running down a track that five workers are repairing. The workers won't have time to get out of the way unless you flip a switch to change the car to another track. But another worker is on the second track. You have just seconds to make a decision: let the five workers die — or kill the one. What do you do?

This dilemma is a famous philosophical conundrum that was originally called the "trolley problem." Now a team from Michigan State University's psychology department has used virtual-reality technology to test how we respond psychologically and physiologically when faced with this problem.

The two opposing philosophical approaches to the trolley problem are the utilitarian one (kill one guy in order save the others) and the do-no-harm approach (let God or nature take its course, but don't make an active choice to kill another person).

In many years of surveys, the vast majority of people — usually about 90% — have chosen to kill the one and save the five. But until now, there's never been a study examining how people would react in a lifelike setting with real-looking potential victims.

In the Michigan State study, led by psychologist David Navarette, the 147 participants made their choice while wearing a head-mounted virtual-reality device that projected avatars of those who could die. (Watch a simulation here.) One chilling factor of the test: the potential victims were screaming as the boxcar approached.

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See more about the project

Γκαζώνω και δεν πληρώνω

του Στράτου Παπαδημητρίου

Τα Νέα
29 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Αν υπάρχει ένας χώρος όπου καθρεφτίζεται ανάγλυφα η παθογένεια της ελληνικής κοινωνίας, αυτός είναι ο δρόμος και το πεζοδρόμιο. Το πώς οδηγούμε, πώς συμπεριφερόμαστε ως οδηγοί και πώς η πολιτεία αντιμετωπίζει τις σχετικές παραβατικές συμπεριφορές είναι ενδεικτικά για το τι συμβαίνει και στους άλλους τομείς της κοινωνίας.

Κατ' αντιστοιχία με το χρέος και τα ελλείμματα, είναι γεγονός ότι κατέχουμε μία από τις πρώτες θέσεις, αν όχι την πρώτη, στην Ευρώπη στα τροχαία δυστυχήματα σε σχέση με τον πληθυσμό μας, παρά τον ισχυρισμό ότι είμαστε πολύ καλοί οδηγοί. Ακόμη και η σημαντική μείωση κατά 15% των ατυχημάτων του πρώτου εξαμήνου του 2011 σε σχέση με το αντίστοιχο του 2010 οφείλεται περισσότερο στη μείωση των διανυόμενων χιλιομέτρων.

Για την κατάσταση στους δρόμους και στα πεζοδρόμια ευθυνόμαστε όλοι μας. Την πιο σημαντική ευθύνη έχει βέβαια η πολιτεία και η τοπική αυτοδιοίκηση, με την απουσία συστηματικής εκπαίδευσης από τα σχολικά χρόνια, την παραβίαση βασικών κανόνων σήμανσης και συγκοινωνιακής τεχνικής, την πλημμελή συντήρηση, τη διαχρονική ελλιπή αστυνόμευση... Αλλά εξίσου σημαντική ευθύνη έχουμε και όλοι εμείς ως οδηγοί και ως πολίτες.

Στον δρόμο οφείλουμε να συμβιώνουμε όλοι αρμονικά τηρώντας τους κανόνες που εμείς έχουμε θέσει. Δυστυχώς, αντί γι' αυτό, συνήθως ισχύει το δίκαιο του ισχυροτέρου (κατά σειρά: φορτηγά, λεωφορεία, αυτοκίνητα, μοτοσικλέτες, ποδήλατα, πεζοί). Είναι εξάλλου αξιοπερίεργο το ότι, ενώ σε διάφορες χρονικές στιγμές οι ρόλοι μας αλλάζουν - οδηγός τη μία, πεζός την άλλη -, όταν επιστρέφουμε στον ρόλο του ισχυροτέρου ξεχνάμε τις αρνητικές εμπειρίες που είχαμε με την προηγούμενη ιδιότητα. Μπορεί δηλαδή να διαμαρτυρόμαστε για την έλλειψη πεζοδρομίων, αλλά αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι δεν θα παρκάρουμε μπροστά σε στάση λεωφορείων αν δεν βρίσκουμε χώρο αλλού. Ομοίως φερόμαστε και στο πλαίσιο της οικονομίας. Μπορεί, π.χ., ως πελάτες να μη μας αρέσει όταν κάποιος εστιάτορας δεν μας δώσει απόδειξη, αλλά αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι οι περισσότεροι θα είχαμε πρόβλημα να διαπραγματευτούμε την τιμή χωρίς απόδειξη με τον ηλεκτρολόγο αν αυτό μας ωφελούσε ή να αποκρύψουμε κάποιο δικό μας εισόδημα αν ήταν δυνατό.

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German Constitutional Court at Risk of Losing Power

Spiegel
November 29, 2011

Some see Germany's Federal Constitutional Court as as a guardian of democracy in the euro crisis, others see it as an obstacle to rescuing the currency. Now members of Chancellor Merkel's ruling conservatives want to lessen its power by amending the constitution -- to remove its jurisdiction over European issues.

German Federal Constitutional Court judge Udo Di Fabio only has a few weeks to go before he retires on Dec. 19. The former governor of the western state of Saarland, Peter Müller, was elected as his successor by the Bundesrat, Germany's upper legislative chamber representing the interest of states, last Friday.

But before he leaves, di Fabio, responsible for European issues at Germany's highest court, will have to finalize two sensitive rulings. His panel of judges will deliberate on Tuesday and Wednesday this week on two complaints submitted by the Bundestag, the federal parliament, affecting the relationship between the parliament and the government.

The judges must decide how heavily members of parliament are to be involved when the government once again tries to rescue Europe.

But behind the scenes, much more is at stake: the loss of power of the Constitutional Court in itself. The government and the court are locked in one of their biggest power struggles to date. One judge at the court described it as a "latent constitutional crisis." The government, he said, was trying to free itself of the restraints imposed on it by the constitution, and by the court.

The president of the court, Andreas Vosskühle expressed it a little more cautiously. The perception of his court was at present, he said "ambivalent in parts."

On the one hand, the court had been credited for ensuring that European unity remained on a secure legal and democratic footing, he said. But on the other hand, it "is seen by some as an obstacle in overcoming the current crisis."

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Ευρωπαϊκή ή εθνική δημοκρατία;

του Π.Κ. Ιωακειμίδη

Τα Νέα
18 Νοεμβρίου 2011

Τα όσα (τραγικά και κωμικά) συνέβησαν τις τελευταίες μέρες στη χώρα γύρω από τις σχέσεις με την Ευρωπαϊκή Ενωση (ΕΕ) και το «πακέτο στήριξης» (ανακοίνωση δημοψηφίσματος και ματαίωσή του, απαίτηση γραπτών εγγυήσεων σεβασμού των δεσμεύσεων και οι αντιδράσεις που προκάλεσε) αναδεικνύουν ένα θεμελιακό πρόβλημα του ευρωπαϊκού πολιτικού συστήματος. Το πρόβλημα αυτό έγκειται στο γεγονός ότι ενώ οι καίριες αποφάσεις οικονομικής πολιτικής λαμβάνονται σε επίπεδο ΕΕ από τα όργανά της (Ευρωπαϊκό Συμβούλιο, Συμβούλιο Υπουργών, Eurogroup, κ.ά.) η νομιμοποίησή τους πρέπει να γίνει σε εθνικό επίπεδο, από τα εθνικά πολιτικά συστήματα και τους θεσμούς δηλαδή. Εδώ έχουμε μια βασική αντίφαση και ασυμμετρία. Εχουμε με άλλα λόγια ένα ευρωπαϊκό σύστημα λήψης αποφάσεων και διαμόρφωσης πολιτικής, αλλά δεν έχουμε ευρωπαϊκή δημοκρατία. Η δημοκρατία παραμένει εθνική δημοκρατία που λειτουργεί στο πλαίσιο των εθνικών κρατών - μελών με τους επιμέρους κανόνες που ορίζει η συνταγματική τάξη των κρατών - μελών. Το φαινόμενο αυτό συνιστά τη βασική εκδοχή του περίφημου «δημοκρατικού ελλείμματος» σε επίπεδο Ευρωπαϊκής Ενωσης.

Το Ευρωπαϊκό Κοινοβούλιο (ΕΚ) και η άμεση εκλογή των μελών του από το εκλογικό σώμα το οποίο (υποτίθεται) θα κάλυπτε και θα ακύρωνε το «έλλειμμα» αυτό, δεν μπόρεσε να επιτελέσει αυτόν τον ρόλο (και σε σημαντικό βαθμό δεν του επιτρέπει να πράξει κάτι τέτοιο). Δεν μπόρεσε να συνδέσει τους ευρωπαϊκούς θεσμούς με την ευρύτερη ευρωπαϊκή κοινωνία. Από μια άλλη πλευρά, η ανάληψη της πρωθυπουργίας σε Ελλάδα και Ιταλία από κατά βάση τεχνοκράτες (υψηλού κύρους και ικανοτήτων - Λ. Παπαδήμο και Μ. Μόντι αντίστοιχα) έχει επίσης ανοίξει μια συζήτηση για τη σχέση ευρωπαϊκού συστήματος και εθνικών δημοκρατικών συστημάτων.

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Merkel Eyes Constitution Revamp to Boost EU Powers

Spiegel
November 14, 2011

Germany's constitution is highly respected, but it also obstructs the transfer of power from Berlin to Brussels -- a fact that has hindered the rescue of Europe's common currency. At the CDU's party conference this week, Angela Merkel may push for an overhaul of the Basic Law in order to hasten euro bailout efforts.

Virtually nothing is more sacred to Germans than their constitution, which is known as the Basic Law. It was originally planned as a stopgap measure, but it has seen the Federal Republic of Germany through the past 62 years. During the Cold War, political parties may have squabbled over conservative Chancellor Konrad Adenauer's political commitment to Western Europe and the United States -- and they had their differences over left-leaning Chancellor Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik policy of normalizing relations with communist Eastern Europe, particularly with East Germany -- but they immediately and unanimously praised the Basic Law. "We have one of the best constitutions in the world," German Chancellor Angela Merkel once said.

Now, it looks as if Merkel herself may order an overhaul of the German constitution. At the party conference of the chancellor's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) which commenced on Monday morning, Nov. 14, it is expected to approve a plan that could change the face of Europe -- and perhaps make it necessary for the Germans to rewrite their constitution.

This operation to amend the constitution has already become one of the government's most delicate political initiatives. If it succeeds, it would remove one of the euro's biggest problems: The 17 euro-zone countries have a common currency but do not have a common finance policy, a fact which partly explains why the euro is teetering at the edge of an abyss. This is tackled in the key sentence of the new paper. "We need more Europe in key policy areas," it says.

Merkel hesitated for a long time before making such a statement in public. It was three quarters of a year ago that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble reportedly took the chancellor aside and explained to her that the euro crisis could not be resolved with spur-of-the-moment policies. He told the chancellor that he was in favor of using the crisis to advance Europe's political unity.

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Legally Speaking: A Conversation with Martha Nussbaum

hosted by Martin Lasden

University of California
Hastings College of Law
November 14, 2011

In a wide ranging interview, Martha Nussbaum, one of the world's most prominent moral and legal philosophers talks about the relationship between law and emotion, abortion, animal rights, and social justice.