Sunday, September 23, 2012

Eπιτρέπεται η απαγόρευση πολιτικού κόμματος;

του Νίκου Κ. Αλιβιζάτου

Καθημερινή
23 Σεπτεμβρίου 2012

Στις συζητήσεις που προκάλεσε η φασιστική δράση της Χρυσής Αυγής έρχεται και επανέρχεται το ερώτημα: ώς πότε η δημοκρατία μας θα ανέχεται τις βίαιες πρακτικές του νεοναζιστικού αυτού κόμματος; Γιατί δεν το θέτει εκτός νόμου;

Δυστυχώς, η σχετική συζήτηση πήρε γρήγορα ηθικές και πολιτικές διαστάσεις. Υπάρχει καλή και κακή βία; Και αν ναι, ποιο είναι το κριτήριο της διάκρισης; Η ιδεολογία όσων την υποστηρίζουν; Το αν αυτή βλάπτει πολλούς ή λίγους; Το αν τους βλάπτει σοβαρά ή όχι; Ή μήπως τα κίνητρα όσων τη μετέρχονται;

Υπό τις σημερινές περιστάσεις, θεωρώ ότι η συζήτηση αυτή δεν έχει νόημα. Σε ένα κράτος δικαίου, όπως ευτυχώς παραμένει ακόμη η Ελλάδα, η βία είναι καταδικαστέα, απ’ οπουδήποτε και αν προέρχεται, όποιο χρώμα και αν έχουν οι σημαίες όσων την υποστηρίζουν. Διότι η δημοκρατία μας θα αυτοκαταργούνταν αν ανεχόταν άλλα μέσα πολιτικής δράσης, εκτός από την ψήφο των πολιτών και από την άσκηση των δικαιωμάτων που αναγνωρίζει κάθε φιλελεύθερη και δημοκρατική έννομη τάξη. Με άλλα λόγια, με όρους ποινικού δικαίου, η «ευγένεια» των όποιων προθέσεων θα μπορούσε να ληφθεί υπ’ όψιν, όχι βέβαια για τον αποκλεισμό του αδίκου, αλλά το πολύ πολύ ως ελαφρυντική περίπτωση, για την επιμέτρηση της ποινής (άρθρο 84 Π.Κ.).

Γιατί λοιπόν δεν απαγορεύονται κόμματα που όχι μόνο δεν καταδικάζουν τη βία, αλλά τη χρησιμοποιούν συστηματικά, ήδη από σήμερα, ως μέσο πολιτικής δράσης;

Μετά τις φρικαλεότητες του φασισμού και του ναζισμού, τα Συντάγματα πολλών δημοκρατικών χωρών προβλέπουν τη δυνατότητα απαγόρευσης «ανατρεπτικών» κομμάτων, συνήθως με δικαστικές εγγυήσεις. Γνωστότερα από αυτά είναι το γερμανικό και το τουρκικό. Οπως έχει κρίνει το Δικαστήριο του Στρασβούργου, η απαγόρευση αυτή, όταν θεμελιώνεται σε πράξεις και επίσημες διακηρύξεις και όχι σε μεμονωμένα περιστατικά, δεν προσκρούει στη Σύμβαση της Ρώμης (ΕΣΔΑ). Οι Αρχές, πάντως, δεν μπόρεσαν να εμποδίσουν την ανασύσταση των κομμάτων που απαγορεύτηκαν. Κάτι που λέει πολλά για τη μικρή αποτελεσματικότητα του θεσμού της απαγόρευσης, υπό καθεστώς δημοκρατίας.

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Sunday, September 16, 2012

The audacity of democracy

by Akhil Reed Amar

Los Angeles Times

September 16, 2012

Monday marks the 225th anniversary of the turning point of the world — the hinge of modern human history.

On Sept. 16, 1787, kings, czars, sultans, princes, emperors, moguls, feudal lords and tribal chieftains dominated most of Earth's landmass and population. Wars and famines were commonplace. So it had always been. Democracies had existed in a few old Greek and Italian city-states, but most of these small-scale republics had winked out long before the American Revolution. While Britain had a House of Commons and a broad-based jury system, hereditary British kings and lords still retained vast powers. A small number of Swiss yeomen governed themselves, and the Dutch republic was on its last legs. That was about it for democracy in the world.

Today, roughly half the planet lives under democracy of some sort. What happened to precipitate this stunning global transformation?

Here's what. On Sept. 17, 1787, a small cluster of American notables who had been meeting behind closed doors in Philadelphia went public with an audacious proposal. The plan, signed by George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and 37 other leading statesmen, began as follows: "We the People of the United States … do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

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Steve Brodner

                 

Friday, September 14, 2012

Terry Jones and the First Amendment

by Geoffrey R. Stone

Huffington Post

September 14, 2012

Are those who condemn Islam and mock Mohammad protected by the First Amendment? There are two arguments one might make to support the proposition that such speech is beyond the protection of the Constitution. First, one might argue that such speech is blasphemous and, as such, is outside the boundaries of the First Amendment.

Historically, supporters of laws against blasphemy have argued that such laws are necessary to avert divine wrath, to enforce conformity with prevailing beliefs, to insulate those beliefs from the contagion of doubt, to protect the sensibilities of believers, and to avoid retaliation by believers against those who deride their beliefs.

During the Middle Ages, the penalty for blasphemy included death, imprisonment on bread and water (often causing a lingering death), cutting off the lips, and burning or tearing out the tongue. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, executions and other brutal punishments for blasphemy were inflicted throughout Europe.

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Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Ruling Shows Court's Weakness in EU Matters

by Thomas Darnstädt

Spiegel

September 12, 2012

The ruling on Wednesday by the Federal Constitutional Court on the euro bailout fund makes one thing very clear: The Karlsruhe-based institution will not stop European integration because it can't. The justices have created expectations among the people that they are no longer able to fulfill.


Never before has there been this much drama at Germany's Federal Constitutional Court. One of the longest-serving police guards working there confided to a radio reporter that there has never been anything like this at the highest court in the land. The scene was thronged with journalists, satellite dishes, broadcast vans, cables and floodlights: The entire world had its eyes turned to this courthouse, a converted barrack on the edge of this western German city. All the fanfare was directed at one highly anticipated event: Eight judges, three of them professors, were about to publicly declare whether they intended to block efforts to resolve the euro debt crisis.

So, what happened? Just what everyone expected: The European Union will not be stopped in its tracks. Germany can now ratify the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), the permanent euro bailout fund, and the fiscal pact aimed at bringing economic governance to countries in the euro zone -- albeit with a few conditions. What's more, court President Andreas Vosskuhle repeated his usual warning that euro bailout packages cannot come at the cost of a loss of power for the Bundestag, Germany's federal parliament. Everyone has now relaxed, and even the German DAX index of blue chip companies is climbing.

But that's not all that happened. Never before has it been so clear that the best days of the Karlsruhe court are already behind it. All the pomp and circumstance of the eight judges in their red robes has grown hollow. The panel regularly and solemnly convenes in its massive courtroom to rule on what the relationship between the European Union and the democracy guaranteed in Germany's constitution should be. However, everyone sitting in the courtroom knows that there is precious little democracy when it comes to the current crisis in Europe.

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Saturday, September 8, 2012

The Mirage of Progressive Originalism

Dana Verkouteren/AP/Corbis
by Randy Barnett

Wall Street Journal

September 7, 2012

Akhil Reed Amar is a rarity: a progressive law professor who is unafraid of the text of the Constitution. Most progressives would see whole passages of the Founders' Constitution "interpreted" away. But Mr. Amar has never met a clause he didn't like. In his ambitious new book, America's Unwritten Constitution, he examines the paradox of needing to go beyond the text in order to faithfully follow the text.

At nearly 500 pages of analysis, this is actually two books in one. In the first, the author discusses what he calls "America's Implicit Constitution," by which he means what you can glean "between the lines" of the text. His is a "holistic" interpretation, one that rejects reading passages or clauses of the text in isolation from the document as a whole. He is masterfully creative in finding overarching themes that tie the disparate clauses together in novel and sometimes counterintuitive ways. For example, because the abortion and contraception laws invalidated in Roe v. Wade and in Griswold v. Connecticut, respectively, were enacted before women could vote, Mr. Amar proposes that the old statutes should have been held unconstitutional under "a robust vision of the Nineteenth Amendment" that protected women's suffrage (though he also intimates that, if reenacted today, such laws might violate the "robust idea of sex equality" now supported by "a strong majority of Americans," which provides a "popular gloss" on the Fourteenth Amendment).

In what amounts to a second book, Mr. Amar dedicates chapters to "America's Symbolic Constitution," "America's Feminist Constitution," "America's 'Georgian' Constitution" (as in George Washington), "America's Institutional Constitution," "America's Partisan Constitution," "America's Conscientious Constitution" and "America's Unfinished Constitution." These chapters read more like separate essays on discrete topics than parts of a coherent whole, but they do reveal the expansiveness of Mr. Amar's vision of an unwritten Constitution.

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