Subject:
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Jurisdiction and Hypocrisy
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Fri, 20 Jun 2003 09:34:23 GMT
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Viewed:
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226 times
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Belgium Gets War Crimes Cases Against Bush/Blair
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0619-09.htm
BRUSSELS - Belgium said on Thursday it had received lawsuits against President
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair under a controversial war crimes law.
But it said it had forwarded the cases to the defendants’ countries, reducing
their chances of reaching a court.
Belgium has come under harsh criticism especially from the United States for the
law, which empowers its courts to try foreigners for serious war and human
rights crimes no matter where they were committed.
I only have two words to say in response: Manuel Noriega.
Prior to 1990, a foreign head of state had never been brought to the United
States to stand trial for offenses committed outside the country. Why?
Jurisdiction. If that doesn’t mean anything to you then you need a better
understanding of the legal concept of “jurisdiction” and here it is.
According to Wikipedia
http://www.wikipedia.org/w/wiki.phtml?search=jurisdiction&go=Go, “In most
common law systems, jurisdiction is conceptually divided between jurisdiction
over the subject matter of a case and jurisdiction over the litigants.” But
there is also territorial jurisdiction -- which is to say that the contemplated
subjects and acts occurred within the territories governed by the state. You
wouldn’t stand trial in Canada for a murder committed in the United States...or
would you?
Traditionally, the answer is no. Under that reading of jurisdiction the United
States had no authority to hold, try, or even to convict Manuel Noriega. Simple
as that.
The idea that there is a law above the law of a given nation brings us into
International Law and the concept of an International Tribunal that may be
empowered by participating nations to have jurisdiction over subjects and acts
committed all over the world. But that any one country has the right to try the
leader of another a country is a very new and very controversial idea.
Of course, the United States wants it both ways: it wants to put Noriega away
probably forever, while at the same time insisting that U.S. citizens are in
some way above having the same thing done to them by another country, like
Belgium.
The controversy over jurisdiction does nothing to diminish the questions of fact
surrounding the sorts of acts that are contemplated as “war crimes” and “human
rights crimes.” And with our ongoing occupation of Iraq things are bound to
start smelling even worse than they do now.
-- Hop-Frog
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