The traditional common law tool to withhold information from the parties to a court case is Public Interest Immunity (PII). PII is a principle of English common law under which the courts can grant a court order allowing one litigant to refrain from disclosing evidence to the other litigants where disclosure would be damaging to the public interest. The areas of public interest that may be protected by PII include: national security, international relations and the prevention and detection of crime. The categories of PII are not fixed, but the courts will not recognise new categories without clear and compelling evidence. An order that PII applies would usually be sought by the British Government to protect official secrets. However, the heads of the intelligence agencies are under a statutory duty to ensure that there are arrangements in place to ensure that no information is disclosed by the agencies except so far as it is provided for in statute. Whilst it is for the government or the security agencies to raise a claim for PII, in Conway v Rimmer, the House of Lords held that the courts retained the final decision of whether a PII disclosure should be upheld. Ultimately then, whilst Under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relevant evidence should generally be disclosed to the parties, even in civil proceedings, this right is not absolute and limits on disclosure may be justified, for example, in the interests of justice or of national security in order to protect the public from harm.
The use of PII has been problematic in that, a claim in which evidence is excluded may be prevented from proceeding. For example, in Candruff v Rock, a majority of the Court of Appeal found that the case could no...
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...s wrong-doing and misconduct by officials and agents.
Overall then, for civil libertarians, the rule of law embodies the notion that there should be ‘due process of law’: It imposes significant constraints upon how the law is made and how it adjudicates. For example, it suggests that all laws should be ‘general’ in that they apply to all citizens and do not select particular individuals or groups for special treatment, good or bad. The principle of the rule of law effectively means that laws should be precisely framed and accessible to the public. Thus, the law is not to be seen as a constraint upon the individual, but as an essential guarantee of his liberty. The supreme virtue of the rule of law, for liberals such as Dicey, therefore, is said to be that it serves to protect the citizen from the state in that it ‘ensures a government of laws and not of men’
...ection against the government. Others believe that courts must be more active and open to expand the ideas of liberty even if it is required to strike down the majoritarian law in order to protect the minority group from government interference.
What this basically says is that laws are made up to maintain order, monitor. actions, and work in the best interest of society as a whole. If there were no laws, chaos and anarchy would be widespread. This is why society has set up government. The sex of the sex.... ...
The Rule of Law has always been a widely discussed topic throughout the history of modern political thinking. It can be defined as, “the principle that all people and institutions are subject to and accountable to law that is fairly applied and enforced; the principle of government by law” (Dictionary.com). English philosopher John Locke and Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau have both developed well-rounded and detailed accounts on the Rule of Law and its crucial role in ensuring democracy and freedom in society. Despite the undeniable success and importance of their works and ideas, I believe ________ constructed a more persuasive and influential argument in explaining the extensive effects of the Rule of Law on government and society.
The People's Party, also known as the "Populists", was a short-lived political party in the United States established in 1891 during the Populist movement. It was most important in 1892-96, and then rapidly faded away. Based among poor, white cotton farmers in the South and hard-pressed wheat farmers in the plain states, it represented a radical crusading form of agrarianism and hostility to banks, railroads, and elites generally. It sometimes formed coalitions with labor unions, and in 1896, the Democrats endorsed their presidential nominee, William Jennings Bryan. The terms "populist" and "populism" are commonly used for anti-elitist appeals in opposition to established interests and mainstream parties. Though the party did not win much of anything it did however shape the United States we know today.
Somewhere near the heart of much contemporary liberal political theory is the claim that if the state restricts an agent's liberty, its restrictions should have some rationale that is defensible to each of those whose liberty is constrained. Liberals are committed to the "requirement that all aspects of the social order should either be made acceptable or be capable of being made acceptable to every last individual." But there are many kinds of claim which are particularly controversial, many about which we expect reasonable disagreement. Coercive policies should not be justified on the basis of such controversial grounds; rather, they should enjoy public justification. That coercive policy should enjoy public justification implies that political actors are subject to various principles of restraint, that is, that they should restrain themselves from supporting policies solely on the basis of excessively controversial grounds. The point of advocating restraint is to achieve a minimal moral conception, a core morality, which is rationally acceptable to all and which provides the ground rules for political association.
Locke states that the correct form of civil government should be committed to the common good of the people, and defend its citizens’ rights to life, health, liberty, and personal possessions. He expects that a civil government’s legislative branch will create laws which benefit the wellbeing of its citizens, and that the executive branch will enforce laws under a social contract with the citizenry. “The first and fundamental positive law of all common-wealths is the establishing of the legislative power; as the first and fundamental natural law, which is to govern even the legislative itself, is the preservation of the society and (as far as will consist with the public good) of every person in it.”1 Locke believes that humans inherently possess complete and i...
In the Nineteenth Century the natural order of conservatism was challenged by new ideology such as Marxism and Liberalism. Conservatism was the norm and dominated Europe at the time so of course people were going to challenge monarchs because of their disagreement with the way they ruled. So I am here to show why conservatism is better for countries than liberalistic ideas. Also I will give sufficient reasoning why the conservative limits on voting should not change and why the limits are best for a country.
One major justification for minimising intervention into the lives of individuals, for liberals, may be a fear of a possible ‘tyranny of the majority’, including a majority religious or moral view. Mill, for example, was conscious of the damage that could be done by an over mighty state. Public power, for Mill, had to be limited by absolute natural rights, which pre-dated any particular consensus or majority view. Here, rights may be defined as a ‘protectiv...
BELLOTTI v. BAIRD. The Oyez Project at IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. 06 April 2014.
Fascism is a 20th century form of nationalistic, militaristic, totalitarian dictatorship that seeks to create a feasible society through strict regimentation of national and individual lives. Total subordination to the service of the state and unquestioning loyalty to its leader would adjust conflicting interests. It is a modern political ideology that looks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging of ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas of freedom and individual rights, it often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures and other elements of democracy. Despite fascism’s idealistic goals, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that have caused millions of deaths (notably WWII and the Holocaust). As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism and violence. Fascist movements oppose such doctrines as liberalism, individualism, materialism, communism and conservatism. In general, fascists stand against all scientific, economic, religious, academic, cultural and leisure activities that do not serve their vision of a national political life. Fascism emphasised nationalism, but its appeal was international. Fascist political parties and movements capitalised on the intense patriotism that emerged as a response to widespread social and political uncertainty after World War I (1914-1918) and the Russian Revolution of 1917. It flourished between the so called fascist era of 1919 and 1945 in many countries mainly Italy, Germany, Spain and Japan. Even such liberal democracies as France and England had important fascist movements.
Fascism may be described as an extreme right-wing movement in the form of a radical authoritarian nationalism. Fascism was first created in Italy by Mussolini in 1922 to 1943. Mussolini implemented force wherever necessary to ensure the continuation of the controlling environment he was trying to perfect. The Italian government was endeavouring to control nearly all aspects of life and had completely thrown the private and public spheres of life out of balance. A fascist state needs a strong leader who can motivate the nation to feel a huge sense of nationalism and thus increase the army’s size, have a nostalgia for the past, show a hatred of communism, no opposition parties or even perhaps create a scapegoat of the opposite party. A fascist state would also require state control over production and major banks to ensure control. In the beginning of 1933 when Adolf Hitler was given the chancellorship he began implementing these fascist ideals into the German society through propaganda speeches, passing legislation that banned certain practices and ignoring the binding clauses of the Treaty of Versailles and rebuilding the army to its former glory. Many historians have argued that the Nazi ruled Germany was a fascist state. This report will show that Nazi Germany was infact a fascist state in regards to women, children and the control of the government.
This theory looks at how the sovereign and its officials created the law based on social norms and the institutions (Hart, 1958). However, hard cases such as this makes for bad law, which test the validity of the law at hand based on what the objective of the law was in the first place. The law should not be so easily dismissed just because it does not achieve justice in the most morally sound manner (Hart, 1958). Bentham and Austin understood that there are two errors in the way law is understood, what the law is and what the law should be (Hart, 1958). He knew that if law was to become what humans perceived the law ought to be, the law itself would be lost, but he also recognized that if the opposite was to occur where the law replaced morality, than any man would escape liability and there would be no retribution (Hart, 1958). This theory looks at the point of view of the dissenting judge, Justice Gray, which is that the law is what it is, even if it may conflict with morals. Austin stated that “The existence of law is one thing; its merit and demerit another. Whether it be or be not is one enquiry; whether it be or be not conformable to an assumed standard, is a different enquiry (Hart, 1958).” This case presents the same conflict that Bentham and Austin addressed, that the law based on the statute of the
The rule of law is thought to be one of the most fundamental doctrines of the constitution of the whole of the United Kingdom. The distinctive UK‘s constitution has influences previously on the judicial system too. Government and the legal systems in history have both been involved in rules and discretion and most of all the elimination of all discretionary power in which both of these are impossible and unwanted. The rule of law means in one sense, government by the law but obviously government is by the people as well as by the law. As soon as the governing people are added in, the government can’t then be by law on there own. Although the situation is not undoubtedly as the making of particular laws can be guided by open and relatively stable general laws that have been made. For the Rule of Law to have meaning in a democratic society, it has to mean that those who run it have comply with it for it to work; there must be no room for an “ends justifies the means”
Modern day society is engrossed in a battle for protection of individual rights and freedoms from infringement by any person, be it the government or fellow citizens. Liberalism offers a solution to this by advocating for the protection of personal freedom. As a concept and ideology in political science, liberalism is a doctrine that defines the motivation and efforts made towards the protection of the aforementioned individual freedom. In the current society, the greatest feature of liberalism is the protection of individual liberty from intrusion or violation by a government. The activities of the government have, therefore, become the core point of focus. In liberalism, advocacy for personal freedom may translate to three ideal situations, based on the role that a government plays in a person’s life. These are no role, a limited role or a relatively large role. The three make up liberalism’s rule of thumb. (Van de Haar 1). Political theorists have
Law is one of the most important elements that transform humans from mere beasts into intelligent and special beings. Law tells us what is right and wrong and how we, humans, should act to achieve a peaceful society while enjoying individual freedoms. The key to a successful nation is a firm, strong, and fair code of high laws that provides equal and just freedom to all citizens of the country. A strong government is as important as a firm code of law as a government is a backbone of a country and of the laws. A government is a system that executes and determines its laws. As much as fair laws are important, a capable government that will not go corrupt and provide fair services holds a vital role in building and maintaining a strong country.