Indefinite detention
iunie 4, 2009
President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition
There is a confusion about “judgement” in this issue. An imprisonned person has been already judged by somebody. That somebody decided that person should be deprived of liberty: the decision in itself is a judgement. Now, in democracy and even before it, we decided judgements should not occure on an arbitrary basis. Depending on custom it’s a qualified person or a group of citizens who can decide depriving somebody of his freedom. Admitting that somebody can be “indefinitedly” imprisonned is giving the right to judge to an unknown person, maybe a secret service agent, maybe a politician, at any rate not to somebody the society named and empowered as lawfully a judge.
On another hand democracy is not only about living comfortably in one of the rich states of the West, it implies risks and most of all courage. This is something we tend to forget nowadays. We forget that the first modern state to become democrat has been attacked by all its neighbours, we forget democracy has to be defended not only a successful business.
All the talk about allowing somebody potentially dangerous free because we don’t have the documents to convict him is about courage. We are deeply inefficient if we consider somebody dangerous but we cannot prove it to our own laws. We are despicably mean if we consider him dangerous but we don’t want to pay enough surveillance to gather facts to convict him or clear him of any suspicion. And finally we are surprisingly irresponsible if his freedom is less important to us than our own as long as we cannot prove he is really dangerous.
Remember our laws first and foremost refer to us individually and only after refer to our enemies.
