those who cannot remember the past
13:16 | 25-06-2014 | Jurisprudence, Politics | No Comments
отличное эссе Уильяма Джозефа Бреннана младшего, члена Верховного суда США:
There is <...> a good deal to be embarrassed about, when one reflects on the shabby treatment civil liberties have received in the United States during times of war and perceived threats to national security. For as adamant as my country has been about civil liberties during peacetime, it has a long story of failing to preserve civil liberties when it perceived its national security threatened. This series of failures is particularly frustrating in that it appears to result not from informed and rational decisions that protecting civil liberties would expose expose the United States to unacceptable security risks, but rather from the episodic nature of our security crises. After each perceived security crisis ended, the United States has remorsefully realized that the abrogation of civil liberties was unnecessary. But it has proven unable to prevent itself from repeating the error when the next crisis came along.
именно так, благими страхами, у нас отбирают свободу[1].
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как сказал когда-то Томас Генри Бингэм, член палаты лордов по рассмотрению апелляций
[A]djudicative procedures provided by the state should be fair. The rule of law would seem to require no less. The general arguments in favour of open hearings are familiar, summed up on this side of the Atlantic by the dictum that justice must manifestly and undoubtedly be seen to be done and on the American side by the observation that “Democracies die behind closed doors.”