Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Human rights lawyer Geoff Budlender SC says courts should be seen as institutions that strengthen rather than undermine democracy, notes a Business Day report. Budlender said that in a participatory democracy, the courts played a crucial role as a ‘critical mechanism of accountability’ to the people. The Constitution gave the executive the function of developing and implementing policy, but this did not mean that every policy could claim a genuine democratic mandate, he said. According to the report, Budlender said his four years’ experience as a civil servant had shown him ‘it was unelected officials like me who made many of the most significant decisions’ on policy. The theory that the executive had ‘a monopoly of wisdom on policy questions, based on a democratic mandate, strikes me as somewhat remote from reality’, he said. Budlender added if courts were to live up to their role in democratising society, they needed to make judgments that did not undermine the other constitutional imperative – that the government should be able to govern. – Business Day
