382 citiri

(…)
La rupture a eu lieu avec la Révolution française qui a profondément changé le rôle du juge. S’opposant radicalement à l’Ancien droit, Montesquieu aurait voulu, au nom de la séparation des pouvoirs, que le droit eut la loi pour source exclusive et que les magistrats n’eussent donc aucun pouvoir créateur; il suffit d’en donner trois citations, la troisième étant la plus célèbre: 1) „Plus le gouvernement approche de la république, plus la manière de juger doit être fixe”; 2) „dans le gouvernement républicain, les juges suivent la lettre de la loi”; 3) „Les juges de la nation ne sont […] que la bouche qui prononce les paroles de la loi, des êtres inanimés qui n’en peuvent modérer ni la force ni la rigueur”. Ce n’est pas ce qui s’est passe et même tout de suite après la Revolution les juges n’ont jamais eu pour role de n’être que „la bouches de la loi”. Malgré la reverence que Portalis portait à Montesquieu, il a, au contraire, affirmé le pouvoir créateur du juge, mais en le subordonnant à la loi: „Forcer le magistrat de recourir au législateur (pour interpreter la loi, lorsque le juge la trouvait obscure, au moyen du référé législatif, comme l’avait prévu la loi de 1790), ce serait le plus funeste des principes […]. On ne peu pas plus se passer de jurisprudence que de lois”; il précisait aussi que la jurisprudence s’exerçait „sous la surveillance du législateur” qui pouvait „la corriger”.
Sans doute, de 1790 a l’an VIII, s’inspirant des idées de Montesquieu, l’absolutisme et l’exclusivité de la loi furent imposes au juge par le „référé législatif”, l’obligeant à saisir le pouvoir législatif chaque fois que se posait une difficulté d’interpretation d’une loi. Le Tribunal de cassation (qui a precede la Cour de cassation) a, dans sa pratique, écarté le plus souvent cette disposition, qui fut rapidement abandonnée, d’abord par le Code civil, dont l’article 4 a reconnu au juge le pouvoir d’interpreter la loi. Le référé législatif conserva cependant quelques avatars, jusqu’a ce que son dernier vertige fut supprimé par la loi du 1er avril 1837.

Philippe Malaurie
(Les précédents et le droit: rapport français în Precedent and the Law, Reports to the XVIIth Congress International Academy of Comparative Law, Utrech, 16-22 July 2006, ed. Bruyland, Bruxelles, 2007, la pp. 141-142)

[O știre conform căreia Iugoslavia este acum angajată într-o purjare a scriitorilor și artiștilor m-a făcut să mă uit încă o dată la rapoartele recentelor acțiuni de purjare literară din URSS, când Zoschenko, Akhmatova și alții au fost izgoniți din Uniunea Scriitorilor.

În Anglia, astfel de lucruri nu se întâmplă încă așa că putem privi cu o anumită detașare și, destul de curios, când mă uit din nou la constatările a ceea ce s-a întâmplat, îmi pare mult mai rău pentru persecutori decât pentru victimele lor. Șeful printre persecutori este Andrei Zhdanov, considerat de unii drept probabil succesor al lui Stalin. Zhdanov, deși a purtat acțiuni de purjare literară și înainte, este un politician cu normă întreagă, care – pentru a judeca din discursurile sale – este un cunoscător al literaturii pe cât de bine cunosc eu aerodinamica. El este cu adevărat șocat de devierea unor scriitori sovietici, care i se pare a fi o trădare incomprehensibilă, ca o revoltă militară în mijlocul unei bătălii.
Scopul literaturii este de a glorifica Uniunea Sovietică; cu siguranță că asta trebuie să fie evident pentru toată lumea? Dar, în loc să-și îndeplinească această îndatorire simplă, respectivii scriitori aflați în eroare se îndepărtează de căile propagandei, producând opere nepolitice și chiar în cazul lui Sozschenko, permițând unei note satirice să se strecoare în scrierile lor. Totul este foarte dureros și uimitor. Este ca si cum ai oferi unui om posibilitatea de a lucra intr-o fabrica excelentă, la zi, cu aer condiționat, i-ai dat salarii mari, ore scurte, cantine bune si terenuri de joaca, un apartament confortabil, o scoala pentru copilașii lui, asigurare socială totală și muzica în timp ce lucrează – doar pentru a-l găsi cum aruncă nerecunoscător chei în utilaje din chiar prima zi.
Ceea ce face totul patetic este admiterea generală – o admitere onestă, văzând că publiciștii sovietici nu au obiceiul de a-și denigra propria țară, că literatura rusă ca întreg nu este ceea ce ar trebui să fie.
Deoarece USSR reprezintă cea mai înaltă formă de civilizație existentă, este evident că ar trebui să conducă lumea și în literatură ca și în orice altceva. „Cu siguranță”, spune Zhdanov, „noul nostru sistem socialist, care încorporează tot ce este mai bun în istoria civilizației și culturii umane, este capabil să creeze cea mai avansată literatură,care va lăsa mult în urma cele mai bune creații ale timpurilor de aur”. (citat de ziarul New York, Politics), Izvestia merge mai departe: „Cultura noastră se află pe un nivel nemaiîntâlnit de superior în comparație cu burgheza cultură… Nu este clar că a noastră cultură are dreptul să nu acționeze ca un elev și imitator, ci dimpotrivă, să-i învețe pe ceilalți moralitatea umană generală?” Și totuși lucrurile așteptate nu se întâmplă niciodată. Directivele sunt emise, rezoluțiile sunt adoptate în unanimitate, scriitorii recalcitranți sunt făcuți să tacă: și totuși dintr-un anumit motiv o literatură viguroasă și originală, fără îndoială superioară celei a țărilor capitaliste, nu reușește să apară.
Toate acestea s-au întâmplat înainte și de mai multe ori. Libertatea de exprimare a avut urcușuri și coborâșuri în URSS, dar tendința generală a fost spre o cenzură mai strictă. Lucrul pe care politicienii se pare că nu pot să-l înțeleagă este că nu poți produce o literatură viguroasă prin terorizarea tuturor spre a se conforma. Capacitățile inventive ale scriitorului nu vor funcționa decât dacă îi este permis să spună cu aproximație ceea ce simte. Puteți distruge spontaneitatea și puteți produce o literatură ortodoxă, dar slabă, sau puteți lăsa oamenii să spună ceea ce aleg și să vă asumați riscul ca unii dintre ei să rostească erezii. Nu există nici o cale de ieșire din această dilemă atât timp cât cărțile trebuie să fie scrise de indivizi.
De aceea, într-un fel, mă simt mai preocupat de persecutori decât de victime. Este probabil ca Zoschenko și ceilalți să aibă cel puțin satisfacția de a înțelege ce se întâmplă cu ei: politicienii care îi hărțuiesc doar încearcă imposibilul. Pentru Zhdanov și celor care îi seamănă, să spui că „Uniunea Sovietică poate exista fără literatură”, ar fi ceva rezonabil. Dar tocmai asta nu pot ei spune. Ei nu știu ce este literatura, dar știu că este importantă, că are o valoare de prestigiu și că este necesară în scopuri de propagandă și că ei ar dori să o încurajeze, dacă ar ști doar cum. Așa că ei continuă cu acțiunile de purjare și cu emiterea directivelor lor, ca un pește care își bate nasul de zidul unui acvariu din nou și din nou, prea lipsit de inteligență pentru a realiza că sticla și apa nu sunt același lucru. (s.n. – M.M.-B.)]

A news item to the effect that Yugoslavia is now engaged on a purge of writers and artists led me to look once again at the reports of the recent literary purge in the U.S.S.R., when Zoschenko, Akhmatova and others were expelled from the Writers’ Union.
In England this kind of thing is not happening to us as yet, so that we can view it with a certain detachment, and, curiously enough, as I look again at the accounts of what happened, I feel somewhat more sorry for the persecutors than for their victims. Chief among the persecutors is Andrei Zhdanov, considered by some to be Stalin’s probable successor. Zhdanov, though he has conducted literary purges before, is a full-time politician with – to judge from his speeches – about as much knowledged of literature as I have of aerodynamics. He does not give the impression of being, according to his own lights, a wicked or dishonest man. He is truly shocked by the defection of certain Soviet writers, which appears to him as an incomprehensible piece of treachery, like a military mutiny in the middle of a battle.
The purpose of literature is to glorify the Soviet Union; surely that must be obvious to everyone? But instead of carrying out their plain duty, these misguided writers keep straying away from the paths of propaganda, producing non-political works, and even, in the case of Sozschenko, allowing a satirical note to creep into their writings. It is all very painful and bewildering. It is as though you set a man to work in an excellent, up-to-date, air-conditioned factory, gave him high wages, short hours, good canteens and playing-grounds, a comfortable flat, a nursery – school for his children, all-round social insurance and music while you work – only to find the ungrateful fellow throwing spanners into the machinery on his very first day.
What makes the whole thing somewhat pathetic is the general admission – an honest admission, seeing that Soviet publicists are not in the habit of decrying their own country that Russian literature as a whole is not what it ought to be.
Since the U.S.S.R. represents the highest existing form of civilisation, it is obvious that it ought to lead the world in literature as in everything else. ‘Surely’, says Zhdanov, ‘our new Socialist system, embodying all that is best in the history of human civilisation and culture, is capable of creating the most advanced literature, which will leave far behind the best creations of golden times.’ Izvestia (as quoted by the New York paper, Politics), goes further: ‘Our culture stands on an immeasurably higher level than bourgeois culture … Is it not clear that our culture has the right not to act as a pupil and imitator but, on the contrary, to teach others the general human morals?” And yet somehow the expected thing never happens. Directives are issued, resolutions are passed unanimously, recalcitrant writers are silenced: and yet for some reason a vigorous and original literature, unmistakably superior to that of capitalist countries, fails to emerge.
All this has happened before, and more than once. Freedom of expression has had its ups and downs in the U.S.S.R., but the general tendency has been towards tighter censorship. The thing that politicians are seemingly unable to understand is that you cannot produce a vigorous literature by terrorising everyone into conformity. A writer’s inventive faculties will not work unless he is allowed to say approximately what he feels. You can destroy spontaneity and produce a literature which is orthodox but feeble, or you can let people say what they choose and take the risk that some of them will utter heresies. There is no way out of that dilemma so long as books have to be written by individuals.
That is why, in a way, I feel sorrier for the persecutors than for the victims. It is probable that Zoschenko and the others at least have the satisfaction of understanding what is happening to them: the politicians who harry them are merely attempting the impossible. For Zhdanov and his kind to say, „The Soviet Union can exist without literature,” would be reasonable. But this is just what they can’t say. They don’t know what literature is, but they know that it is important, that it has prestige value, and that is necessary for propaganda purposes, and they would like to encourage it, if only they knew how. So they continue with their purges and directives, like a fish bashing its nose against the wall of an aquarium again and again, too dim-witted to realise that glass and water are not the same thing. (s.n. – M.M.-B.)

George Orwell
(As I Please, Tribune, 3 ianuarie 1947 publicat în Essays, Everyman’s Library, 2002, la pp. 1158-1160)

The principle of “equal justice under law”, carved into stone over many a courthouse, needs to be translated into action in our world. And we have to realize that gaining real access for all to the justice system is only the beginning of the attainment of justice. Thus, many people who, after a struggle, obtain access to courts, find indifference to their concerns; lack of sympathy for their vulnerability; antagonism to their claim of rights. Or they find that the law is completely out of date, with no reform mechanism to improve it and no real interest to repair its injustices and inefficiencies. Sadly, it is in such circumstances that corruption breeds; because corruption is all too often the solution that economics provides to remedy outdated, unjust and inefficient laws. We do not cure corruption only by imposing big punishments. We must tackle the inflexibilities of the justice system with precisely the same energy with which we endeavour to promote access to it.

[Principiul ”justiție egală în cadrul legal”, cioplit în piatră în multe instanțe de judecată, necesită a fi transpus în acțiune în lumea noastră. Și trebuie să conștientizăm că a căpăta acces real pentru toți la sistemul de justiție este numai începutul pentru realizarea justiției. Astfel, mulți oameni, după ce obțin acces la instanțe luptându-se, se lovesc de indiferență cu privire la îngrijorările lor, lipsă de compasiune față de vulnerabilitățile lor, rezistență față de revendicarea drepturilor lor. Sau descoperă că legea este complet desuetă, fără niciun mecanism de îmbunătățire și fără niciun interes în repararea nedreptăților și ineficacităților. În mod trist, tocmai în astfel de circumstanțe înflorește corupția, deoarece corupția este mult prea des soluția oferită din punct de vedere financiar pentru a contracara legi desuete, nedrepte și ineficace. Corupția nu va fi eradicată numai prin impunerea de sancțiuni drastice. Trebuie să abordăm rigiditatea sistemului de justiție tocmai cu aceeași energie cu care ne străduim să promovăm accesul la el.- traducere și selecție de Ioana Cornescu]

Michael Kirby
(Prefață la Raportul PNUD din 2005 Programming for justice: access for all.
A practitioner’s guide to a human-rights based approach to access to justice)

73. În plus, articolul 47 din cartă, care constituie o reafirmare a principiului protecției jurisdicționale efective, prevede, la primul paragraf, că orice persoană ale cărei drepturi și libertăți garantate de dreptul Uniunii sunt încălcate are dreptul la o cale de atac efectivă în fața unei instanțe judecătorești, în conformitate cu condițiile stabilite la articolul menționat. Trebuie amintit că existența însăși a unui control jurisdicțional efectiv destinat să asigure respectarea dispozițiilor dreptului Uniunii este inerentă existenței unui stat de drept (a se vedea Hotărârea din 18 decembrie 2014, Abdida, C‑562/13, EU:C:2014:2453, punctul 45, și Hotărârea din 6 octombrie 2015, Schrems, C‑362/14, EU:C:2015:650, punctul 95).

74. Deși, desigur, articolul 47 din cartă nu poate crea o competență pentru Curte atunci când tratatele o exclud, principiul protecției jurisdicționale efective implică totuși ca excluderea competenței Curții în domeniul PESC să fie interpretată în mod restrictiv.

Marea Cameră, Curtea de Justiție
(Hotărârea din data de 28 martie 2017, C-72/15, EU:C:2017:236)

44. The Court also acknowledges that the applicant’s counsel appears to have had restricted access to the case file initially; nevertheless, that restriction was only of a financial nature, in the sense that the payment of certain taxes was required in exchange for copies of the relevant and necessary documents. In that respect, the Court considers it important to distinguish the present case from the line of cases in which the restricted access to certain documents was justified by the domestic legislation on public interest grounds (see, for instance, Luboch, cited above, § 63).
45. While reiterating that, in principle, the failure to afford effective access to a case file may be an important factor in the Court’s assessment of how the principle of equality of arms has been applied, the Court considers that the effectiveness of such access cannot necessarily imply the obligation on domestic authorities to provide free copies of the case file in the absence of any indication that the interested party lacks the financial means to pay the stamp duty on those copies prescribed by the law. The Court notes that, in the present case, the applicant has never argued that he was poor or otherwise unable to pay the required fees for obtaining the copies; his lawyer’s application to be exempted from paying the legal fees was based mainly on an alleged lack of legal justification for such payments (see paragraph 13 above). Furthermore, the Court cannot ignore that in exchange for the copies of some 200 pages from the case-file, the applicant and/or his lawyer had to pay approximately EUR 80 (see paragraph 11 above), amount which does not appear as excessive in itself, let alone proved to be excessive in relation to the applicant’s financial means.
46. Lastly, the Court notes that the applicant did not refer to any breach of his defence rights protected by Article 6 of the Convention in his appeal against the first‑instance court’s decision, either expressly or in substance. For the purposes of the applicant’s complaints before it, the Court finds it relevant that the appeal court had the opportunity to fully review the applicant’s case, from both a procedural and substantive point of view (see paragraph 23 above).
47. Assessing the fairness of the proceedings as a whole, and in view of the particulars of the present case, the Court is satisfied that, even assuming that there were defects in the proceedings before the first-instance court in relation to the applicant’s right to mount an effective defence, those defects were cured before the case went before the appeal court. The fact that the applicant himself chose to withdraw his appeal on points of law against the appeal court’s judgment (see paragraphs 24 and 25 above) may also be interpreted as indirect confirmation of this viewpoint.
(…)

Curtea Europeană a Drepturilor Omului
(Decizia din data de 15 mai 2018, Petrovai împotriva României, cererea nr. 44231/10, CE:ECHR:2018:0515DEC004423110)

The right to liberty is of fundamental importance. As well as the value to the individual of liberty in itself, many of the other rights protected by the Convention are to a certain extent conditional upon it.
(…)
In their approach to the interpretation of Article 5, the Strasbourg Court has done much to overcome these problems. Most of the basic principles under Article 5 are now clearly established. Nonetheless, this is a Convention Article that is repeatedly violated by many Contracting Parties. Corruption and political pressure on judges can in some countries mean that individuals are detained pre-trial even where there is no reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct. In parts of central and eastern Europe, Soviet traditions have been hard to dispel, and criminal suspects are still detained almost as a matter of course, even where the national court has not clearly identified any real ground for refusing bail. Under resourced legal systems and long delays in coming to trial can mean that individuals who have not been convicted of any wrongdoing are detained for year after year. Those States which have bad records in relation to unjustified and excessively lengthy pre-trial detention under Article 5(3), moreover, are frequently also States which the Strasbourg Court has found under Article 3 to provide inhuman and degrading conditions of detention. (s.n. – M.M.-B.)

B. Rainey, E. Wicks, C. Ovey
(Jacobs, White, and Ovey: The European Convention on Human Rights, Oxford University Press, ediția a 7 a, data apariției: 14 septembrie 2017, la p. 272)

As with all the other terms describing vulnerable groups in Article 5(1)(e), the word ‘alcoholic’ carries an autonomous Convention meaning. The Court gave some indication as to how it should be interpreted in the first case to come before it concerning detention for drunkenness (Witold Litwa v Poland). The applicant was apprehended by the police for drunkenness. He was taken to a sobering-up centre, where he was certified by a doctor as being ‘moderately intoxicated’ and held for six and a half hours.
(…)
The applicant’s arrest and detention therefore in principle fell within the scop of Article 5(1)(e) (nota de subsol 193 – However, the Court found that there had been a violation of Ar. 5(1) because there was no evidence that the applicant had behaved in such a way as to pose a threat to himself or others or that the draconian measure of detention was necessary in the light of the rather trivial facts of the case). An individual could not be deprived of his liberty for being an ‘alcoholic’ unless other, less severe, measures had been considered and found to be insufficient to safeguard the individual or public interest. (s.n. – M.M.-B.)

B. Rainey, E. Wicks, C. Ovey
(Jacobs, White, and Ovey: The European Convention on Human Rights, Oxford University Press, ediția a 7 a, data apariției: 14 septembrie 2017, la pp. 261-2)

102. Eu égard à ces principes, la Cour considère que la première phrase de l’article 5 § 1 de la Convention doit elle aussi être comprise comme imposant à l’Etat l’obligation positive de protéger la liberté de ses ressortissants. Conclure que tel n’est pas le cas serait non seulement en contradiction avec la jurisprudence de la Cour, en particulier sous l’angle des articles 2, 3 et 8 de la Convention, mais créerait également une lacune assez grande dans la protection contre la détention arbitraire, ce qui ne cadrerait pas avec l’importance que revêt la liberté individuelle dans une société démocratique. L’Etat est donc tenu de prendre des mesures offrant une protection effective aux personnes vulnérables, notamment des mesures raisonnables destinées à empêcher une privation de liberté dont les autorités avaient ou auraient dû avoir connaissance (voir, mutatis mutandis, Z et autres c. Royaume-Uni [GC], no 29392/95, § 73, CEDH 2001-V, et Ilaşcu et autres c. Moldova et Russie [GC], no 48787/99, §§ 332-352 et 464, CEDH 2004-VII).

102. Having regard to this, the Court considers that Article 5 § 1, first sentence, of the Convention must equally be construed as laying down a positive obligation on the State to protect the liberty of its citizens. Any conclusion to the effect that this was not the case would not only be inconsistent with the Court’s case-law, notably under Articles 2, 3 and 8 of the Convention, it would also leave a sizeable gap in the protection from arbitrary detention, which would be inconsistent with the importance of personal liberty in a democratic society. The State is therefore obliged to take measures providing effective protection of vulnerable persons, including reasonable steps to prevent a deprivation of liberty of which the authorities have or ought to have knowledge (see, mutatis mutandis, Z and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 29392/95, § 73, ECHR 2001-V, and Ilaşcu and Others v. Moldova and Russia [GC], no. 48787/99, §§ 332‑52 and 464, ECHR 2004-VII). (s.n. – M.M.-B.)

Curtea Europeană a Drepturilor Omului
(Hotărârea din data de 16 iunie 2005, Stork împotriva Germaniei, cererea nr. 61603/00, CE:ECHR:2005:0616JUD006160300)

Nota de subsol 27: L’imagination n’est évidemment pas discrétionnaire. A propos de cette disposition, B. Cardozo écrivait, dans The Nature of the Judicial Process, 1921, la p. 141: “The judge, even when he is free, is still not wholly free. He is not to innovate at pleasure. He is not a knight-errant, roaming at will in pursuit of his own ideal of beauty or goodness. He is to draw his inspiration from consecrated principles. He is not to yield to spasmodic sentiment, to vague and unregulated benevolence. He is to exercise a discretion informed by tradition, methodized by analogy, disciplined by system and subordinated to the ‘primordial necessity of order in the social life’”.

N. Aloupi, C. Kleiner
(Le précédent en droit international: Technique pre-normative ou acte normatif? în Le précédent en droit international, ed. Pedone, 2016, la p. 19)

The Canadian Charter of Rights, adopted in 1982, provides another version of weak-form review, notably labeled ‘dialogic’ by the leading Canadian constitutional scholar Peter Hogg and one of his students. As with the other documents I have discussed in this chapter, the Charter lists fundamental rights. Two provisions create weak-form review in Canada. Section 1 provides that right guaranteed by the charter are subject to ‘such limitations as are demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society’. Section 33 provides that Canadian legislatures can make statutes effective, for renewable five-year periods, notwithstanding their inconsistency with a large number of important charter provisions (nota de subsol 15: voting, mobility, and language rights are excepted). These provisions license two kinds of legislative response to the constitutional interpretations offered by the courts.
Consider a regulation of commercial expression – for example, a regulation of advertising for sweetened cereals, whose target audiences are children. The Court says that the goal of promoting health by diminishing children’s consumption of sweetened cereals is a permissible one, but concludes that the regulation as enacted sweeps within its coverage too much expression that need not be regulated in order to accomplish a significant reduction in consumption.
How can the legislature respond?
The Section 1 response is this: Bolster the record supporting the legislation so that it provides a better – a more ‘demonstrable’ – justification for the statute’s scope. For example, the legislature might compile evidence, if it can, showing that narrowing the statute’s scope would make it much more difficult to administer effectively, by requiring regulatory agencies to draw lines that they are not competent to draw, or that any wording that would narrow the statute’s scope to accommodate the Court’s concerns would actually leave advertisements on the market that contribute significantly to the demands children make on their parents. Note, though, that the Section 1 response takes the Court’s interpretation of the charter to be correct, and disagrees only with that interpretation’s application to the statute.
In contrast, the idealised Section 33 response does involve a dialogue about constitutional meaning. To continue the example, the Parliament might enact a Section 33 override of the Court’s decision because, in the legislature’s view, the charter’s provisions dealing with freedom of expression are simply inapplicable to commercial speech. This use of section 33 response would be predicated on a disagreement between the Court and the legislature over what the Charter means, not merely over how it should be applied.

Mark Tushnet
(Weak Courts, Strong Rights, Princeton University Press, 2009, la pp. 31-33)