More Legal Nihilism
This New York Times article presents another example, as if another is needed, of the defining characteristic of the Russian legal system. Namely, that it is primarily a means by which the power/security structures prey on those whose property they want, or crush those with the temerity to challenge them. Or, as the article says:
“There are laws in Russia, but the security services are beyond any laws,” said one of Ms. Kazakova’s lawyers, Dmitri Dmitriyev. “They act with total impunity. They can undertake special inquiries, collect information on people, violate fundamental human rights, put people in prison, keep them there as long as they want, manipulate judges and manipulate prosecutors. This case is just a demonstration of all this.”
The entire article is worth a read, but the parts about judges are particularly informative–and dispiriting.
A US judge once wrote that no man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. In Russia, no person’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the FSB (and pretty much any other state security apparatus) is in action. Which is always.
My biggest beef with the Russian legal system is that the laws are so vague, contradictory, and subject to individual interpretation that anybody and everybody is effectively breaking the law and can be shown to be doing so. The system thereby shifts from one where the authorities must prove somebody is in breach of the law to one whereby the authorities merely select whom they will punish.
Comment by Tim Newman — July 12, 2010 @ 8:40 am
Russia has no “legal system.” It has no laws. It has no judges. It has no lawyers. It has only a crazed dictatorship with no regard for the value of individual human life and a lemming-like population apparently made up of masochists who actually like being pummeled into oblivion and watching their nation collapse over and over. Moronic foreigners, of course, who step into this meat grinder will be pulverized as well, and will deserve what they get since they’ve been repeatedly warned.
Comment by La Russophobe — July 12, 2010 @ 4:31 pm
As everything else In Russia :democracy, freedom of press, of assembly, modernization, so called legal system is FAKE.
Comment by voroBey — July 12, 2010 @ 5:56 pm
In Russia, no person’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the judiciary is in session.
Comment by La Russophobe — July 14, 2010 @ 6:55 am