A matter of law

[andrewducker]

I'm somewhat confused by the fuss over the votes for prisoners stuff that's currently in the newspapers.

The government has to do _something_, as it's been found to be in the wrong by the Europan Court of Human Rights. However, it seems unsure what, exactly, it has to do to be in the right. I know that human rights legislation is going to have some grey areas, but is there a reason why the ECHR wouldn't say "You are doing X, which is wrong, in order to be compliant you must do Y."?

Comments

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

Because they can only judge the case before them, which was that no prisoners had the vote. If they said prisoners shall have the vote provided they are serving less than n years, they would be usurping the function of the legislature, and going beyond the actual case at hand.

Separation of powers is inconvenient that way, yes.

[andrewducker]

But surely they can say "You are wrong because of X and Y, which state that prisoners must be allowed the vote if they are over 5 foot tall and have blue eyes." - which would then indicate what needed to be done.

[sigmonster.livejournal.com]

They do provide broad guidance: they do not provide either model law, or a guarantee that such-and-such conduct will not be found to be a violation in future (because they cannot envision all possible future circumstances, any specific rule might be found to be a violation if in combination with some other pattern of facts which they had not considered).

[cartesiandaemon.livejournal.com]

I've not been following the story (I honestly don't care: I think the changes being proposed are generally positive, but not actually fixing any large problems we have) but the vague impression I had is that there was no more fixed principle: that the ECHR had decided (random link: http://ukhumanrightsblog.com/2010/05/30/prisoner-voting-back-on-the-human-rights-agenda-this-week/) that a blanket ban wasn't in accord with the convention on human rights, and the fact that's no-one's sued yet suggests that countries with partial bans are ok, but there was no precedent on what was sufficient, and the ruling didn't make one. (I don't know if it could have or should have, nor whether the judges made any helpful suggestions.)

[andrewducker]

Aaah. So the convention says "People shall be allowed to vote", the court has interpreted that as "You can't blanket ban people from voting.", but it's not clear what exceptions they would allow.

Sounds like something that really ought to be hashed out as part of an international agreement, rather than individual countries randomly trying stuff out until the court agrees it.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

In America prisoners don't have the right to vote and it's often been pointed out that given that blacks, Latinos and women vastly outnumber the number of white males in prison that it's a somewhat racist/sexist policy.

That said, there are so many people in prison in America that if they could vote it would be a huge voting block (large enough to turn a presidential election) and it would be fun to see politicians campaigning for those votes.

[skington.livejournal.com]

It's worse than that, though. In many States, felons don't have the right to vote - even after they've served their sentence.

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

They did that in New Jersey because they were worried about the mafia getting an even larger stranglehold on the state government than they already had.

It was so weird growing up. In my parent's affluent neighborhood you never asked anyone who they voted for, because many, many of them couldn't vote.

The ones that talked about it would claim it was anti Italian racism and that they just had "one little scrape when I was just a kid" - meanwhile they supposedly "work" at an auto detailing place and yet somehow have a half million dollar home.

[marrog.livejournal.com]

I've been so disgusted by the stuff being spouted by politicians ('Physically ill'? Really? I actually felt a little ill reading that quote) on almost every side of the argument that I haven't been able to watch, really, but my understanding is that the issue was with the blanket ban, and with lack of solid precedent being set blah blah as above.

[andrewducker]

Apparently one of the differences that psychologists have found between authoritarians and liberals is that authoritarians tend to have their disgust reflex triggered by people breaking rules, while liberals tend to have it triggered by people being treated unfairly.

Which would fit your comment quite nicely :->

Edit: Don't ask me to find the study. I'm operating from memory here, so take with a pinch of salt.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

Of course what's unfair is in the eye of the beholder.

[andrewducker]

Absolutely, it depends on all sorts of factors.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

The rules being broken to accommodate someone could be seen as being unfair >:-)

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting about this is the difficulty the government is having trying to get a change in the law passed.

[undeadbydawn.livejournal.com]

on a brief skim-read.. one of the issues is that European Directives aren't actually laws. Laws just have to cover Directives. As such the EU *can't* tell the member bodies how to implement Directives, because that would be telling them how to write their own laws, which would be illegal.

I Am Not A Lawyer, and may not even be commenting on the right thing.

[danieldwilliam.livejournal.com]

Some European Directives have direct effect and some are, as you say, instructions to national governments to legislate to X effect.

It's all very murky.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

The BBC analysis implied that there is something special about the 4 years because it (for some reason) largely demarkates between serious and non-serious crimes.

The expectation seemed to be that if they did less then 4 years as the rule then they'd have to demonstrate that they carefully came to that conclusion, but the way it is playing out is making it clear that they won't have done a careful analysis and so it's very likely they will lose the certain future court cases (which is why they talk of having to pay out millions in settlements in the future).