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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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).