Whatever Happened To Due Process In International Relations? – OpEd
It seems that recent events across the globe have further revealed a glaring hole within the framework and structure of international relations, law, and diplomacy – the complete and total lack of Due Process.
In each and every country around the world, from the local level all the way to the federal, there exists in criminal and civil jurisprudence the concept of Due Process – a concept which has been defined as the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person.
Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it.
When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.
Due process has also been frequently interpreted as limiting laws and legal proceedings so that judges, instead of legislators, may define and guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty.
Analogous to the concepts of natural justice, and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions, the interpretation of due process is sometimes expressed as a command that the government must not be unfair to the people or abuse them physically.
Due process developed from clause 39 of Magna Carta in England.
Reference to due process first appeared in a statutory rendition of clause 39 in 1354 AD: “No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law.”
When English and American law gradually diverged, due process was not upheld in England but became incorporated in the U.S. Constitution.
While there is no definitive list of the “required procedures” that due process requires, Judge Henry Friendly (July 3, 1903 – March 11, 1986), a prominent judge in the United States, who sat on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit from 1959 through 1974, generated a list that remains highly influential, as to both content and relative priority:
(1) An unbiased tribunal;
(2) Notice of the proposed action and the grounds asserted for it;
(3) Opportunity to present reasons why the proposed action should not be taken;
(4) The right to present evidence, including the right to call witnesses;
(5) The right to know opposing evidence;
(6) The right to cross-examine adverse witnesses;
(7) A decision based exclusively on the evidence presented;
(8) Opportunity to be represented by counsel;
(9) Requirement that the tribunal prepare a record of the evidence presented; and
(10) Requirement that the tribunal prepare written findings of fact and reasons for its decision.
The international news media, on behalf of various governmental agencies, intelligence organizations, private deep state oligarch run businesses, has been blasting from time to time, allegations and accusations leveled by one country or empire versus another, most notably by the Western NATO powers against the Eurasian ones, that of Russia, Syria, Iran, and North Korea, China and others, while the converse has not occurred at all.
This should tell us something.
Lately, the Skripal poisoning attempts, the multiple alleged Bashar Assad Syrian government chemical weapons attacks, and countless others have dominated the headlines.
Russia has been screaming from the rooftops that their greatest concern is that the USA or West will manufacture some type of false flag attack to blame it on them.
The only solution then is that both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court must be given the power, funding, and support by countries that are being victimized by false flag allegations to be empowered to put a stop to these irresponsible lobbings and accusations of criminal conduct by one set of nations versus the others.
When Due Process is absent from our nations’ courts, police departments, law enforcement agencies, then innocent people get thrown into jail in criminal cases or bankrupted in civil matters.
But when nations are not afforded Due Process in the course of international relations, terrorism breaks out, and so does the possibility of nuclear annihilation of all the worlds’ people.
