{"id":191879,"date":"2009-06-10T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/10\/it-must-be-nice-to-live-in-a-place-where-there-are-civil-rights\/"},"modified":"2009-06-10T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:35:00","slug":"it-must-be-nice-to-live-in-a-place-where-there-are-civil-rights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/06\/10\/it-must-be-nice-to-live-in-a-place-where-there-are-civil-rights\/","title":{"rendered":"It Must Be Nice to Live in a Place Where There are Civil Rights"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Like the UK, where the nation&#8217;s highest court, the Law Lords, have <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUSTRE5594RE20090610?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=worldNews\">rejected the use of secret evidence in trials<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: rgb(0, 0, 153);\"><p>Britain&#8217;s highest court, the House of Lords, ruled against the government on Wednesday in a sensitive case involving the use of secret evidence to justify imposing home curfews on terrorism suspects.<\/p>\n<p>Nine law lords unanimously upheld an appeal by three men who argued it was against their human rights to be subject to control orders, a form of house arrest, based on secret evidence they are not privy to and cannot challenge in court.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;<span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">A trial procedure can never be considered fair if a party to it is kept in ignorance of the case against him<\/span>,&#8221; wrote Nicholas Phillips, Britain&#8217;s most senior law lord, in issuing the lengthy judgment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>(<span style=\"font-style: italic;\">emphasis mine<\/span>)<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in the good old USA, we&#8217;re moving to a new and improved military commissions system here, for whom an unfair trial is a feature, not a bug.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Like the UK, where the nation&#8217;s highest court, the Law Lords, have rejected the use of secret evidence in trials: Britain&#8217;s highest court, the House of Lords, ruled against the government on Wednesday in a sensitive case involving the use of secret evidence to justify imposing home curfews on terrorism suspects. Nine law lords unanimously &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[971,984,972],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-rights","category-europe","category-justice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191879"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191879\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}