Torture, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

2020 ◽  
pp. 395-418
Author(s):  
J.M. Bernstein

It has been claimed, “If cruelty is no longer declared unlawful, but instead is applied as a matter of policy, it alters the fundamental relationship of man to government. If you make this exception [and permit torture], the whole Constitution crumbles.” The ambition of this chapter is to provide the terms through which this judgment can be vindicated. The judgment’s pivotal assumption is that the prohibition on torture is in some manner foundational for any modern legal system. Three theses help to secure this foundational thesis: (i) Historically, basic rule of law and procedural due process requirements—most profoundly the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty”—first emerge in the 18th century as the necessary legal bases for prohibiting judicial and penal torture. (ii) What is systematically implied by this historical process is that the modern rule of law is law’s own reflective effort to provide an absolute separation between the force of law and physical force, between legality or lawfulness and state violence. (iii) The rule of law’s emphatic separation between the force of law and the procedures of state violence presupposes that the object of law is the person with dignity, that is, a being possessing intrinsic worth. What dignity minimally means in the modern age is that while the state may deprive subjects of their liberty, it may not directly infringe upon their bodily integrity, or treat them in any manner that would infringe upon their equal intrinsic worth with all other legal subjects.

2021 ◽  
Vol specjalny II (XXI) ◽  
pp. 549-561
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Szlachta-Kisiel

The concept of justice, crystallizing over the centuries, is very important in creation of material law and shaping the procedures necessary for their implementation. The importance of ideas and principles of procedural justice for social insurance is essential not only because of the demand of law itself. Procedural justice is also important, because it influences the society. Analysis of the procedure before the pension authority on application for pension or retirement through the prism of the constitutional principle of the rule of law, concept of procedural justice and principle procedural due process indicates that justice is indispensable to realize the principle of the democratic rule of law. Robert S. Summers, recognizing other values of the process, taken from social life, sees the necessity to apply them not so much to the procedure as a means to achieve a specific goal, but to the procedure itself. In this context the procedure before the pension authority should be seen through the prism of the error risk, good result of the procedure, procedure evaluation and participatory management.


1981 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 451-493
Author(s):  
Nancy Elizabeth Jones

AbstractWhen a state Medicaid agency terminates its provider agreement with a skilled nursing facility, federal regulations give the state the option of providing a pretermination evidentiary hearing; they do not, however, require that a state provide such a hearing. If a state chooses not to grant a pretermination hearing, as a number of states have done, federal regulations require: (1) an informal written reconsideration made by the state and submitted to the skilled nursing facility before the effective date of the termination, and (2) a posttermination evidentiary hearing.This Article argues that a skilled nursing facility has a right under the due process clauses of the fifth and fourteenth amendments of the U. S. Constitution to an evidentiary hearing before termination of its Medicaid provider agreement. The author claims that a skilled nursing facility's interest in continued receipt of Medicaid reimbursement under its provider agreement is a property interest entitled to constitutional due process protections, and not merely an expectation of economic benefit that does not implicate constitutional due process considerations.The Article concludes that, except in emergency situations, state Medicaid agencies are constitutionally required to grant a provider a pretermination, rather than a posttermination, evidentiary hearing. This procedure would protect the provider and its patients from the severe effects of an erroneous termination, while furthering the governmental interest in ensuring the health and safety of skilled nursing facility patients. The format for such a hearing should allow for the participation, with the assistance of counsel, of both the skilled nursing facility and its patients.


Author(s):  
Gabdrakhman H. Valiev ◽  
Sergey V. Kondratyuk ◽  
Natalia A. Prodanova ◽  
Irina A. Babalikova ◽  
Kermen I. Makaeva ◽  
...  

The problem of the relationship of law and order is relevant to any modern society. The article tries to analyze this relationship, taking into account judicial, police and other activities. The named concepts are closely interconnected, but are not identical. They are correlated as cause and effect: there is a rule of law, there is no rule of law. One suggests the other. The rule of law as concrete reality logically precedes the rule of law as a doctrine, the connection here is hard, causal. The process is one. Law and order: a real indicator of the state of legality, reflects the degree of compliance with the laws, the requirements of all legal regulations. It is concluded that the rule of law is the end result of the implementation of legal requirements and, at the same time, the objective of legal regulation, since it is for the formation and maintenance of the rule of law that laws are issued, thus like other regulatory legal acts, various institutions and bodies and, above all, the justice system, the control system, various human rights organizations and social movements.


2005 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-475
Author(s):  
Henri Brun

Those who like to pay tax are few. Accordingly, income tax is often described as a shame. Of course, the right to enjoyment of property is at stake in the matters of taxation. And the collection of taxation involves also other aspects of the right to substantive and procedural due process of law : right to privacy, to be heard, to unbiassed decision, to professional secrecy... This article contrasts these rights, as they are expressed in sections 5 to 9 and 23 of the Charte des droits et libertés de la personne of Québec and section 8 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom, with sections 13 to 16 and 38 and following of the Loi sur le ministère du revenu of Québec and sections 159, 231 and 232 of the Canadian Income Tax Act. It finds that it is the application of the income tax law, more than the law itself, that threatens human rights. It concludes that the main benefit of both Charters of rights is to provide a shelter from such unreasonnable application


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