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item0062C 924, 925 924 11 February 2004
Naether's Letter
I love receiving your letters, triggered by this website - they bring alive the many different lives reflected in the readership of this richest of media. You will, like me, be moved and impressed with this letter from Robert Naether of Llanelli, home of the mighty Scarlets. He has a very distinctive story to tell.. Dear Mr. Evans, It's obvious to all that you are a well-educated and very bright person who has Labour written right through him. I am a disabled man with no education - and not very bright, according to my teachers - and I bet you’re already saying to yourself “Another disabled? More than likely a waste of time”. My disability was caused when I fell from an oil tank at Milford Haven - it was an accident caused by neglect.
I was born in
Cardiff
to a father who had been a German fighter pilot, so my life was very
difficult for the first six years of my schooling. I was hit and beaten by
a head-teacher who lost his son during the war – I was an easy target.
Anyway, that's my life.
Except that I now live in Llanelli, almost completely disabled and
spending most of my day reading from the Internet - I've read your web-pages
for some time. Robert Naether Robert You have had to face far more injustice in your life, both of malice and of circumstance, than most of us can ever imagine - and yet you are clearly still taking an active interest in the entire world about you, and picking your way through its mazes. I congratulate you on that - and I understand your reaction to Tony Blair. which I share in part.But I do believe in the abolition of the House of Lords, or its replacement by a revising chamber drawn from MPs elected along with the Commons and of parallel status. I am totally discontent with the present compromise. And I remain convinced that devolved Assembly Government is right - both for Wales and all the provinces of the UK. But that does not mean I am starry-eyed about the Assembly - I recognise its faults, and that its development has a long way still to go... On the £1m site purchase: I fancy that, once they have sorted out the specific matching design of the neighbouring building, the Assembly will re-sell the site - and make a profit on the deal!
Best wishes What is your response to Robert? Drop me a line
925 12 February 2004 Extraterritorial, not extraterrestrial Our increasingly integrated globe is raising new questions of extraterritoriality all the time. That is where a "national" law is enforced in respect of actions occurring outside the territory of that nation-state. And such situations are particularly difficult for English and continental European lawyers and politicians to handle. For English law, unlike American law, has consistently resisted doctrines of extraterritoriality, and certainly avoided creating such jurisdictions. But circumstances are changing. Let me come clean. I have been trained within the four-corners of European law. And that means that I have been trained to think of “law” as consisting of a series of nation-state rules, each applying strictly to the physical territorial jurisdiction of that state. When Radio Caroline broadcast to the UK in the Swinging Sixties, it was because the transmitters were on a boat moored just outside the UK’s 12-mile territorial limited, off Southend. At 11-miles out, the broadcasting would have been “illegal”: at 15-miles out, it was not. And most Continental lawyers are in the same tradition, with minor exceptions. A more recent example (which causes me difficulty, given my education) is the new plan for the State of Austria to build an "Austrian prison" in Romania, to which Romanians who have committed crimes in Austria can be sent. That may be difficult for me to reason, but it is happening - right now.
The explanation lies in the 18th century shift of political convention - from territoriality to nationality in the definition of “states”. That shift towards principles of “nationality” remains, even though 200-years old, one of the most destructive influences in the modern world – the consequences of the French Revolution (following Mao Tse Tung) are indeed still working through – and it is still “too early to say” what the final outcome will be. That distinction still poisons our citizenship laws, inhibits the development of rational migration policies, and fosters racism and xenophobia. The awful mistakes of the right-wing French Parlement this week are attributable to the abiding faultlines in the jurisprudence of the French Revolution.
In the UK, the first such example was the law permitting the prosecution in the UK of UK Citizens accused of paedophile sex crimes in Thailand. Previously, the UK Courts had stuck to the principle that such crimes could be prosecuted only in Thailand – but popular opinion persuaded Parliament to abandon that traditional rule. Drug-running, gun-dealing piracy, smuggling, money-laundering, and tax evasion all seem to require that national forces should be able to intervene outside their own territory to interdict certain criminal acts. Other positive concerns – with environmental quality, GM proliferation, nuclear pollution – these all raise similar questions. Not everything can be done by a gentlemanly phone-call between Scotland Yard and Interpol.
What do you think? Do you have any examples of extraterritoriality? Drop me a line
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