{"id":69133,"date":"2013-01-12T10:18:20","date_gmt":"2013-01-12T10:18:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?p=69133"},"modified":"2013-01-14T12:30:27","modified_gmt":"2013-01-14T12:30:27","slug":"did-the-cj-show-any-such-impartiality-im-reminded-of-pastor-niemoller","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/did-the-cj-show-any-such-impartiality-im-reminded-of-pastor-niemoller\/","title":{"rendered":"Did The CJ Show Any Such Impartiality, I&#8217;m Reminded Of Pastor Niemoller"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=RMB+Senanayake+&amp;x=7&amp;y=4\">RMB Senanayake<\/a><\/span> &#8211;<\/strong><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_54936\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/sinhala-tamil-and-zero-sum-game\/rmbs61012\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-54936\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-54936\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-54936\" title=\"RMBS61012\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/RMBS61012-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/RMBS61012-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/RMBS61012-50x50.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-54936\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">RMB Senanayake<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong>Why Business should protect the Rule of Law\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among the several bodies of magistracy as that no one could transcend their legal limits without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.\u00a0<\/em>[James Madison, <em>Federalist No. 58<\/em> (February 20, 1788)]<\/p>\n<p>We are today facing a situation where the Rule of Law is being replaced by the rule of a man. Parliament has refused to accept the interpretation of the Constitution given by the Supreme Court, which alone is empowered to do so under our Constitution.<\/p>\n<p>The concept of the rule of law is the principle of nondiscretionary governance of those people currently in authority. It stands in contrast to the arbitrary or discretionary rule of some of our ancient kings although they too were expected to follow custom and law. In shorthand, either we have the rule of law or we have the subjective rule of persons who exercise arbitrary authority. Under the rule of law, government agencies do nothing but faithfully enforce statutes already on the books. Under the rule of persons or authorities, those in positions of executive authority have the discretion to decide any matter as they please and they do not have to follow any existing rules or laws.<\/p>\n<p>Friedrich Hayek in his classic work <strong><em>The Road to Serfdom<\/em><\/strong> contrasted \u201ca country under arbitrary government\u201d from a free country that observes \u201cthe great principle known as the Rule of Law.\u201d \u201cStripped of all technicalities,\u201d he continued, \u201cthis means that government in all its actions is bound by rules fixed and announced beforehand\u2014rules which make it possible to foresee with fair certainty how the authority will use its coercive powers in given circumstances and to plan one\u2019s individual affairs on the basis of this knowledge.\u201dThis is necessary for businessmen who plan to invest whether they are local businessmen or foreigners. So don\u2019t expect direct foreign investment in the form of factories or long term investments if there is no rule of law and the Courts are not free to decide against the government on any commercial matter.<\/p>\n<p>It is of course true that laws must be executed by people in authority. People in authority can be men who act rightly based on their conscience or men who act only in their self interest and such self interest may involve the perpetuation of their power. The people they appoint to the Judiciary can either be people who impartially enforce the laws or those who decide on the basis of serving their self interest. Did the <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Shirani+Bandaranayake&amp;x=11&amp;y=2\">Chief Justice<\/a><\/span> show any such impartiality in her decision on the 18<sup>th<\/sup> Amendment. I am reminded of Pastor <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/?s=Niemoller&amp;x=6&amp;y=1\">Niemoller<\/a><\/span>. Those who are silent in the face of injustice and will not uphold the law, will have their own turn to face similar injustice and unfairness. But the fate of the Chief Justice is entangled with the Rule of Law and hence we have to ensure the Rule of Law for trying her for any offences.<\/p>\n<p>Consider a soccer match referees. They can be people who arbitrarily enforce rules against one team but not the other, or (even worse) who penalize a team for \u201cinfractions\u201d of novel \u201crules\u201d that they have made up in mid&#8211;match. When there is no rule of law we will find those in authority making up their own laws and rules like Alice found out in Wonderland.<\/p>\n<p>The rule of law concept has deep historical roots. Hayek quotes David Hume\u2019s History of England\u2014written two centuries earlier\u2014on the value of establishing the rule of law in place of the unconstrained discretion of government officials. Hume acknowledges that it is not always convenient in the short run to forego ad hoc measures. He writes that \u201csome inconveniences arise from the maxim of adhering strictly to law,\u201d but affirms the lesson of history that in the long run we are better off from adhering to the rule of law. According to Hume, \u201cIt has been found, that . . . the advantages so much overbalance\u201d the inconveniences that we should salute our ancestors who established the principle.<\/p>\n<p>The contrast between the rule of law and the rule of men is sometimes traced still further back to Plato\u2019s dialogue entitled Laws. In that work, the Athenian Stranger declares that a city will enjoy safety and other benefits of the gods where the law \u201cis despot over the rulers, and the rulers are slaves of the law.\u201d In other words, government officials are to be the servants and not the masters of society.<\/p>\n<p>The rule of law is vitally important because it allows a society to combine freedom, justice, and a thriving economic order. When legal rules are known and government actions are predictable, free people can confidently plan their lives and businesses, and can coordinate their plans with one another through the market economy. Citizens need not fear arbitrary confiscation of their possessions or nullification of their contracts. Entrepreneurs know that if they succeed in turning lower&#8211;valued bundles of inputs into higher&#8211;valued products, they get to keep the rewards. If they fail, they fail, and they bear the losses. So let businessmen not be silent in this crisis in the Rule of Law.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p> [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":54936,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,46,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69133","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-colombotelegraph","category-constitutional-reforms","category-editorial"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Did The CJ Show Any Such Impartiality, I&#039;m Reminded Of Pastor Niemoller - Colombo Telegraph<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.colombotelegraph.com\/index.php\/did-the-cj-show-any-such-impartiality-im-reminded-of-pastor-niemoller\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Did The CJ Show Any Such Impartiality, I&#039;m Reminded Of Pastor Niemoller - 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