Getting off the Judiciary Square stop one day, I was struck by the drugs and poverty that confronted me, a far cry from the material abundance of Georgetown and Foggy Bottom, reminiscent of Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives.
The demonstrators, including many lawyers and opposition MPs, shouted slogans and displayed banners reading "hands off the judiciary".
The new constitutional amendment (again) kills off the independence of the judiciary, brings universities under (even more) governmental control, opens the door to political prosecutions, criminalizes homelessness, makes the recognition of religious groups dependent on their cooperation with the government and weakens human rights guarantees across the board.
Josh Reynolds is off to the judiciary to fight the grading of his dangerous throw charge but he will do very well to get off what looked a pretty ordinary tackle.
On November 20th the constitutional court backed the opposition's view that the amendment was unconstitutional; it has yet to rule on whether those who voted for it broke Thailand's strict lèse-majesté law.Like some of its predecessors, the government may thus be finished off by the judiciary.
Several independent reviews of existing legislation, including QC David Anderson's report published this June, have also called for surveillance warrants to be signed off by the judiciary, rather than (as is currently the case) by government ministers.
A long-awaited independent review of U.K. government surveillance capabilities, conducted by QC David Anderson and published today, has recommended that interception warrants should be signed off by the judiciary, rather than government ministers.
The latter point is interesting because two government commissioned independent reviews of surveillance legislation, which have both published their findings this summer, have called for intercept warrants to be signed off by the judiciary, rather than being sanctioned by ministers — as is the case now.
The recall efforts seem likely to touch off a nasty political battle over the proper role of the judiciary and the legacy of the disputed 2000 presidential election.
Judges' associations said the proposal would kill off the independent judiciary by placing the public prosecutor's office in the hands of the executive power.
The head of the judiciary, Sadeq Larijani, declared this week that the internet was a swamp that must be cordoned off with barbed wire.
