Two debates over justice that threaten to destabilize the neoliberal state have broken out in recent days. In the United States, legislators have objected to the threatened federal government use of drones to kill U.S. citizens while on U.S. territory. In Egypt, a court verdict contested by various participants in the Arab Spring revolution was issued in the midst of a police strike. For both debates a central question remains: whether legislative and court systems will be able to limit the reach of the President, a time-honored defense against abuse of power by sovereign authorities and strategy promoting justice in the exercise of government power.
U.S. citizens have long been accustomed to the erosion of court-based limits on executive power following the 9-11-01 attacks, including both the domestic loss of many constitutional rights under the PATRIOT Act and the loss of court jurisdiction over U.S. adherence to such international standards as prohibitions against torture and the treatment of prisoners. These erosions have not provoked any organized push back on the scale of the lawyer mobilizations in Pakistan or other mobilizations in countries where comparable erosions have occurred.
The new debate over whether U.S. military or paramilitary forces might kill U.S. citizens on U.S. territory extends a debate regarding the killing by U.S. drones of U.S. citizens in Yemen under the War on Terror. In this instance the question of justice is grounded in what Michel Foucault termed the modern government’s right to take life or let live, or using the language of international law, the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.
Following the removal of President Mubarak from office, an election, and a constitutional referendum, some may have expected justice to follow. But as Derrida wrote, in our expectations of justice, what we get instead is sovereignty, a network of mythologies that has come to define politics in our own time. In Rogues Derrida argued that “As soon as there is sovereignty, there is abuse of power and a rogue state. Abuse is the law of use; it is the law itself… There are thus only rogue states. Potentially or actually.”
The rejection by Egyptian democracy activists of court judgments is promising, no matter which side we may take on the specifics of the verdict. Such a rejection opens up a public debate on the nature of justice, and recognizes the possibility that court verdicts are not always the same as justice. That recognition makes possible the fight for justice that is Other to the limits of justice as established by sovereign states and their presidents. It remains to be seen if such debates will be possible in the United States, but signs at present are not promising.
U.S. citizens have long been accustomed to the erosion of court-based limits on executive power following the 9-11-01 attacks, including both the domestic loss of many constitutional rights under the PATRIOT Act and the loss of court jurisdiction over U.S. adherence to such international standards as prohibitions against torture and the treatment of prisoners. These erosions have not provoked any organized push back on the scale of the lawyer mobilizations in Pakistan or other mobilizations in countries where comparable erosions have occurred.
The new debate over whether U.S. military or paramilitary forces might kill U.S. citizens on U.S. territory extends a debate regarding the killing by U.S. drones of U.S. citizens in Yemen under the War on Terror. In this instance the question of justice is grounded in what Michel Foucault termed the modern government’s right to take life or let live, or using the language of international law, the right to life, liberty, and the security of person.
Some Egyptian citizens are demanding that the Egyptian courts be held to a new standard of justice, one that includes freedom from the arbitrary use of state power to kill (or conspire to kill) national citizens. Unlike the U.S. citizens, Egyptian groups have demanded justice in the sense that the French political theorist Jacques Derrida in “Force of Law” defined it as that that “doesn’t wait. It is that which must not wait.”
Following the removal of President Mubarak from office, an election, and a constitutional referendum, some may have expected justice to follow. But as Derrida wrote, in our expectations of justice, what we get instead is sovereignty, a network of mythologies that has come to define politics in our own time. In Rogues Derrida argued that “As soon as there is sovereignty, there is abuse of power and a rogue state. Abuse is the law of use; it is the law itself… There are thus only rogue states. Potentially or actually.”
There are practical problems that must be resolved if justice is to be possible in either country. Judicial appointments in both are tainted by political interests, and as a result often protect governmental abuses of power. But the activists in Egypt and Pakistan are right to fight for a more independent judiciary that may limit some of the worst abuses of modern nation-states. As Derrida argues, “What we see in Western democracy today is the increasing importance of the legal authority on politics-sometimes in an abusive fashion, as is the case in Italy, France, and in [the United States] too. We have a feeling that today the independence of justice is the crucial test for democracy.”
James Martel has argued that this problem of the relation of the law to justice is a foundational problem for the modern nation-state, suggesting that “sovereignty…defines and produces what is deemed “just” in our world. Insofar as it speaks for justice, it becomes impossible to distinguish sovereign practices from “real” justice.”
The rejection by Egyptian democracy activists of court judgments is promising, no matter which side we may take on the specifics of the verdict. Such a rejection opens up a public debate on the nature of justice, and recognizes the possibility that court verdicts are not always the same as justice. That recognition makes possible the fight for justice that is Other to the limits of justice as established by sovereign states and their presidents. It remains to be seen if such debates will be possible in the United States, but signs at present are not promising.
No comments:
Post a Comment