Corpus Juris - totally repressive (From Warrington Guardian)

Corpus Juris - totally repressive

AN open letter to Brian Simpson:

On April 12, in a vote in the European Parliament, you voted in favour of the new legal system that the EU wish to impose on us (Corpus Juris). As you must be aware, this legal code has many alien concepts. I list a few below.

Unlike the UK, where a person on arrest must be charged within 24 hours, and brought before a magistrate in public, under Corpus Juris rules a person can be arrested and held for six months, (renewable every three months indefinitely), without a public hearing. (Article 20).

So good-bye to our ancient Habeas Corpus rights which have their 700 year old roots in Magna Carta. Corpus Juris will abolish trial by jury: the draft legislation specifically excludes, "simple jurors or lay magistrates". (Article 26). So good-bye to trial by our peers. Proceedings before the 'Judge of Freedoms' - (shades of Orwell's 1984), may be held in secret, and access to the court may be denied to the press and public. (Article 34).

So good-bye to the principle that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done. An arrested person may be transferred to the territory of any member state. No mention is made of formal extradition proccedings. (Article 24).

These and other changes are in my opinion completely intolerable in our liberal democracy. The Government have indicated that they will try and veto any proposals, but once the Treaty of Amsterdam is fully ratified on May 1 this matter will be subject to qualified majority voting, and since 14 member states have indicated their acceptance of it , we will be over-ruled.

The Corpus Juris document itself even decribes the new code as, '...a more efficient system of repression', (Page 40).

Would you please explain to your Cheshire East electorate, why you voted in favour of this totally unacceptable and repressive proposal?

RICHARD BUTTREY

Marlborough Crescent

Grappenhall

Converted for the new archive on 13 March 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.