The Gazette 1978

GAZETTE •

- APRIL 1978

Human Rights Battonnier Louis-Edmond Pettiti

A very distinguished audience, which included Lord Elwyn Jones (The Lord Chancellor), Monsieur Alain Peyrefitte (Minister for Justice), the President of the English Law Society and Mr. Joseph Dundon (President of our Society) as well as all the Judges of the Paris Cour d'Appel and of the Cour de Cassation, heard Maitre Louis-Edmond Pettiti deliver this memor ab le inauguration address on Human Rights. Space precludes us from publishing the full text, but, amongst • other things • Batonnier Pettiti said:— Only yesterday, more than 70.000 men and women, arbitrarily detained in distant continents, were launching an appeal for mercy, renewing the cry of distress of their brothers and sisters which we have constantly heard since the end of the war. These are the true underground men of this new generation, who have been buried by oppression, and who had met death. A handful of lawyers stood up to meet this challenge, and to meet these cries of distress, having been inspired by the wording of the United Nations Charter. The singular merit of these advocates has been to conquer the general indifference by becoming personal witnesses, as a result of the missions undertaken by them in the very places where violence was perpetrated. Their aim was to force the world at large to contemplate the world of injustice. It was necessary to force men no longer to be passive spectators, contemplating the horrors of the chambers of torture a:>a distance but to search closely into their own conscience. Last year, at this ceremony, the President of the Republic, stressed that the independence of the judiciary and of magistrates was essentially dependent upon their sense of justice. The philosophy of the Rights of Man is no longer a mere description of rights, but has become an important topic. The concepts establishing standards for the Rights of Men, have now erupted into our own life and conditioned world affairs. Unlike the past the very Words affirming these rights have now established themselves in the vocabulary of statesmen and are printed in the daily press. The notions of Justice and of the Rights of Man must henceforth converge. We must no longer consider judicial administration as having no function in enforcing Human Rights. It is necessary to enforce a superior juridical norm, in order to face a world where ethical norms are no longer universally approved. The system where criminal law is an ob .ious derogation of the rights of man. The Rights of Man ore superior to positive law and the repressive apparatus of judicial administrations must necessarily give way to it. The modern State c::ists primarily in order to serve the individual man. All harm inflicted against the rights of the individual is but a perversion of justice, and inevitably leads to the decay of the individual. The administrators of justice must constantly treat man as a respectable human being. Those who govern distant countries hove altered them in a short time from democracies to despotisms and tyrannies. The boundaries which scparatq the psychological basis of the cood naturcd civil servant from the violiN.i policcinun aic fragile.' and the same fragile oasis separates the ordinary soluier iroin the professional torturer, or the free citizen from the gagged prisoner. The

profound change takes place in an insidious manner, when the agents of the law apply for several years all the directives issued by their superiors at the price of grave infringements of principles which will eventually lead to an authoritarian regime. We must stress that the new oppressors have only to utilise old procedures. Wc are, each of us, concerned as well as responsible if there are violations of Human Rights by the mcchanisms applied by that universal solidarity. The simple physical or phychological pressure exercised in a police station is but a reflexion of the sophisticated tortures in a State where those responsible, far from denying its existence, are proud of it. We must remain vigilant. No civil case of secondary importance nor of minor crimes can possibly justify mistakes in procedure or practices which should be condemned. Our so called liberal States may boast that they do not try to infringe Human Rights. They should not only maintain the status quo in order to remain worthy of being democrats but they must also be exacting and diligent in applying rules of perfection. The European Convention of Human Rights has not substituted the dynamism of Fundamental Rights to the negative conception of State security. There is a great disparity of norms between States which had considered themselves identical. The list and contents of Fundamental Rights have been revealed in different forms in various countries, but this helped harmonisation. The rights recognised by Regional Conventions will inevitably limit the absolute principle of law and order. As far as Community Law is concerned, we have seen a legal revolution from which we have been quite unable to measure the consequences. This is a first limitation upon the doctrine of sovereignty which was founded upon an egoistical and antiquated conception of the legal status of man. The European Community accepts not only the principle of freedom of movement but also that of freedom of establishment, and here the European Court of Justice can impose rules for controlling internal law and order in a State by rules based on international constitutional law. No State may henceforth make the sole claim of being exemplary. We have refused to see Justice become a department on the same footing as others, a mere prisoner of strict enforcement and of statistics. It is for us to accomplish our mission, even if we suffer loss thereby we cannot assume our destiny of defenders' rights and of grudges by remaining prisoners of State Rules of convenience and of rules of prudence founded on intellectual comfort. If necessary we can be indignant lawyers, who will cry out to rectify injustice. The work of the lawyer is an attempt similar to a religious incantation to make man respect ;d. The lawyer by his very vocation chooses to be insecure in his career. Judges and lawyers must decline to follow the norm if the exercises lead to the negation of man himself. They do not measure sufficiently the great measure of their destiny which is to become the true philosophers of today. Justice, founded on the principles of international jurisprudence has become the power which destroys sovereignty. The task of the legislation is to allow social changes to grow gradually before intervening, and never to abandon fundamental 63