Corpus Juris and the policy of deceit.
On 13th April 1999 the EU Parliament voted to “welcome” the introduction of Corpus Juris
Corpus Juris was first introduced as a concept almost exatly 2 year before when it was announced at a Seminar of the Spanish European Institute. Like all EU confidence tricks the Corpus Juris was introduced as something other than its intended purpose. In this case the need for effective protection of the Community budget, particularly in connection with fraud against subsidies, but the true reason for its introduction was that it has been designed to become the embryo of a future European Criminal Code.
True to form the British government in November 1998, voted against the idea at an Inter-Parliamentary Conference in Strasbourg, however, The Amsterdam Treaty established a legal requirement for closer cooperation between member states’ police and judicial authorities to combat and prevent racism, xenophobia, terrorism, organised crime, trafficking of persons and offences against children, drug trafficking, corruption and fraud. Article 209a specifically invokes newly created budget crimes is the enabling legislation allowing Corpus Juris to be introduced as a measure, these measures are to be adopted in accordance with the procedure referred to in article 189b which calls for co-decision with the EU Parliament but provides for NO NATIONAL VETO. So much for the Governments red line on criminal law.
Corpus Juris is a project designed to create a “European Judiciary Space†“in a specific field of criminal justice, with a public prosecutor, or investigating judge, having powers of arrest, committal to trial and the power of overruling of national prosecuting bodies. A system with a European Public Prosecutor (EPP) with
wide powers and overriding jurisdiction in and over all member states. This would introduce the inquisitional system of justice whereby the investigating prosecutor is a judge. The EPP would have a delegate in each state, and a Euro-warrant for arrest would be valid across the whole of the EU. The system would include measures for detention for up to 6-9 months pending investigation, that is three months, then a further three and on application to the judge a further three months.
Now we see the system beginning to take shape, we already have the EU Arrest warrant, and the Embryo EU Police force, which by accepting both, the British government have reneged on their duty to protect British citizens.
The EU Constitution will put in place the European Public Prosecutor, although the British Government are saying we do not need the post of EPP, the report “Ratification Bottleneck†suggests this as one of the areas that need not wait for all states to ratify before setting up the position, so we can expect moves to be made in that direction in the near future.
This is an important step towards a complete, federal European system of criminal law based on Roman law and Napoleonic law, which would subordinate national law throughout the EU and would destroy the English safeguards of habeas corpus and trial by jury, something a certain Edward Heath assured the British people would never happen.
The importance of Trial by Jury cannot be overstressed, it is a fundamental tenet of British Common Law. But we are already seeing evidence of this government’s intention to introduce Corpus Juris, we are all of a sudden hearing how expensive it is to have jury trials, how wasteful of time, how difficult it is to explain certain things to juries. Of course to speed things up we already do have the option for an accused person to elect not to insist on a jury trial, but a few years ago Jack Straw was suggesting that instead of the accused having the right to choose, that decision should be made by a magistrate. Straws argument was enlightening, in as much he said, I paraphrase; trial by jury was a basic and necessary right in a democratic state, but the right to choose between two courts was not, so therefore the magistrates should choose which court the case would be heard. If the right to trial by jury is a basic right, then as far as I can see, no one has the right to make you be judged by a different system, you may elect to do so yourself, but this may not be forced on you, otherwise by Straws own argument a basic right has been infringed.
Whilst looking for details for this post, I came across a rather amusing article written by Richard Dawkins. Published as “Three herring gull chicks . . . the reason juries don’t work” in The Observer (London), Sunday November 16, 1997 Which totally misses the point of Jury Trials but does give an account of the thinking behind trial by judge. (I will expand this in a later post)
