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Mr Lennart Geijer, the Social Democratic Minister of Justice, declared that, ‘The social composition of the bench of judges is all wrong. There are too many representatives of Social Group One.* We must change our means of recruitment so that we can have a better balance, with more from the working classes.’ In the Swedish mind, then, the judiciary takes its place alongside ministries and other institutions as an agent of the * The upper classes. The vocabulary of snobbery has been abolished and replaced by that of vulgar sociology. 124 The New Totalitarians State. Justice is not associated with the courts. It is expected, instead, from the Ombudsman. To this we will return later. Some Swedish <a href="http://www.vibramksoshoessale.com/vibram-five-fingers-sprint-c-1.html"><strong>vibram 5 fingers sale</strong></a> authorities might regard the idea of the law adumbrated mbt walking shoes above as old-fashioned, and as uniquely a means of codification. On that interpretation, it is a passive instrument, lacking in ideological content. The more advanced theoreticians see it as an agent of indoctrination. There was an instance of this in certain fiscal legislation. Although the Swede implicitly accepts high taxation* he still cheats the exchequer. Heavy fiscal burdens caused tax evasion to swell during the 1960s. It ceased to be the prerogative of the affluent, and affected all conditions of men. Understandably, the government was perturbed, although not on economic grounds. While the financial losses were noticeable, it was the alienation of the citizen from the State implied by activity of this kind that was the real cause for concern. It threatened the sense of community upon which Swedish society is based, and the control of the citizen founded on that concept. Legislation was invoked to stop mbt shoes uk this mental rot. All tax evasion was made a felony, to be rigorously punished by heavy fines and imprisonment, where before it had been leniently treated as a lesser misdemeanour. The express intention was to mark with the stigma of serious crime something that had been widely considered venial. It was part of a trend to make offences against the State more serious than those against the person which, in turn, was a result of promoting the collective at the expense of the individual. Quoting Mr Lidbom again: ‘The new legislation will equate robbing society with robbing the individual. But its aim is not to make new criminals. It is to make the public realize that there is no antagonism between themselves and society, and to make the individual realize that his interests are the same as those of the State.’ The comment of the Ombudsman, Mr Arne Bexelius, is * See page 174 ff. Judiciary and Ombudsman 125 this: ‘Swedes on the whole do identify themselves with the State, but the aim of the new legislation is to get at the exceptions.’ In the Anglo-Saxon mbt lami West, the legal profession has a status of its own. A judge, although he is paid out of the public purse, is generally regarded not as an agent of the State, but as an independent creature above government, populace and bureaucracy. He is the servant only of the law and, however imperfect, a guardian of the individual’s rights, prepared on occasion to side with him against authority if it exceeds its prerogative. To the Swede, however, the lawyer is the instrument of government; the judge merely another bureaucrat, like all the others, enforcing the ukases of the public administration and subduing the citizen. In consequence, the law is treated with the same obsequiousness by the public as are the other branches mbt walking shoes of the administrative machine. At a trial for assault in 1968, the accused, a young man of little means, was given legal aid. He was dissatisfied with the lawyer assigned to him and, as he was entitled to, demanded another. The judge then addressed him as follows: ‘Young man, if you persist in your demand, do you know what will happen? It’s not an easy matter to change lawyers in the middle of the case. I’ll have to adjourn the court, and you’ll have to wait a few days, and then the new lawyer will have to spend time reading up the case. Have you thought about what that’s going to cost society? It’ll be a lot of money.’ Whereupon the prisoner in the dock apologized mbt trainers outlet for wanting to do anything that would waste public money, and immediately retracted his demand. He appeared mbt kisumu to consider it natural that the good of society (i.e. the State) should take precedence over his own interests. The desire not to oppose and the necessity of giving the State the appearance of omnipotence extend to the judiciary. If it were not so, feelings of security would be threatened; under Swedish conditions, confrontation in any sphere 126 The New Totalitarians generates unease everywhere else. Even in jurisprudence, the aim is consensus, not controversy. Acquittal* in Swedish criminal cases is rare; so, for that matter, is a proper legal battle. It is not only that the police, the prosecution and the judge dislike a fight, but so do most defence lawyers. Almost all trials take the form of a plea of guilt, qualified with a request for leniency on personal, humanitarian or psychiatric grounds. Partly, this is a natural consequence of Swedish legal practice, which gives the prosecution great privileges in running a trial. The police are allowed to conduct what is in all but name their own preparatory examination without bringing the accused before a judge. There is no equivalent of the English remand proceedings, and a man may be held in custody for months while the police prepare their case. On the other hand, they rarely take a suspect into court unless they have a <a href="http://www.vibramksoshoessale.com/vibram-five-fingers-classic-c-5.html"><strong>vibram five fingers shoes</strong></a> cast-iron case, and conviction is a foregone conclusion. Since the aim of this procedure is to make the judiciary appear infallible, acquittal would not only be an affront to the prosecution, but it is mbt shoes australia a scar on the system. Sometimes, of course, things go awry. In 1970, there was one case near Stockholm in which a man called Hoglund was accused of murdering his wife. The trial had not been long in progress before it became obvious that the prosecution was doing very badly. The evidence was shaky and unconvincing, the public prosecutor was reduced to bullying the accused and, if it had been England and America, the stage would have been set for a splendid and convincing performance by the defence, with a dramatic acquittal as the probable outcome. What in fact happened was that the prosecution abruptly stopped the trial. ‘If the case had carried on,’ said the national police chief in a mbt shoes sale newspaper interview, ‘it would have had an unfortunate result [i.e. acquittal] and we would have lost * Acquittal as understood in England and America is unknown in Sweden. See below. Judiciary and Ombudsman 127 the confidence of the public. Our work would have been handicapped. We depend on cooperation for our effectiveness, and our system works on confessions. Practically all our cases are settled by admissions of guilt. If we didn’t get those confessions, it would make things difficult mbt shoes , and our work would be much slower. More policemen would have to spend more time on every case. I don’t know what we’d do if our prisoners started defending themselves and refusing to cooperate under interrogation. And one case like this would be enough to destroy our reputation. But I think we managed to stop the case before it could do us any lasting damage.’ This attitude is not peculiar to the police, but is common to the whole legal profession. The exceptions are not frequent, and the lawyer who likes putting up a fight in court is not admired. On one occasion, an attorney of this rare kind was publicly attacked by the prosecutor as ‘the disgusting kind of man who defends a client that he knows is guilty’. In other countries, that might be interpreted as arrant bullying, if not a threat to the rule of law. But it is unfair to judge one country by the standards of another. Under Swedish conditions, the outburst was quite understandable. It was saying, in other words, that the lawyer in question had broken the conventions, thus wasting the prosecution’s time and endangering the system. Above all, a man was being reproached for the unpardonable misdemeanour of introducing controv e r s y where consensus was accepted. Consensus is indeed entrenched in Swedish legal doctrine, the relation of judge, prosecution and defence being defined as one of cooperation to ascertain the truth. In most Western systems of jurisprudence, the position is that prosecution and mbt shoes review defence confront each other over a question of guilt or a point of law, the judge arbitrating between the two. Even if in most countries judge and prosecution may work too closely for Anglo-Saxon tastes, nevertheless a defending lawyer is firmly on the other side of the fence. This means 128 The New Totalitarians that his loyalty is unreservedly to his client. That is not necessarily true in Sweden. The relation of defence lawyer to public prosecutor and that of the judge to both is equivocal. The function of an attorney is not to secure an acquittal but to help the court. This in turn implies that his prime duty is not to get his client off but to make the system work. This mbt chapa is not to say that the sole function of a Swedish lawyer is simply to deliver his client up to the jaws of justice, suitably plucked and pruned. Behind the scenes, he can do a lot, by that ‘licensed intrigue’ spoken of before, to persuade the prosecution to drop the case. For his only hope lies in keeping the case out of court. As long as he can negotiate privately, he may devote himself to the interests of his client; but once the matter mbt shoes online turns into the public display of a trial, his duty is to the system. And that precludes controversy in open court. The Swedish judiciary works in public as a registry of mbt stockists guilt. It stands or falls by the absence of mbt discount the concept of acquittal. The function of a Swedish court is not to decide whether a suspect is innocent or guilty, but to put evidence on record and decide on a penalty for guilt established by preliminary inquiry. The only alternatives open to a judge* are to hand down a sentence or declare the prosecution not approved.** The latter is a way of giving a man the benefit of the doubt without admitting the fallibility of the system. The accused is discharged, but with the implication that he was guilty, and only escaped punishment by a quirk of fortune. The ‘no approval’*** of the Swedish system has nothing to do with *The jury system is unknown in Sweden, except in libel cases, Judges sit alone, or together with assessors. ** Literally, ‘the prosecution is left without approval’. This happens in about one per cent of all cases. Appeals are rare, usually concerning the sentence, not the verdict. Reversal of the verdict of a lower court is very rare indeed. *** It is less definite than ‘not proven’; it is judging the prosecution rather than the accused. Judiciary and Ombudsman 129 the removal of suspicion implicit in the Anglo-Saxon idea of acquittal. In Sweden, the only way of obtaining mbt restitution is to sue the Crown for wrongful trial and a pronouncement of not guilty. Such suits are exceedingly rare. The law says more than most institutions about the political soul of a country. In the Anglo-Saxon world, the existence of acquittal derives from an cheap mbts admission of the <a href="http://www.casualphorum.com/viewtopic.php?p=1826526#1826526"><strong>Capitol Review » Surprising Cheap Air Max Online</strong></a> fallibility of the State. Conversely, the absence of acquittal from the Swedish legal system implies that the State is always right, and must always be seen to be right. This has certain interesting consequences. Under Anglo-Saxon conditions, a man may be cleared in court, so that he is never considered guilty by his fellows until the verdict is given. It is not only fear of the law of libel that makes the press refer to mbt sale an accused man as the alleged or suspected criminal; it is a deep-rooted social instinct. But in Sweden, since the courts may discharge but never absolve, any accusation puts an indelible stain on a man’s character. Arrest is automatically taken by the public to be synonymous with guilt. The unvarying practice of the Swedish mass media in calling Related posts:mbt shoes store locat running shoe cheap The Best Felony Defense Lawyer How to discover if you’re qualified to get a Texas expunction They Voice That Everyone Is Entitled To A Commendable Protection When On Trial The Importance of Getting Attorney Services in Criminal Defense This entry was posted on July 23, 2011 at 8:41 am and is filed under article. 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