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