Was any penal law corresponding to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights ever introduced in any country? Was any penal law corresponding to UDHR ever introduced in any country? So that UDHR could be enforced. I now that UDHR itself is not a penal code and as of now it is not enforced globally. But is there any country that has written or modified its penal law so that UDHR can be enforced (at least on its territory)?
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights isn't a penal code. It says very little about what should be a crime and only a little about what shouldn't be a crime or how those crimes should be punished. It is cribbed heavily from the constitutional rights set forth in the U.S. Constitution and the positive rights declared by FDR in connection with his New Deal agenda. It implies many positive entitlements and general principles that can't be achieved in the criminal justice system (Articles 1-2 and 13-30). Articles 3-12 pertaining most directly to criminal procedure are very modest expectations that many countries meet, and even more countries have enacted as law, even if the reality doesn't always live up to the law in the statute books. This is evident from their very brevity. Article 3. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person. Article 4. No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5. No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6. Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7. All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8. Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law. Article 9. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile. Article 10. Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him. Article 11. (1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence. (2) No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed. Article 12. No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
No. The law would be void for vagueness. Connally v. General Construction Co., 269 U.S. 385, 391 (1926): [T]he terms of a penal statute [...] must be sufficiently explicit to inform those who are subject to it what conduct on their part will render them liable to its penalties… and a statute which either forbids or requires the doing of an act in terms so vague that men of common intelligence must necessarily guess at its meaning and differ as to its application violates the first essential of due process of law. The example of the "well known but hidden stop sign" appears to allow for arbitrary prosecution and should also be void.
The UN charter is really hard to amend It requires approval by two-thirds of its member states, and ratification by two-thirds of its member states, including in both cases by the five permanent members of the security council (the USA, the UK, Russia, China, and France). It's happened a total of 3 times, in each case, for completely non-controversial reasons.
Only Parliament has the power to define crimes in law (well, also in the UK there are common law crimes, where ages ago the courts defined punishable wrongs). The police have the power to enforce existing law, but not the power to create new crimes. Part of police power is the power to use force to enforce laws. If a person is trying to kill another (which is a crime), the police can use force to stop the person from committing this crime. Police power can be statutorily encoded (Parliament passes a law saying what police can and cannot do), or it could be part of common law. As for laws regulating a suspect, there may be a specific statutory prohibition – &quot;you may not reach into your pocket&quot; – or there is a common law inference to be made, that if the police have the power to order you to not reach into your pocket you may be forced to comply. The subtle distinction here is that if it is a crime to reach into your pocket when told not to, you can be prosecuted and imprisoned. If there is no such crime, you just have the consequence that you can be roughed up to some extent for disobeying the police order. One act of Parliament is the Offences against the Person Act 1861 §38 which says Whosoever . . . shall assault any person with intent to resist or prevent the lawful apprehension or detainer of himself or of any other person for any offence, shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and being convicted thereof shall be liable, at the discretion of the court, to be imprisoned for any term not exceeding two years, NB &quot;assault&quot; does not require physical contact: creating apprehension suffices. Another law is the Police Act 1996 §89 which says Any person who resists or wilfully obstructs a constable in the execution of his duty, or a person assisting a constable in the execution of his duty, shall be guilty of an offence and liable on summary conviction to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one month or to a fine not exceeding level 3 on the standard scale, or to both These laws do not exhaustively list all of the things that are forbidden (e.g. they do not say &quot;may not bite. nor scratch, nor kick...&quot;), instead, the prohibitions fall under the general rubric of assault and resisting. Under the circumstances, it is possible that the person could be criminally prosecuted, but even in lieu of a prosecution, it is strongly probable that the police use of force in this instance was lawful. One would have to await the outcome of investigations and litigation to know for sure.
Probably not. I can't find the new text, but the existing law was probably just amended with a new category: &quot;hate speech&quot; based on race, religion, disability and &quot;homosexual leanings, lifestyle, or orientation&quot; was illegal – this new law seems to just tweak the categories. The Supreme Court has addressed the general law here in a race-based case, stating that expression of contempt is crucial to defining the crime (&quot;to threaten or insult, or promote hatred, persecution or contempt&quot; based on a protected category). The line that would be drawn is between reading the text, versus promoting hatred or contempt using the text as justification. You can't be prosecuted for hate speech in Norway by reporting the existence of racial etc. discrimination.
The answer to your question, strictly in terms of whether they have the capacity to authorize states to violate international humanitarian law is yes. However, it is highly unlikely. It takes only one permanent member to veto such a resolution. Moreover, UN Charter Article 24(2) states that: ... the Security Council shall act in accordance with the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations ... and International Humanitarian Law would certainly be considered a principle of the United Nations. So, are they capable of passing a resolution in violation of International Humanitarian Law? Sure. Is it likely to happen? Almost certainly not. Having said that, if this happened, it would be a novel area of law, and while currently, international law suggests it would be binding and legal, it is possible that sanctions could be imposed if such a resolution were passed by the Security Council.
The US Constitution has no bearing on the Nuremberg Tribunals The tribunals were not conducted under US law, they were conducted under an international treaty going by the snappy title of No. 251 Agreement by the Government of the United Kindom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Government of the United States of America, the Provisional Government of the French Republic and the Government of the Union of Societ Socialist Republics for the Prosecution and Punishment of the Major War Criminals of the European Axis. This was signed for the United States on 8 August 1945 by Robert H. Jackson who later served as chief prosecutor on the tribunal. The laws of the United States allow three mechanisms for the US to join international treaties: treaties, congressional-executive agreements and executive agreements. I do not know what mechanism was used but AFAIK, no contemporary challenge was made that the US lacked the power to or hadn't properly acceded to the treaty. This is the extent to which US domestic law would be applicable. The US recognises that there are other laws and other courts than merely US ones and that their citizens may be subject to those laws and serve on those courts. Indeed, there are circumstances where US courts will apply foreign law to a case; when that happens US law applies to the procedure but the substantive law of the other jurisdiction is applied to the facts. There is no doubt that the legal basis of the Nuremberg Tribunal was suspect and controversial and this was recognised at the time as this April 1946 The Atlantic article demonstrates. However, there was never any doubt that US law (or UK, or USSR, or French law) was totally irrelevant. I suggest you ask a new question focusing on the role of &quot;Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law&quot; under international law.
Any country is their own sovereign There is no international law that demands any state to allow anyone free speech of all kinds. Remember that your rights end where the rights of others [incl. society] begin. And in Germany, the right of the society is defined as being not subjected to the symbols of illegal organizations, especially ones that try to violate the liberal democratic basic order Also, Germany is not alone in banning the sentence or the accompanying gesture. They are also illegal to various degrees in Austria, Switzerland, Slovakia, The Czech Republic, and Sweden. It also can be illegal in the US, if disturbing the peace. The sentence is an identifier for a banned organization The sentence is certainly illegal if spoken to express certain things. However, it is legal to be used for example in art (films) and is commonly found in lecture material, as one example of how the nazi party identified. But how? People are often confused, but the rule is actually somewhat easy: If you display any symbol of a banned, unconstitutional organisation (under § 86a StGB) like any of the logos of the Nazi Party and spiritual successors (those with a red bar: banned!) or even the PKK, then you are acting in an illegal manner. And unless you have an exception to claim, the determination can be done entirely on a factual basis by looking at the circumstances. Indeed, the mens rea requirement is so minimal (because the law is written in a way that there is none needed!), that posting photos of a swastika tattoo can get you convicted for jailtime Exceptions However, I mentioned exceptions. Those are in § 86a StGB(3), pointing to $ 86(3)&amp;(4) [eng]: (3) Die Absätze 1 und 2 gelten nicht, wenn die Handlung der staatsbürgerlichen Aufklärung, der Abwehr verfassungswidriger Bestrebungen, der Kunst oder der Wissenschaft, der Forschung oder der Lehre, der Berichterstattung über Vorgänge des Zeitgeschehens oder der Geschichte oder ähnlichen Zwecken dient. (4) Ist die Schuld gering, so kann das Gericht von einer Bestrafung nach dieser Vorschrift absehen. (3) Subsection (1) [and (2)] does not apply if the propaganda material or the act serves civic information, to prevent unconstitutional activities, to promote the arts or science, research or teaching, reporting about current or historical events, or similar purposes. (4) If the degree of guilt is minor, the court may dispense with imposing a penalty under this provision. That is why we have swastikas in German school books, as those tell about the horrors of nazi germany. That is why the logos can be found in research material and history books analyzing the use of the symbols in different countries. That's why the news outlet filming the demo where people yell Heil Hitler show that footage without precautions (unlike those that fly the banned symbol!) That is why you can have the film Inglorious Bastards with all its Swastikas and people yelling Heil Hitler, but its advertisement material was specifically altered to not show those. However, until August 2018, computer games were not accepted as arts. This is why the German versions of Wolfenstein that did get a german release before had been altered to remove Swastikas and voice lines. But the &quot;Sozialadäquanzklausel&quot; had been applied to computer games in August 2018, and the games got (after some other hoops) re-released in their international version on 22nd November 2019. How come some ideologies are banned?! Germany's equivalent of a constitution is the Grundgesetz (Basic Law). Its first 20 articles (not paragraphs or sections!) prescribe the rights of any person. The very first and most important one is, and the very first sentence of it makes clear what the very guiding principle of all other laws has to be (emphasis mine) before any of the other basic rights are enumerated. Art. 1: Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar. Sie zu achten und zu schützen ist Verpflichtung aller staatlichen Gewalt. Art. 1: (1) Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority. This is the most absolute right anyone can have. There is no provision in any way that would allow (or make it possible!) to strip or reduce the human dignity and every human being, living and dead, has it. Violations of human dignity have been used quite often to repeal laws, such as several incarceration methods or when cuts to the social security system would prevent someone to live a life that would be without dignity. Human Dignity is the measure that can be used to cut all other rights. In fact, it is explicitly the foundational principle of all german laws, that rights are not granted beyond where other rights start and that nobody has any rights when it comes to harming the constitutional order derived from the Grundgesetz (emphasis mine): Art. 2: (1) Jeder hat das Recht auf die freie Entfaltung seiner Persönlichkeit, soweit er nicht die Rechte anderer verletzt und nicht gegen die verfassungsmäßige Ordnung oder das Sittengesetz verstößt. (1) Every person shall have the right to free development of his personality insofar as he does not violate the rights of others or offend against the constitutional order or the moral law. Now, where comes freedom of speech? Only in Article 5, and it is absolutely not absolute but has defined limits (emphasis mine): Art 5:(1) Jeder hat das Recht, seine Meinung in Wort, Schrift und Bild frei zu äußern und zu verbreiten und sich aus allgemein zugänglichen Quellen ungehindert zu unterrichten. Die Pressefreiheit und die Freiheit der Berichterstattung durch Rundfunk und Film werden gewährleistet. Eine Zensur findet nicht start. (2) Diese Rechte finden ihre Schranken in den Vorschriften der allgemeinen Gesetze, den gesetzlichen Bestimmungen zum Schutze der Jugend und in dem Recht der persönlichen Ehre. (3) Kunst und Wissenschaft, Forschung und Lehre sind frei. Die Freiheit der Lehre entbindet nicht von der Treue zur Verfassung. Art 5: (1) Every person shall have the right freely to express and disseminate his opinions in speech, writing and pictures, and to inform himself without hindrance from generally accessible sources. Freedom of the press and freedom of reporting by means of broadcasts and films shall be guaranteed. There shall be no censorship. (2) These rights shall find their limits in the provisions of general laws, in provisions for the protection of young persons, and in the right to personal honour. (3) Arts and sciences, research and teaching shall be free. The freedom of teaching shall not release any person from allegiance to the constitution. Parties and organisations that can't abide by the other rules of law because of their ideology will get banned based on that. In the case of the nazi ideology, it's quite simple: The core idea of Rassenlehre and its believe in Untermenschen is so deeply dehumanizing that there can't ever be a way to get that in line with the very first (as well as 2nd and 3rd) Article of the Grundgesetz. Or to quote the words of Amon: Nazi ideology denies dignity to some humans, goes against the liberal-democratic order, and therefore cannot enjoy the usual protections. Rule of law is still maintained because restrictions to the freedom of expression are codified in law, and violators will get a fair trial. You see, you simply don't even have an absolute right to disseminate your ramblings, because the Basic law itself points to the general laws that ban the dissemination of certain materials. This is how § 86 StGB can ban any propaganda material for organizations and § 86a StGB subsequently bans their symbols, including gestures and slogans.