Kategorie: Zitate

Pierre Bourdieu zu den Juristen (Zitat)

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Unvermeidlich drängt sich abschließend der Fall der Juristen auf, die nur um den Preis einer „frommen Heuchelei“ immer noch glauben können, dass ihre Verdikte nicht auf äußeren, namentlich ökonomischen Zwängen beruhen, sondern in transzendenten Normen gründen, zu deren Hütern sie bestellt sind. Das Feld der Rechtsprechung ist nicht, was es zu sein glaubt, nämlich ein von allen Kompromissen mit den politischen oder wirtschaftlichen Notwendigkeiten befreites Universum. Dass es ihm aber gelingt, als solches anerkannt zu werden, trägt zur Produktion vollkommen realer sozialer Effekte bei, und zwar zunächst einmal bei denen, deren Beruf es ist, Recht zu sprechen. Was aber wird aus den Juristen, diesen mehr oder weniger aufrechten Inkarnationen der kollektiven Heuchelei, wenn einmal allgemein bekannt wird, dass sie, weit davon entfernt, transzendentalen und universellen Werten zu gehorchen, ganz wie alle anderen gesellschaftlichen Akteure Zwängen ausgeliefert sind – Zwängen wie denen, die ohne jeden Respekt vor Prozeduren oder Hierarchien der Druck ökonomischer Notwendigkeiten oder die Versuchung durch journalistische Erfolge ausübt?

Pierre Bourdieu, ‚Im Bann des Journalismus‘ in Über das Fernsehen (Suhrkamp 1998), 119f

warum Staaten scheitern (Zitat)

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In letzter Zeit ist, insbesondere aufgrund der Flüchtlingskrise, immer öfter von failed states die Rede. Was die Frage aufwirft, weshalb Staaten eigentlich scheitern. Das Standardwerk zum Thema jedenfalls identifiziert ihre selbstbereichernden Institutionen – die also nur einigen wenigen privilegierten Personen und dahinterstehenden Organisationen oder Unternehmen dienen – wirtschaftlicher und politischer Natur als Hauptgrund:

Weiterlesen „warum Staaten scheitern (Zitat)“ →

good read on Syria

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The Syrian government does not publish casualty figures by sect, but martyrs’ notices pasted on the walls in Jabal Alawia, the Alawite heartland in the hills east of the port of Latakia, indicate that the Alawites have suffered a disproportionate share of deaths in the war to preserve the Alawite president. A myth promulgated by the Sunni Islamist opposition is that the Alawites have been the main beneficiaries of forty-four years of Assad family rule over Syria, but evidence of Alawite wealth outside the presidential clan and entourage is hard to find. The meager peasant landholdings that marked the pre-Assad era are still the rule in Jabal Alawia, where most families live on the fruits of a few acres. Some Alawite merchants have done better in the seaside cities of Latakia and Tartous, but so have Sunni, Druze, and Christian businessmen. This may explain in part why, from my own observations, a considerable proportion of Syrian Sunnis, who comprise about 75 percent of the population, have not taken up arms against the regime. If they had, the regime would not have survived.
The rising number of Alawite young men killed or severely wounded while serving in the army and in regime-backed militias has led to resentment among people who have no choice other than to fight for President Assad and to keep their state’s institutions intact. Their survival, as long as Sunni jihadists kill them wherever they find them, requires them to support a regime that many of them oppose and blame for forcing them into this predicament.

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/nov/06/syria-we-dont-know/ 

In addition, there is new insight from VICE news, including the alliance between „moderates“ and Islamist groups in their recent advances against Assad’s troops:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-2uvKfYGQ4 

D’Amato, Anarchy, and the purpose of international law

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In a recent article in the latest American Journal of International Law, Anthony D’Amato examines the structure of international law and claims that its primary purpose is self-preservation, not the regulation of international relations. His characterization of international law along with reference to Schachter’s good old ‚invisible college of international lawyers‘-metaphor may well stir debate. Tom Farer (in a reply in the same issue of the American Journal) for instance already noted D’Amato’s understanding of anarchy as chaos. One may add Kant’s understanding of Anarchy as ‚Law and Freedom without force‘ (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy#Kant_on_anarchy). After all, international lawyers in particular are well aware of defending the anarchic, yet nevertheless legal, character of their field (already Jellinek has characterized international law in this manner).

Here is the relevant passage from D’Amato’s article (footnotes omitted):

the general-systems viewpoint here takes an essentialist position in claiming that the rules and processes of international law can be best explained if we start with the selfprotective nature of all aggregative, interconnected entities known as general systems.

International law is not a stack of rules on a library shelf. It is a professional industry, made up of national officials, diplomats and statespersons, international practitioners and scholars, law professors and students, UN officials, judges of international courts and their clerks, professional arbitrators, judges and clerks of bilateral claims commissions, and advocate-members of NGOs, among others—all of whom were well described by the late Oscar Schachter as an invisible college of international lawyers dedicated to a common intellectual enterprise. Because of the time that these persons have devoted to studying and learning international law, they have invested significant human capital in the system’s continued utility and preservation. To be sure, they will often disagree as to whether an alleged rule belongs to the set of accepted rules of international law (especially if it is their job to come out the way that their employers or their governments demand), but even then they have a personal stake in preserving and maintaining the system of international rules. Governments turn to them for advice as to the international legality of a given policy that the government plans to implement—at the very least in order to help predict the reactions of the legally informed international community. These advisers, both official and unofficial, infuse the international legal system with a dynamic sense of purpose and persistence. Thus, to the tens of thousands of persons making up the invisible college around the world, international rules can sometimes seem incorrect but never irrelevant.

The greatest threat to the viability of the international-law system is anarchy. With total anarchy, international law would perish and might be replaced, if peace is restored, by something entirely different (such as a world dictatorship). Thus, when any controversy arises among nations and the relevant rules are in dispute, the international legal system’s bias for self-preservation will tilt toward the rule that offers the greater probability of a peaceful resolution of the controversy and will bend away from the rule that prolongs or escalates it. That is not to say that justice is irrelevant to conflict resolution. But justice does not function in the abstract; rather, it is perceived justice that counts. And most of the time the perceived justice is symbiotic with the resolution that augurs future peace. Arguably, a justly perceived decision, both in domestic and international law, promotes stability. After the temper of a losing side cools down, the just decision may gradually be accepted as the right decision.

Anthony D’Amato, ‚Groundwork for International Law‘ (2014) 108(4) The American Journal of International Law 650, 652-3.