Quote of the week
[T]he moral point of the matter is never reached by calling what happened by the name of ‘genocide’ or by counting the many millions of victims: extermination of whole peoples had happened before in antiquity, as well as in modern colonization. It is reached only when we realize this happened within the frame of a legal order and that the cornerstone of this ‘new law’ consisted of the command ‘Thou shall kill,’ not thy enemy but innocent people who were not even potentially dangerous, and not for any reason of necessity but, on the contrary, even against all military and other utilitarian calculations. … And these deeds were not committed by outlaws, monsters, or raving sadists, but by the most respected members of respectable society.
Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on The Banality of Evil
Western Cape High Court Judge Dennis Davis says the JSC’s recently-published criteria for the appointment of judges are ‘simply not good enough’. Business Day notes the criteria were applied for the first time earlier this month during interviews by the JSC. Davis, speaking at a debate organised by the Constitutional Court Clerks Alumni Association last night, said some of the latest appointments raised ‘troubling questions’, such as whether the JSC was looking for more deference to the government from SA’s judges. He reportedly said it was also essential that the public is informed how the criteria are being implemented. ‘Simply putting those (criteria) out there, in the incoherent way that they have, is simply not good enough.
