Henry II Quotes

Reaction to the indictments of several of his political associates who were subsequently convicted after this statement:

This quotation is a great example of the difficulty of deciding some of the major Constitutional issues. Most reasonable people believe that Rehnquist certainly has a point. On the other hand, critics observe that this quotation essentially says that it is OK to convict an innocent person if it cost too much or be too much trouble to do so. Reasonable people would also agree that this objection has much merit also. So the judicial system is stuck with deciding when the cost or trouble is too much. There will never, can never, be a clear cut answer.

Americans are divided as to whether this should be encouraged and helped or not.

Charles I was tried by Parliament but at the time there was the concept of Royal Impunity and there was no existing crime that he could be charged with despite the murder of many of his citizens. Cooke established the legal precedent making Tyranny a crime. See {624032}.

Appeals to Providence included Trial by Fire, Trial by Water and related Trial by Ordeal. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_by_ordeal for explanations of these.

He was one of the few “national security hawks” who was willing to place this issue in the public table. In the 21st Century, there were some Muslims living in Democratic countries who were or had just become radical Islamic extremist jihadist by religious belief and philosophy. Some would preach or advocate violence in terrorism against Democracy and the west. Many of these people with radical Islamic beliefs would give material aid and comfort to terrorists and some would themselves engage in terrorist activities themselves. When they did, it was too late to prevent tragedies. So there was this population of emotional and intellectual terrorists who could act on their beliefs at any moment. These are what Hayden referred to as the “not yet guilty”. Preventive detention could protect against serious terrorist attacks. But the legal system of virtually every democracy had no legal bases to incarcerate or move against anyone for his/her beliefs or speech. Criminal charges required action other than thoughts, beliefs or speech. But by waiting until there is terrorist action, the law enforcement authorities give up the ability to prevent the terrorist action. Some were advocating changes in this fundamental and traditional distinction of law enforcement.

This clause is a real puzzlement to non-Muslims throughout the world. What it means is that a person is allowed to murder certain other people—the “blood” was permitted. These include homosexuals, heretics. blasphemers, and those individuals who have had Fatwas—Islamic legal opinions—calling for their death as enemies of Islam. So if a Muslim cleric issues a fatwa calling for the death of someone, anyone who can kill the person will be exonerated. Under Sharia, a Muslim who murders his own daughter or sister because she violated the sexual taboos of Islam, is exonerated because in this case the blood of the victim was permitted. It is the same for murdering a homosexual, or someone who converts from Islam to Christianity.

This is one of the many statements of President Bush that contributed to his reputation as a polarizing politician. His supporters turned to this statement to illustrate that Bush was a supporter of the Constitution and civil liberties by urging the nation not to engage in vigilantism or give vent to their stereotypic views of minorities. Detractors took the same statement as a perfect example of Bush’s assault on Constitutional freedoms. Law enforcement does not determine guilt or innocence in our system. Police and prosecutors in America do not determine guilt or innocence; juries do. They argue that the Bush administration law enforcement policies are designed to have law enforcement usurp more and more of this facet of criminal justice.

This assize is generally considered to be the first written specification of due process in English Common Law.

This is the classic argument given by those who would deny a defendant the Constitutional protection against self-incrimination. The belief that an innocent man has nothing to fear from the police is refuted by the many cases of innocent men being convicted by evidence they have given in the belief that they were innocent, and served long jail sentences only to later be proved by DNA evidence that they could not possibly have been guilty. Since Nott’s day, society has not only found many cases where honest error was made by the police or prosecutors, but many where there was venal prosecutorial misconduct and defendants were jailed even though the authorities were aware of evidence of innocence and kept it secret. There have been a number of these cases where a defendant was on death row and about to be executed when it was found he was innocent. Probably there have been men wrongly executed. See {629444} for a probable example.