Individual Rights and the Law - Scots Law Essay

Individual Rights and the Law - Scots Law - Essay Example It has therefore its core topic human rights. It necessitates us therefore to define as well human rights. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines human rightsï‚ ¸ as international moral and legal norms that aspire to protect all people everywhere from severe political, legal, and social abuses. They are inherently universal and therefore they transcend citizenships or nationalities. Famous of these rights are the right to life, liberty and happiness and their deprivation could not be permitted without due process of law. Unlike other laws human right focuses on the rights rather than on duties of the individuals. Other laws like criminal statutes or civil law legislations do also enumerate certain rights but the tenor of these obligations normally discusses duties, responsibilities and obligation and the consequences of their violations. Human right laws therefore focuses on the individuals as the subject of major consideration in deciding issues. In terms of criminal prosecution, for example, the law seems to treat more favourably the accused rather than the prosecution because it recognizes the rights of the accused to presumption of innocence while not mentioning more emphatically the right of the state to implement its laws. Politicisation of the judiciary seems to imply a judiciary that does not perform its function according to original design. It would give the connotation that judges will not interpret the law on the basis on what is the law but rather on what is popular or how they want it. It could also mean judges acting not as judges but politicians. It could further mean judges lacking judicial independence and holding some unholy alliance with the other branch of government which could be either the executive or the legislative. We could therefore restate the proposition into some like this: The nature of deliberating cases involving rights of the individuals for purposes of