First of all, by western here I am referring to the legal system which has been adopted, developed and spread around the world by the British Empire, which is currently the legal system of almost every country, especially given the fact that the world is run by a global government, whose power and hierarchy overrules the political power of national governments. Even countries such as Saudi Arabia, which officially apply the Islamic law by and large, have no choice but to adopt many aspects of this British legal system, such as court rules, the concept of appeal, the introduction of lawyers as a major barrier to people from having access to the legal system etc. So, it’s only fair to know and study the problems of the western legal system, as directly or indirectly it affects our lives, families, properties, and above all, it has to do with our freedom.
In my opinion, one of the major flaws of the western legal system is that it is a system which prioritizes interests over principles. It’s a legal system which revolves around political interests and it is designed that way. One of the major objectives of the legal system, laws, court rules, procedures, and legal precedents is to produce a legal product based on interests, such as political interests, financial interests, ideological interests, and even circumstantial interests of politics and the ruling elite.
The western legal system is not a system of principles. Everything written or articulated about principles is just a propaganda. That’s why the principles of the western legal system are very broad and vague, such as human rights, peace, safety, rule of law, independence.
That’s why the western legal system consists of a large body of laws, which are ambiguous and often contradictory. Court rules are complicated and full of subtleties in order to increase the power of judges instead of increasing the access of people to the justice system. In addition, judges are supplied with discretionary power and offered political impunity. On top of everything, laws and legal acts change frequently, and often formulated and passed to address one single individual or a small category of people.
Unfortunately, when a society prioritizes interests, which are many and change constantly, over principles, that society is doomed to collapse. That’s why legal corruption and injustice in the West and around the world is rampant. That’s why corrupt countries such as the USA have the highest number of people imprisoned per capita. It’s a system that doesn’t deliver justice. It does not guarantee equality, fairness, political disinterestedness, safety and prosperity.
In order to cover up this major flaw of the western legal system, the western countries have come up with an empty slogan, namely, judicial independence, just to calm people down, to tell them that the system is focused on interests, but judges should not have interests – “trusts us.”
Sabri Lushi
