Independent judiciary

Just had a thought, alongside the whole "I'm so glad I named my teddy bear 'ted'" story.

Take two tinpot dictatorships run by the military who opress their own people. Hmm, Sudan, and.... Pakistan. With one country we'll mount international pressure to restore the independence and jurisdiction of the judiciary, with the other country we'll say, "nah, your judges are wrong, overturn it". Not exactly the first hypocrisy I know, nor will it be the last, but we preach to the world the wonders of democracy and how a fundamental tenet of that is a legal system independent of the ruling body, then go tell people to overturn decisions we don't like.

In the context of the laws in place in the country (which I, and I suspect most here, think are bonkers, but that's actually beside the point) the sentence passed actually seemed quite reasonable and considered.

EDIT: Thought number 2, and derailing my own thread. People often call for the return of capital and/or corporal punishment to the UK, claiming it'll "sort out our crime problem" etc. Yet, when this story first emerged, one of the potential punishments was 40 lashes, to which there were crys of barbarism. I'm willing to bet that some of the people that claim barbarism are the same that call for the same type of punishments here. And I'll counter the whole "British legal system is so much better here" argument by simply stating that the British legal system has been known to make mistakes in the past.

[northwind]

Originally Posted by MiniMatt

Take two tinpot dictatorships run by the military who opress their own people. Hmm, Sudan, and.... Pakistan. With one country we'll mount international pressure to restore the independence and jurisdiction of the judiciary, with the other country we'll say, "nah, your judges are wrong, overturn it". Not exactly the first hypocrisy I know, nor will it be the last, but we preach to the world the wonders of democracy and how a fundamental tenet of that is a legal system independent of the ruling body, then go tell people to overturn decisions we don't like.
.

But of course. Just like we'll invade one country to remove a dictator enforce democracy, but we try and keep dictators and totalitarian monarchs in power when we know the people who'd be democratically elected would be worse for us (ie, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia). We're only pro-democracy as long as people are democratically electing the people we want.