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Comment by profstasiak | Hacker News Reader

how is sentencing for corruption connected to defensive democracy?

The headline really should be Le Pen guilty of embezzlement, ineligible to run for public office for X years.

Seems like a reasonable policy we should adopt in the US…

Wouldn't matter. Trump is already a felon and should be ineligible. We have at least two parallel lehal systems in the US, probably more. The more "important" you are the less the rules are able to touch you. That's the american way.

This aligns with America's original "sin", rule of law versus a disguised aristocracy. It's always there beneath the surface.

People find the dream of hitting the jackpot far more appealing than creating a genuinely classless society.

Exactly. For better or worse, and whether or not people realize that we have basically inherited and mutated the English class system, except instead of being defined by your birth lineage, it's now defined by how much money you have. I guess you could call that egalitarian in the way that the British call their private schools, "public schools", meaning that anyone with an adequate amount of money is allowed to attend them.

The Wikipedia article has "deprival of the rights of individuals and parties from running for election" listed as a method. So I assume the prison/fine part of the sentencing wouldn't really be defensive democracy but barring her from office is. (Don't think I would feel positively about that in the U.S. but nonetheless the concept is there.)

Applying the laws regardless of if that person is a political candidate.

That's the case in any working democracy. Defensive democracy is a different conception, e.g. the German constitution allows for party prohibitions. In a defensive democracy, rules like party prohibitions are ideally not applied by an ordinary court but by an independent political organ. To give an example from Germany, the German Supreme Court is an independent political organ that serves as a power division element to check the work of the two parliaments for constitutionality. The "highest" ordinary court is the Bunderverwaltungsgericht.

Hehe, now let’s wait and see how they grapple with the fact that you can’t have both! It‘s either criminal use of EU funds or defensive democracy, unless you’re drenched in kool-aid.

The verdict was clearly and unambiguously about a criminal abuse of EU funds and nothing else. It's noteworthy that a list of people was sentenced for it, not just Le Pen.

sure, and just 4 days prior to that totally neutral verdict another french court ruled that political bans were legal. what a coincidence, what a convenience. something that was never even considered legal in France just “clearly and unambiguously” fell into that judge’s hands days ahead.

No, there’s nothing noteworthy here, especially for a crime Le Pen didn’t committed herself and which every single party of France is guilty of.

Don’t choke on that kool aid!

You're talking to the wrong person since I would fully support a prohibition of the RN if France's democracy was as combative as it should be. I just don't think this played a role here. Politicians complaining bitterly about being persecuted for crimes they've committed is not a new thing, though, they always believe they deserve special treatment.

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