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Some Points on Remand

Under the Ethiopian Criminal Justice System, delivery of criminal justice is a process. It starts from setting justice on motion. Some person or government official may give information about the commission or omission of a crime. The person need not necessarily be the victim of a crime. He or she may be any concerned person or whistle blower. After the police get such information, the police start criminal investigation. In principle and from the point of view of human rights, no one should be arrested before the necessary investigation is done and the appropriate evidence is collected. The arrest if necessary should follow the investigation. Thus, investigation should, in principle, precede arrest. However there may be some cases that the suspect is under custody until the completion of the investigation. Article 59(1) of the criminal procedure code rules “The court before which the arrested person is brought (article 29) shall decide whether such person shall be kept in custody
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Some points about Declaration of State of emergency

Ethiopia has declared state of emergency a number of times. The Ethiopian constitution allows the declaration of state of emergency when man made or natural disasters occour.Currently,the Ethiopian government has declared a state of emergency on Amhara region. The main feature of state of emergency is that some rights may be limited to enable the restoration of law and order.Under Ethiopian constitution some rights cannot be limited or violated even during state of emergency. Furthermore,some procedures previously followed to ensure due process of law may not be followed during state of emergency. This opens a hole for a potential violation of human rights if the implementation process of the state of emergency is not done with due care. That is why a board that follows up implementation of state of emergency is established every time a state of emergency is declared.

RULE OF LAW VERSUS Rule by Law

In both rule of law and rule by law there is rule i.e. positive law but the two are different in the purposes they serve. If a government makes laws by its legislators and the law serves for all people to bring peace and stability and if all the people are equally treated and benefited from the law, this is called Rule of Law. On the other hand if a government makes laws that benefit a certain group of people or only the ruling class disregarding the equality of people before the law, this is Rule by Law. One common example of rule by law is the rule of the nazi’s regime in Germany. Let us work together to ensure rule of law but not rule by law everywhere.

A GOOD MESSAGE FOR LAWYERS

Force Majeure and Hardship under UNCISG and Ethiopian law (By our professional guest author Yidnekachew Tadele - LL.B., LL.M (Federalism Studies) and LL.M Candidate (International Investment Law) Honourable yidnekachew is currently working as a judge at Addis Ababa City Appelate Court.

Introduction The article that is entitled Force Majeure and Hardship under UNCISG and Ethiopian law discusses only about UNCISG and Ethiopian law. The paper doesn’t discuss about other UN convection or other countries’ laws. The article has five parts. The first part discuss about the general concept of force majeure and hardships. The second part discusses about the similarity and differences of force majeure and hardship.   The Third one discusses about force majeure and hardship under UNCISG. The fourth part discusses about force majeure and hardship under Ethiopian law. Under the fifth and the last part the article the writer concludes the paper and gives some recommendations.  

Towards a Comprehensive Prosecution Service in Ethiopia: Noting the New Developments by Leake Mekonen Tesfay

Abstract   Although Ethiopia’s public prosecution is a recent development, continuous changes have been made since the first public prosecution department was established. While the prosecution service has been wavering between centralized prosecution department at times and specialized prosecution institutions in another, a new comprehensive prosecution department – the Federal Attorney General has been recently established in the federal government taking almost all prosecution powers to it. This article briefly reviews the historical development of the prosecution department, the ups and downs between centralized and specialized prosecution institutions and the new developments related to the establishment of the Federal Attorney General as a comprehensive prosecution institution. Key Words Public Prosecution, Specialized Prosecution Institutions, Centralized Prosecution, Ethiopia

A point about some traffic police corruption

            Our traffic police are not clean handed. This doesn’t mean all traffic police are corrupt. There are many ethical and professional and country-loving traffic police as opposed to the corrupt ones. I have been traveling from Addis to the South region and back to Addis many times. It is a very common practice for the drivers to give Birr 50 or 100 to the traffic police to have a ‘safe’ pass besides overloading passengers,missing dispatch paper(‘mewicha’),driving above the speed limit, driving a technically deficient car, overpricing the transportation fee above the tariff,etc. These faults of the driver are ignored as seen in return to the Birr 50 or 100 bribe.The drivers have told me that the traffic police do collect the money from each public transport car. What an ashaming practice! If our law enforcement organs are corrupt, then who can enforce the law? Will these corrupt ones will enforce it? No. A serious measure has to be taken on this problem. Let you share us