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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

Forgery is a real threat to our Justice System

Nowadays,documents submitted to employers as evidence of education and work experience,driving licenses,ID cards,certificates of ownership,business licenses,etc are prepared in a forged way.Such forged documents are often submitted to courts and administrative tribunals as evidence resulting in miscarriage of justice.So,all of us have to fight against this threat to our justice system.The Federal Police forensic directorate documents investigation department is making a great contribution in fighting forgery. Each and every one of us should also contribute our share in fighting forgery.Otherwise,injustice will triumph over justice.What is your opinion on the issue?

Unsolicited Mobile Text Messages

        Day in and day out,a lot of text messages pop into our mobile phones. These are not from family or friends. Some of the text messages are sent from the telecom operator ,Ethiotelecom;Others are sent from government offices to convey a certain message and others are sent from organizations that run ads.,etc...Whoever is the sender,there is no a request given by us to get these messages. We are rarely asked whether or not we are interested to receive such messages.Nor anyone of us has given permission to the senders to send messages to our phones. In my opinion,our phones are ours;your phone is yours.So sending unsolicited text messages may amount to infringement of our privacy rights something like somebody entering our house without permission.The problem related to this issue is that there is no a clear law which directly regulates such privacy issues. I think it needs regulation.What is your opinion on the issue?