WA Resolution: Ban on Ex Post Facto Laws

[Hockeynutville]

Ban on Ex Post Facto Laws
A resolution to improve worldwide human and civil rights.

Category: Human Rights
Strength: Significant
Proposed by: Hiriaurtung Arororugul


Description: Believing that ex post facto laws are violations of both the rule of law and the right of persons to fair treatment by the criminal justice system;

Asserting that one should not be penalised for doing something that is not prohibited by law;

Further, asserting that there can be no crime committed, and punishment must not be meted out, without a violation of the law as it existed at the time;

The World Assembly hereby:

Defines, for the purposes of this resolution, an ex post facto law as a criminal or penal law that retroactively changes the legal consequences of acts or the legal status of facts and relationships that existed prior to the enactment of the law. This includes laws that criminalize acts which were legal when committed and laws which retroactively increase sentences for crimes already committed;

Declares that:

(I) No person may be charged with or convicted of a criminal offence because of any act or omission unless, at the time of the act or omission, it constituted a criminal offence under the law of the jurisdiction in which the charge is brought or under international law.

(II) No nation or governmental subdivision thereof shall enact any criminal or penal law with ex post facto provisions that criminalize an act or omission, or that increase sentencing or punishment. Any such ex post facto provisions in existing criminal laws shall be rendered null and void.

(III) Any persons under sentence as a result of ex post facto laws shall have their sentence for any ex post facto offences nullified and their criminal record expunged of these ex post facto offenses.

[Guy]

Against. That would mean that something equivalent to real-world Nazis couldn't be prosecuted in many nations for crimes against humanity.

[Shelter from the Storm]

For. Surely mass murder and war crimes are already illegal?

[Guy]

Not in countries which were only independent after 1945. Adolf Eichmann's main defence was exactly that, because Israel was only created in 1948.