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London mayor’s law change proposal not ‘minor’
London Mayor Boris Johnson
So long and farewell to the presumption of innocence, if Boris Johnson – either a blond buffoon or the next UK prime minister depending on your leanings – gets his way.
The mayor of London has proposed a “swift and minor change” to the law discarding, for people who travel to certain war zones, the presumption of “innocent until proven guilty” in favour of a new presumption: that if you travel to such an area without notifying the authorities in advance, you do so for a terrorist purpose. The onus is on you to prove otherwise.
Such “rebuttable presumptions” are not unheard of in UK law – they’re used around the carrying of knives on the street, and for some sexual offences – but in this particular instance it is hard to see this “minor shift” as anything other than a total reversal of the core governing principle of our legal system.
In Johnson’s world, a whole class of people will become guilty unless they can prove otherwise. And as any logician knows, proving innocence is a fraught task: sure, you can prove you travelled to southern Turkey to visit family. But can you also prove that you didn’t cross the border to deliver supplies or receive training for terror purposes?
Source: http://philosophers-stone.co.uk/wordpress/2014/08/london-mayors-law-change-proposal-not-minor/
