The thousands of Bulgarians taking to the squares because of the "Kotsev" case are doing exactly what citizens are obliged to do by their very nature - to be vigilant for the correct application of laws that comply with the law.
The mantra that citizens do not have the right to comment on the work of the judiciary continues to be pushed into public discussions, as they did not understand these legal complexities.
This is elementary propaganda by elementary (and bad) people. The issue of citizens and law was resolved centuries ago.
Here's what the solution looks like:
Citizens are both authors and addressees of law.
Let's start with the level of politics, i.e. the common good organized in a state.
Even Plato came to the conclusion that the state exists not to serve the powerful and the rich, but to work for ordinary people. Aristotle adds that the state is the totality of its ordinary citizens. Among them are elected those who deal with the common good, i.e. the good of all: customs officers, military leaders, policemen, postmen, tax collectors and judges. Ordinary citizens dispense justice to other ordinary citizens. I personally know two people (an Englishman and a Scotsman) who were "justices of the peace" (magistrates), i.e. they decided small cases on the spot. One had graduated in history, the other in philosophy.
On a philosophical level, things are even more categorical.
For Plato and Aristotle, the founders of European thought, the foundation on which people can only build their successful common life (i.e. without killing each other), is morality, the distinction between good and evil and the practice of good. From morality come the rules on which justice is built in relations between people. A state is created to maintain this justice. How? By dressing the knowledge of good and evil in binding rules. This dressing gives rise to law. Law, in turn, gives rise to the laws that enforce it.
In every link in this chain - laws, law, politics, morality - citizens are present, because they are both the authors and the addressees. And the authors - be careful here - because they may not have specific legal knowledge, but they have the most important knowledge: about what is good and what is evil and how these two look in relationships between people.
Citizens watch out for justice
For the ancient Greeks, this was a given and was not even discussed in too much detail. Subsequently, this given sank into the hierarchical relations and chaos of the Middle Ages. After its end, the topic was most clearly formulated by the English philosopher John Locke at the end of the 17th century. He derived the principle of "natural justice", which states more or less the following: where there is a society, every person, even if they do not yet live in the conditions of a state, knows what is good and evil, just and unjust, honest and dishonest, permissible and impermissible. Everyone knows that it is not good for a person to kill, steal, lie, cheat, not pay their debts, etc. This knowledge precedes both the state and legal education.
That is to say: citizens know, as citizens, the most important thing, the basis of any legal structure - the principles of morality. And once they know the most important thing, they have the unconditional right to judge everything downstream. They have the right (and the obligation) to formulate answers to questions such as: Does the idea of justice available in the state correspond to the rules of morality? Do the principles of law correspond to the idea of justice? Do the existing laws correspond to the principles of law?
Citizens control the way in which power functions
And finally - do the existing courts correctly apply the existing laws? Or do they violate them? Or do they use them as magicians to reach a predetermined outcome? Or do they simply "smear" people on a list?
The thousands of Bulgarians taking to the squares because of the "Kotsev" case are doing exactly what citizens are obliged to do by their very nature: to watch over the proper implementation of laws that correspond to the law, that correspond to justice, that correspond to morality. They do not interfere in "complex legal matters". They exercise direct control over constitutionality, i.e. over the way in which power is structured and functions in the state that they created and whose masters they are.
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This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State Gazette as a whole.