Westminster System Countries
Legislators in countries using the Westminster system, such as the United Kingdom, are protected from civil action for slander and libel by parliamentary immunity whilst they are in the House. This protection is known as parliamentary privilege. Parliamentary immunity from criminal prosecution is not enjoyed by Members of Parliament under the Westminster system. This lack of criminal immunity is derived from the key tenet of the British Constitution that all are equal before the law.
In the run-up to the 2006 election in Canada, Conservative Party leader Stephen Harper denounced the ruling Liberal Party on the floor of the House of Commons, contending that the government ran "a massive corruption ring using organized crime to defraud taxpayers." Although the Liberal Party had threatened to sue Harper if he repeats his allegation during the campaign, parliamentary immunity prevented them from legal action against his statements in the Commons.
Read more about this topic: Parliamentary Immunity
Famous quotes containing the words system and/or countries:
“The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave.”
—George Steiner (b. 1929)
“It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshiped in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and respectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one another, not yet God.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)