Representation & Law Background This section deals with the considerable practical difficulties of using the law to protect Roma in Europe. One of the difficulties facing the Roma in much of Europe is the inherent bias against them in government administrations and the judiciary. Let us be specific, this bias is held by those who effect decisions which are supposed to be "unbiased". In the article "The European Democratic Deficit in Perspective"1, the removal of trial by jury in many European countries, under the fascists, starting in the late 1920s is described. It is then stated that, "Since 1945, in the Europe of today, we have still not yet seen the full re-establishment of jury systems as a fundamental human right. This is because the judiciary in many countries, rather than lobby for the full reintroduction of juries, jealously defended their, sometimes, arbitrary powers. This anti-democratic prevarication, on the part of the judiciary, has in most cases been explained as a way of mantaining judicial "independence". It is true that some countries have re-established juries, but in a limited form and normally only for criminal matters where there is a capital offence (someone's life is at stake)". In a somewhat stark view of European legal independence, this article goes on to state, under a section entitled, "Lack of judicial independence", the following: "In many European countries, judges continue to have over-bearing influence on legal matters because the civilian input is restricted by a variant on the jury system. The independence of judges remains questionable in many European jurisdictions because the appointment of judges is often a political act related to party or factional group interests. Law, for some, rather than being a fundamental construct of democracy designed to protect people's freedom, is rahter a basic weapon in the armoury for government control and enforcement of its wishes. In other words the law can be, and is, still used to harm individuals on no more than the word of a judge, or a group of judges, on the basis of various arbitrary motivations, including politics, racism and other forms of bias." The issue of arbitraty legal decisions in Europe is not of course one which is restricted to the case of the Roma but affects anyone who might be considered, in the vieww of the judges not to be fully in line with their view of "institutional norms". But, because of the rampant racism and abberational fixations some individuals have concerning racial superiority and various other fanatical views, the Roma suffer more at the hands of the law than most. The article referred to above is part of a series which advocates a radical restructuring of European justice in the context of the current drafting of a European Constitution. However, those involved in the drafting are studiously avoiding such issues as jury rights and are pushing more for greater concentration of institutional and therefore arbitrary power. This is bad news, not only for the Roma, but for all Europeans too. Accordingly, the articles in this section need to be read with this defective and politicized European legal setting in mind. 1  "Why Juries? - The European Democratic Deficit in Perspective", H. McNeill, April 2003, ECRJ-European Campaign for Jury Rights ( no url is provided because the ECJR has been absorbed by Emancipation, a new organization, which will have a website ready in mid-June 2006).