A woman in Ireland is fined for parking in a space reserved for persons with disabilities; she writes that a covering of snow prevented her from seeing the wheelchair logo painted on the pavement, and feels that her honesty is being impugned.\u00a0 Presiding at trial, a judge in Sweden says that a husband\u2019s assault on his wife is \u201cunderstandable.\u201d\u00a0 In the United Kingdom, a life insurance company\u2019s practices and the government\u2019s ineffective regulation result in billion-dollar losses for customers.<\/p>\n
They range from the day-to-day to the life-altering, but these cases all involve conflicts between citizens and the state, and were addressed through the growing institution of the national ombudsman.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public administration intervenes intensely in people\u2019s lives \u2013 education, health, everything,\u201d explains Emily O\u2019Reilly, the Ombudsman and Information Commissioner for the Republic of Ireland, resulting in the \u201cneed for an independent, well-resourced,\u00a0 expert, easily accessible, impartial body to safeguard public entitlements, rights and freedoms.\u201d<\/p>\n
On December 3, O\u2019Reilly spoke at Harvard Law School about the history and role of the national ombudsman in Europe.\u00a0 O\u2019Reilly, who is serving her second six-year term, undertook this role in 2003, after a well-respected and highly visible career as a political journalist.\u00a0 Her connections with Harvard include a Nieman Fellowship in Journalism.<\/p>\n
In general, she said, the need for ombudsmen stems from \u201cmaladministration,\u201d a problem that occurs when a public body fails to act in accordance with a rule or principle binding upon it. \u201cThis can be high or low,\u201d O\u2019Reilly explained; \u201cit can range from serious breaches of the law to how you are treated in a doctor\u2019s waiting room.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe principle is that [the ombudsman\u2019s involvement] levels out the playing pitch between the state and the citizen \u2013 state very big, citizen very small,\u201d O\u2019Reilly explained. \u201cWhat the ombudsman does is bring his or her expertise, authority, and power to bear on the resolution to the problem so that citizens can stand on an equal level with the state while their complaint is being investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n
O\u2019Reilly traced the concept of the ombudsman (coined from the Swedish word \u201combud,\u201d meaning \u201cagent\u201d or \u201cauthority\u201d) to Charles XII of Sweden. \u00a0In 1712, embroiled in the Great Northern War between the Swedish and Russian empires and exiled in Moldova, the King appointed an official to ensure that bureaucrats back home were not ill-treating his people. The first Swedish parliamentary ombudsman was appointed in 1809, but it was not until the early and mid-20th<\/sup> century \u2014 with the devastation caused by two World\u00a0 Wars, the subsequent growth of public administration, and the establishment of the\u00a0 European Convention on Human Rights \u2014 that the institution began, slowly, to take hold.\u00a0 By 1998, a dozen Scandinavian and Western European countries had established an ombudsman\u2019s office.<\/p>\n After the collapse of Communism in the late 1980s, an equal number of Central and Eastern European countries followed suit. In these new democracies, O\u2019Reilly said, titles like \u201dCitizen\u2019s Defender\u201d (Bulgaria) and \u201cPublic Defender of Rights\u201d (Czech Republic), and the ombudsmen\u2019s specific powers to challenge new laws, intervene against or appeal judicial proceedings, and monitor institutions prone to human rights abuses\u00a0 reflect\u00a0 a \u201cmuch sharper focus\u201d on traditional human rights issues and the need to embed the rule of law.\u00a0 As examples, she cited the Croatian ombudsman\u2019s intervention as amicus curiae<\/em> in the first discrimination case heard by the country\u2019s Supreme Court, and widespread involvement by ombudsmen in Albania, Hungary, and Romania in complaints of discrimination against the Roma people.<\/p>\n She argued that for the system to work, the process must be free to use and accessible, the office should be created under a legal statute or the country\u2019s constitution, and the ombudsman must have wide powers of inspection and inquiry.<\/p>\n An ombudsman\u2019s approach is conciliatory and non-adversarial, O\u2019Reilly said, but while his or her recommendations have no binding legal effect, they carry a strong moral persuasion.\u00a0 And \u201cin most well-functioning democracies, with well-functioning ombudsmen\u2019s offices,\u201d that is often, even virtually always, enough for them to be accepted.\u00a0 This stems, she explained, from \u201ca contract of trust\u201d among the ombudsman, the public bodies, and the people. \u201cThe people buy into my independence, the public administration accepts that [an ombudsman] is a good thing for a democracy to have, and as long as the decisions I make are rational and not off-the-wall, they will accept them. \u2026There\u2019s a sense that they should trust in the diligence and the skill of the office to arrive at an effective outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A woman in Ireland is fined for parking in a space reserved for persons with disabilities; she writes that a covering of snow prevented her from seeing the wheelchair logo painted on the pavement, and feels that her honesty is … Continue reading