Why Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook should not be afraid of men in tights

If a sticky man comes to your door and demands that you hand him private documents or come to Parliament, do you need to comply?

This issue was raised this week by the Commission on Digital, Culture, Media and Sports, which sent a parliamentary officer to a London hotel to inform an American businessman that he was obliged to provide them with confidential documents.

The observer reported that the committee "had invoked a rare parliamentary mechanism to compel the founder of a US software company, Six4Three, to hand over the documents during a business trip to London … It would have been put at the risk of a fine and even a term of imprisonment. "Not hand over the documents."

These files were contentious: in fact, a US court had banned the company from publishing them. But he delivered them.

The documents related to Facebook, a company whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have, on the contrary, ignored the repeated requests to appear before the committee.

Yesterday, Mr. Zuckerberg was chaired by a committee.

All this is a strange turn of events. Our parliamentary committees have the right to call people and documents to conduct investigations.

If you disregard their grand summons, which can be issued by the Sergeant-at-Arms, you can be considered "in defiance of Parliament" – in the same way as non-compliance with a prescription. of the court can lead you to contempt of court.

So which of these two companies understood the state of the law?

Probably Facebook. If the Six4Three executive had refused to comply, it is likely that he escaped with nothing more than a stern letter. For all the theater, the information and the testimonies requested by the committees of private institutions and individuals are essentially voluntary.

Take the case of Dominic Cummings, the former Vote Leave Bigwig member, who declined to attend the same committee earlier this year. He also annoyed the committee by joking about their summons in untimely terms.

Committee Chair Damian Collins told MPs, "A person must have some kind of punishment for his behavior and language, as well as for the contempt they have shown toward Parliament."

We are awaiting a verdict on this issue: the House of Commons has asked its committee for privileges to consider an appropriate penalty.

But it is unlikely that Mr. Cummings will see inside a cell or face a fine. The right of MPs to vote to imprison people who do not comply is more hypothetical than real.

Why deputies can not lock you up

Why? Well, there are some problems to consider here.

There are problems of great principle. Other countries have explicit divisions of legislative and judicial powers enshrined in the law. We dont do; Parliament still considers itself sometimes as a kind of special court.

But the principle that MPs should not vote to prosecute individuals has long been established here for a good reason.

Putting aside the fact that it would be a circus to sue the House of Commons, the fact that courts are built for this purpose is part of the reason for wanting a division between the courts and the legislators.

The courts have appeal processes. We do not know who could do this for Parliament. Who would intervene if a group of zealous deputies went beyond the limits and began to interfere in a court case?

And if they interfered unnecessarily in the lives of innocent people with powers of arrest and seizure of documents?

Take it seriously: in the worst case, these are powers that would allow a party with a majority in parliament to seize documents about the lives of their opponents and throw them into jail if they did not dare to comply.

At another time, deputies punished the king 's enemies through so – called outreach bills.

Perhaps things could never get so bad: Clerks badume that any attempt to imprison or fined an individual would immediately result in a court challenge. But it would be a very big constitutional fight; Remember that Parliament is protected by something called "privilege".

Judges are not supposed to be able to examine or hinder the work of our legislature.

But once you start locking up members of the public, the courts may not stay outside that's quite their area of ​​work.

This would create a deadlock between the judiciary and the legislature. (Note to MPs: I'll bet on the justice system.)

Members must be wary of this for obscure reasons. One of my concerns is close to my heart: our laws of contempt of court and data protection, for example, are designed to protect journalists who seek to protect confidential sources from disclosure.

No rule of this kind binds the deputies.

Hence the verdict of MP Chris Bryant, intervened in a debate on the conduct of Mr. Cummings: "The idea of ​​sending the Sergeant of arms is beautiful and picturesque. can undoubtedly deliver a letter, but I do not think he has a summons to appear.It is also a bit strange that a political body stops someone, which, in reality, is what that we must be able to do.

"I am happy to be able to say that politicians who decide on a political motion to decide whether a person should be arrested are anathematized … We just do not believe in this way of asking for justice."

Give teeth to committees

This is not to say that there is no way to divide this circle in half. There are many advocates for strengthening the powers of committees, and they often find that US congressional committees have more resources and can summon people to appear for documents and demand their presence.

Mr. Zuckerberg was forced to testify.

The United States has a legal concept called "inherent contempt" in Congress, which is similar to our "contempt of Parliament".

But the teeth of their committees really come from the fact that, since 1857, they can forward the subpoena to a US attorney in order to prosecute non-conformists in court.

Or, since 1978, they can seek a civil judgment from a federal court so that non-compliance is contempt of court rather than contempt of Congress.

The thing is, that these two processes introduce a court in the composition, so that there is a judicial review of the abuse of power committees.

This could be a way forward for our MPs if they want Parliament's contempt to become a reality.

People have good reason to cooperate with committees – they especially want to be seen as cooperating. But beware of anyone who claims to have been forced to do so.

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