Review: Schengen Investigated: A Comparative Interpretation of the Schengen Provisions on International Police Cooperation in the Light of the European Convention on Human Rights
| Author | J.W.E. Sheptycki |
| DOI | 10.1177/136571279700100406 |
| Published date | 01 December 1997 |
| Date | 01 December 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
REVIEWS
Chantel Joubert and Hans Bevers
SCHENGEN INVESTIGATED:
A
COMPARATIVE INTERPRETATON
OF
THE
SCHENGEN PROVISIONS ON INTERNATIONAL POLICE COOPERATION
IN
THE
LIGHT
OF
THE EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS
The Hague: Kluwer Law Publishers (1996) hb,
€119.00
From a sociological perspective, law forms a central pillar of the occupational
subcultures of the crime control apparatus. However. as the authors of this
thorough examination of the law governing regional cross-border policing in
Belgium, The Netherlands, Luxembourg, France and Germany remind us,
simple uniformity of the legal frame does not, in itself, ensure smooth
sailing. Mutual understanding of the language, culture and customs as they
blur into and out of each other across this region is. perhaps, more requisite.
After all, and as the authors of this text observe, there are plenty of examples
of transborder regions where the homogenisation of criminal justice systems
has not taken place but where relatively harmonious police co-operation has
been achieved. The Scotland-England and Canada-United States frontiers are
but two examples which show that
it
is cultural understandings, not legal
doctrines, that need to be syncretised in order to set the tempo for
transnational policing efforts.
However, the issue is not simply about the effectiveness of police
co-operation. There
is
also a question of jurisprudence involved that
is
as old
as the rule of law itself. The classical formulation of this question was,
of
course, put by Juvenal:
quis
custodiet
ipsos
Custo&s?
Thus, while Joubert and
Bevers are concerned with the efficacy of ‘international policing’, they are
also concerned to hold such policing up to the standard of the European
Convention on Human rights. This
is,
according to them, the maximum
standard to which policing in a borderless Europe can be held:
it
is the only
available expression of the rule of law for the transnational Europe of the 21st
century. And yet that might not be enough, as we shall see. Such concerns
would be familiar to a classical liberal of the 19th century like John Stuart
Mill. The question of the proper relations between law, liberty and rights
246
THE
INTERNATIONAL
JOURNAL OF
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&
PROOF
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