Cynthia Brzak filed the petition-stemming from a December 2003 incident implicating ex-UNHCR chief Ruud Lubbers.
He was never charged in the case thanks to the diplomatic immunity granted to top UN officials.The infamous affair, and frenzied media coverage surrounding it, eventually prompted Lubbers to quit his post in February 2005, four years after he took office. He has long denied the allegations.
The lawyers noted that the case was not an isolated one, in terms of sexual misconduct among UN agencies,and pointed to a "systematic array of sexual misconduct that continues to go unaddressed at the UN."
"My client, an American citizen, experienced criminal behavior that would land any other employer in jail. But at the UN, it's just another day at the office," said attorney Edward Flaherty. "Because of where she happens to work, her assailant is beyond the law. The question being placed today before the Supreme Court is whether this system should be allowed to stand in the United States, where no one is supposed to be above the law."
The Supreme Court is unlikely to rule on the matter before this fall if it accepts to take up the case. It would mark the first time the high court intervenes on the question of diplomatic immunity granted to top UN officials.
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It serves always to distract the public councils and feeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill founded jealousies and false alarms, kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.
It is important, likewise, that the habits of thinking in a free country should inspire caution in those entrusted with its administration to confine themselves with in their respective constitutional spheres, avoiding in the exercise of the powers of one department to encroach upon another. The spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate the powers of all departments in one and thus to create, whatever the form of government, a real despotism.
If in the opinion of the people the distribution or modification of the constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed."
…George Washington’s Farewell Address…
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