Shame is not a juridical category

25/04/2006

The decision of the RA Constitutional Court, according to which the Governmental decision to take out citizens out of their apartments in the center of Yerevan to build new buildings were illegal and contradicted the Constitution, didn’t bring any positive results. However, the mentioned decision didn’t contain any information concerning compensation of the victims. In other words, the citizens that suffered the consequences won only morally. Now, imagine a situation when a police officer catches a thief stealing a purse from a citizen on the street and tells him “shame on you” and lets him go without punishing the thief and returning the purse to the citizen. We don’t know whether this is justice or not, but we are sure that the citizen will not be satisfied with the police service in such a case because her purse was stolen not morally, but directly by making her lose something she had paid for.