The stasis of disrepute

• Main Authors: Lilienthal, Gary I., Ahmad, Muhamad Hassan
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English; English
• Published: NOVA Science Publishers 2023
• Subjects: K1701 Labor Law
• Online Access: http://irep.iium.edu.my/103915/1/T01_%20The%20stasis%20of%20disrepute_SCOPUS.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/103915/2/T01_The%20stasis%20of%20disrepute.pdf; http://irep.iium.edu.my/103915/

In 2022, the broadcaster “Russia Today” had its United Kingdom license revoked, after British watchdog Ofcom ruled it was neither a "fit and proper" nor a "responsible” broadcaster. In the light of the significance of this apparently quasi-judicial characterization, the overall research objective of this research is to investigate critically the stasis of how decisions of fitness and propriety can be formulated. Early rhetoricians described the so-called ‘moving apart’ of opposing contentious assertions, by analogy to what the Sophists called “primary entities”, those combining form with matter. Movement could only be predicated on these primary entities. Thus, when “movement” of the opposing components of a contentious matter came to rest, this was called “stasis”. Stasis theory thus allowed the rhetorician to judge whether or not a conflict of wills really existed, and if so, in what ways. The research question asks whether there can be a stable stasis, between the applicant and the general public, with which the court can render its decision on whether or not the applicant is a “fit and proper” person. Argument seeks to demonstrate that prior denunciation of a fit and proper person is an attempt to make the person disreputable, destroying any chance of safe and stable judicial determination. The research is doctrinal, based on best available authoritative scholarship. In the result, the rhetor could denounce a person simply with a bare persuasive declamation and the situation’s stasis would be one of ‘conjecture’, by default, and all that would remain would be its effect in the public mind. A denunciation of a fit and proper person could have the same moving effect as the conception of murder lingua vel facto, before the matter arrived anywhere near a court of law. In the light of this, fit and proper administrative determinations were in the nature of an asystatic question, specifically the asystatic question of “disreputable”, incapable of stasis because it did not have any issue. The subaltern groups, such as professionals have been constructed to receive less justice from their superior professional associations, while those inside the professional associations are protected as reputable by their own definition. To satisfy the axiom of modern stasis, accusing someone of violating either a legal or a moral norm must specify the violated norm, which must be neither unstable nor overly strict or absolute in liability, or else everyone breaches it.