In Norway, a Victory for the Rule of Law

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/opinion/in-norway-a-victory-for-the-rule-of-law.html

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Anders Behring Breivik is about as evil as a man can be, a far-right terrorist who murdered 77 people with bullets and a bomb in Norway in 2011. He was tried and sentenced to 21 years in prison, the maximum in Norway, but with the possibility of extending his term if he was found to still be a public threat. Then, in a galling reversal, the fiend became the accuser, charging that his isolation in prison violated his human rights. And he won. And with his victory, however shocking it may be, the rule of law also won.

Judge Helen Andenaes Sekulic ruled Wednesday that Mr. Breivik’s solitary confinement was a form of “inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” and ordered the government to reduce his isolation and pay his legal fees. To many Americans, the notion that isolating so heinous a murderer, especially in the relatively comfortable conditions of a Norwegian prison, would be a violation of his rights is hard to accept. Even to many in Norway, which is admirably dedicated to rehabilitating and reintegrating prisoners into society, the decision is appalling.

But Judge Sekulic was right. In effect, Mr. Breivik took the fundamental notions of human rights and the rule of law to their most extreme test: Is someone who is convinced that he stands far above the law and the rest of humanity, who can walk around an island shooting one helpless teenager after another, eligible for the same rights as the people whose rights he so flagrantly denied?

The answer must be yes, even in Mr. Breivik’s case, because rights are not distributed according to behavior or moral standing; they are and must be universal. Extremists like Mr. Breivik, or the murderers of the Islamic State, or the Nazis in another time, challenge that fundamental notion by dehumanizing their victims in the name of some pernicious ideology.

Mr. Breivik’s mass murders and galling lawsuit may have been limited to Norway, but they reflected what many democratic societies confront from the global forces of terror and extremism. And the Norwegian court demonstrated how to hold firm.