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zeveb is arguing for nonviolent civil disobedience, which is a very far cry from vigilante justice. Some of our greatest civil rights heroes are advocates for c

by Zikes 11y ago

zeveb is arguing for nonviolent civil disobedience, which is a very far cry from vigilante justice. Some of our greatest civil rights heroes are advocates for civil disobedience, including Martin Luther King Jr, Rosa Parks, Mohandas Gandhi, and Emmeline Pankhurst.

jdmichal 11y ago
Yes, vigilante justice is probably a step too far, but only because it's definition requires a lack of rule of law to start with. zeveb is basically arguing that the morality of the individual citizens at each step of the chain overrides the rule of law. The basic premise is the same between them: A vigilante applies their own morality extra-judiciously, without regard for the rule of law. It's the positive counterpart (applying law) of the negative (nullifying law) that zeveb is arguing for. Civil disobedience is also not correct. Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey laws, not the refusal to uphold them. People participating in civil disobedience do it with the understanding that they can (and should) be prosecuted for such. They do so to act as martyrs.
- Zikes 11y ago
  I have to apologize for the extreme and apocryphal example, but I honestly can't think of a better one right now: there are quite a few people that have been convicted as war criminals for "applying law" as they were ordered to do. The law can be very wrong sometimes, and it's the responsibility of an ethical human being to disobey such laws, whether by non-application or nullification, until such time as those laws are corrected.
  - jdmichal 11y ago
    I actually think that's a great example; no need for apologies. (And, after all, I did set the example with my original comment and white supremacists.) My response would be that, in such cases, there exist two sets of conflicting laws. The national law, which was not being broken, and the supra-national law regarding human rights and war crimes, which was. So that is actually an example of rule of law being upheld, just not national law. The bottom line is, you need to be really, really careful when you start arguing for "ethics" and "morality" as a basis for execution of law. For instance, to make a concrete example: It could be argued that based on the ethics and morality of the Nazis, that the mass murders committed under the Holocaust were in fact them morally disobeying those supra-national human rights laws. Who are you to say that the Nazi morality is wrong? You can't point to the agreed-upon supra-national human rights laws, because you are in fact arguing that law should be violated based on morality! In fact, one of the ways to view law is as an encoding of the morality of the society it covers. Sometimes laws, being fixed entities, and society, being ever changing, drift apart over time. Same as software drifts from the requirements of business if not kept up to date. It usually takes an example like this German one to point out the absurdity, and if the law really is no longer part of the society's morality, becomes fairly easy for lawmakers to fix. (As a reminder, this law being invoked is very old -- from when Germany was a monarchy and insulting dictator kings was morally a very serious crime!)
coddingtonbear 11y ago
You might have missed it because it's used here toward unsavory aims, but the situation jdmichal is describing is also non-violent civil disobedience.

by Zikes 11y ago

jdmichal 11y ago

Yes, vigilante justice is probably a step too far, but only because it's definition requires a lack of rule of law to start with. zeveb is basically arguing that the morality of the individual citizens at each step of the chain overrides the rule of law. The basic premise is the same between them: A vigilante applies their own morality extra-judiciously, without regard for the rule of law. It's the positive counterpart (applying law) of the negative (nullifying law) that zeveb is arguing for. Civil disobedience is also not correct. Civil disobedience is the refusal to obey laws, not the refusal to uphold them. People participating in civil disobedience do it with the understanding that they can (and should) be prosecuted for such. They do so to act as martyrs.

Zikes 11y ago
I have to apologize for the extreme and apocryphal example, but I honestly can't think of a better one right now: there are quite a few people that have been convicted as war criminals for "applying law" as they were ordered to do. The law can be very wrong sometimes, and it's the responsibility of an ethical human being to disobey such laws, whether by non-application or nullification, until such time as those laws are corrected.
- jdmichal 11y ago
  I actually think that's a great example; no need for apologies. (And, after all, I did set the example with my original comment and white supremacists.) My response would be that, in such cases, there exist two sets of conflicting laws. The national law, which was not being broken, and the supra-national law regarding human rights and war crimes, which was. So that is actually an example of rule of law being upheld, just not national law. The bottom line is, you need to be really, really careful when you start arguing for "ethics" and "morality" as a basis for execution of law. For instance, to make a concrete example: It could be argued that based on the ethics and morality of the Nazis, that the mass murders committed under the Holocaust were in fact them morally disobeying those supra-national human rights laws. Who are you to say that the Nazi morality is wrong? You can't point to the agreed-upon supra-national human rights laws, because you are in fact arguing that law should be violated based on morality! In fact, one of the ways to view law is as an encoding of the morality of the society it covers. Sometimes laws, being fixed entities, and society, being ever changing, drift apart over time. Same as software drifts from the requirements of business if not kept up to date. It usually takes an example like this German one to point out the absurdity, and if the law really is no longer part of the society's morality, becomes fairly easy for lawmakers to fix. (As a reminder, this law being invoked is very old -- from when Germany was a monarchy and insulting dictator kings was morally a very serious crime!)

coddingtonbear 11y ago

You might have missed it because it's used here toward unsavory aims, but the situation jdmichal is describing is also non-violent civil disobedience.