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Nobody knows the law anymore. Everyone is guilty of something. This argument is reductio ad absurdum. The corpus of law bearing significant consequences for v
by coolgeek 15y ago
Nobody knows the law anymore. Everyone is guilty of something.
This argument is reductio ad absurdum. The corpus of law bearing significant consequences for violators [1][2] is sufficiently small as to be almost intuitively understood by any reasonably educated person.
As a general rule, you're not going to be confronted by the full weight and force of the state for violating the jaywalking statute. Were you to be targeted for arrest for such a minor violation, it would be transparent to knowledgeable observers that you were specifically targeted and surveilled until a reason was found to arrest you.
[1] By significant, I mean incarceration and/or crippling financial penalties. And note that the cost of defending oneself is categorically not a penalty.
[2] This, of course, only applies to societies ruled by law, as opposed to those ruled by individual persons or groups
- SageRaven 15y agoI'm too tired to find the reference, but some woman recently got sentenced to serve 90 days (thereabouts) incarceration for planting a garden in her front lawn in contradiction to local ordinances. Of course this is a prime example of civil disobedience, as she intentionally flaunted this absurd law, challenged it as best she could in court, then paid the price of losing. The point is, you can be tossed into the clink for just about anything if you are brazen enough to openly challenge the law and don't prevail. Judges don't care much for the proles challenging the state.
- joegester 15y agoShe wasn't sentenced. The charges were dropped either because the city didn't want the negative publicity or because the case would not have held up. http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/15/charges-dropped-against-woman-for-front-yard-vegetable-garden/ http://moneyland.time.com/2011/07/15/charges-dropped-against...