4 ms·

They're just saying our legal system doesn't try to consistently create justice.

shadowgovt 5y ago
It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.
- samatman 5y ago
  > It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.
  - tunesmith 5y ago
    I think it's more valid than an argument from definition. At its most cynical, a legal system is at least an attempt to disguise brute power as reason. So even then there's an allowance that reason and fairness should have precedence over brute power - they just try to dress it up. So if that concept of reason and fairness being important didn't exist, they would just do away with the song and dance.
  - munificent 5y ago
    > the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. And, to play Devil's advocate, most of those in power under Stalin would likely have claimed and honestly believed that it was a justice system and that it was using its might for the greater good. Outright sociopaths who simply don't care about harm are rare. When systems cause more harm than good, it's usually because well-intentioned participants fall prey to other human flaws: * Dehumanizing and believing that some groups are simply less worthy of care than others. * Biased data or beliefs about who is harmed and who is helped. * Principle-agent problems where the ones making the decisions don't see or own the consequences of them. * Emergent properties where no individual member of the system wants a result, but the system as a whole ends up producing it because of its structure. Sort of the beauracratic equivalent of crowd crush. The reason I'm pointing this out is because I think when non-totalitarian systems fail to help, it's usually for the same reasons. It's not because of psychopathic monsters. It's mostly that primate brains were never designed to operate at the organizational and power scale we have created. The fact that it works at all is a miracle.

It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it). ... but it doesn't always succeed for multiple reasons. One of the most common being that it's not always possible to grant all parties justice. Sometimes, courts have to evaluate a zero-sum situation and decide how cost will be shared, so there's no way to move forward without constraining someone's rights. And people's definitions of "justice" vary, and are far more often grounded in emotion than coherent philosophy... It's not always even logically possible to grant all parties justice. The useful distinction to keep in mind is that the legal system will follow the law, but whether the outcome of that is "justice" is a subjective evaluation more than a measurable concept.

samatman 5y ago
> It definintely tries (that's sort of the point of it) This is probably argument from definition (unclear) but in any case, it's a statement which needs backing up. To cite a usual boogeyman for such discussions, the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. It's not clear to me that the incentives in the US court system align with justice more than accidentally. As in, sometimes the guilty go to prison, as a side effect of the prosecutor's office needing to clear their docket and present good numbers to keep their budget up. Very occasionally, the innocent are cleared of crimes, and even more occasionally than that their lives aren't ruined in the process; defense attorneys want to look good as well.
- tunesmith 5y ago
  I think it's more valid than an argument from definition. At its most cynical, a legal system is at least an attempt to disguise brute power as reason. So even then there's an allowance that reason and fairness should have precedence over brute power - they just try to dress it up. So if that concept of reason and fairness being important didn't exist, they would just do away with the song and dance.
- munificent 5y ago
  > the Soviet court system under Stalin wasn't at all interested in justice. And, to play Devil's advocate, most of those in power under Stalin would likely have claimed and honestly believed that it was a justice system and that it was using its might for the greater good. Outright sociopaths who simply don't care about harm are rare. When systems cause more harm than good, it's usually because well-intentioned participants fall prey to other human flaws: * Dehumanizing and believing that some groups are simply less worthy of care than others. * Biased data or beliefs about who is harmed and who is helped. * Principle-agent problems where the ones making the decisions don't see or own the consequences of them. * Emergent properties where no individual member of the system wants a result, but the system as a whole ends up producing it because of its structure. Sort of the beauracratic equivalent of crowd crush. The reason I'm pointing this out is because I think when non-totalitarian systems fail to help, it's usually for the same reasons. It's not because of psychopathic monsters. It's mostly that primate brains were never designed to operate at the organizational and power scale we have created. The fact that it works at all is a miracle.