4 ms·

When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused, the simplistic assessment of relative power between parties ceases to be cor

by yodon 4y ago

When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused, the simplistic assessment of relative power between parties ceases to be correct. This is why the constitution (which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed) requires that defendants be given the right to face their accusers. Valid accusations and false accusations happen in all forms of law. There are commonly power or status differentials in the context of accusations. The constitution and 200+ years of case law have left our legal system far from perfect but far better than the ad hoc, administrator-defined, corporate insurance rate protecting pretend legal systems put in place by universities and the like. The right to face your accuser is a critical right that exists to facilitate legal systems arriving at the truly best right answer.

blindriver 4y ago
Good point. I think at some point anonymity needs to be lifted regardless, maybe if the case is strong enough, or if the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad faith.
- xienze 4y ago
  > or if the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad faith. How are either of those things determined? “Bad faith” seems to be a tool used to dismiss accusations without any objective basis, and determining if a claim is fraudulent may very well depend on the accused being able to rebut a claim based on knowing who the accuser in question is.
- cld8483 4y ago
  Not permitting the accused to know what they are being accused of is always done in bad faith. If the accused were guilty, then they'd already know who the victim is and already know who the accuser is, so hiding the accuser does nothing. Hiding the accuser is only ""useful"" when the accused is actually innocent. The entire point of hiding the accuser is to deny the wrongfully accused of the opportunity to defend themselves. Such systems are weapons created by and for bureaucrats to cement their power.
  - erosenbe0 4y ago
    Mostly true. Though certain property crimes or conduct violations such as vandalism, ripping down flags, graffiti, and the like might just have the institution itself as the complainant.
  - rebeccaskinner 4y ago
    > If the accused were guilty, then they'd already know who the victim is and already know who the accuser is That’s only true if the accused knows the potential accusers and there is a small enough number of potential accusers that it could be reasonably narrowed down.
    - kneebonian 4y ago
      Then maybe I go a step farther if the violation I commit is so innocuous as to be incapable of identifying a pool of possible victims of this violation; unless the victim themselves self selects to report that they were harmed by the violation. Doesn't that indicate that maybe I didn't actually do anything that bad?
  - Clubber 4y ago
    That's a really good point. The only counter would be the Catholic Church child molestation scandal. There were so many victims, I think hiding the accuser would have value. I admit that is an extreme circumstance.
lliamander 4y ago
> When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. At most, it can be cause to investigate further. We do have whistle-blower protection laws, and I think those serve an important function in our legal context.
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
  > I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. There's the way we think the world should be, and then there's reality. Please let me know when you find the planet where this conversation takes place "Mr. Smith, the teacher, was just accused by a student of sexual assault. But it's just an accusation, there's no proof, so we'll begin an investigation, but in the meantime everything will go on as prior with Mr. Smith teaching his students." And in fairness, if you had a kid in Mr. Smith's class, would you want him teaching your kid, even if the result was "Well, we did an investigation but we couldn't find any additional proof beyond the accuser's word, so all is back to normal."
lettergram 4y ago
> which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed There are many people (and quite a bit of case law) who believe the constitution governs everyone in every situation. If it’s for the people and by the people, then it’s to protect “the people” from government (which is “the people”). This includes private entities. Particularly, private entities receiving public funds (which Stanford is). Anyway, in this particular case, free speech laws pretty much dictate you can’t seek reprisal for what people read.
- freejazz 4y ago
  Are you saying that the constitution outright applies to private entities the same as it applies to the government? and that is so, because the government consists of people?
keneda7 4y ago
But the reverse is also true. Professors have the power to ruin a students career before it even starts. I am a product of public schools and two state colleges. I saw tons of professors that used their personal feelings of a student to determine their grade. Sometimes this would work in the students favor, sometimes it would work against the student. Until no professors are doing that (I would say from my experience over half are) there absolutely needs to be anonymous reporting on faculty. What you are advocating for it a system where professors can do anything they want and them simply blackball the student who makes a legitimate complaint and have all their professor friends do the same.
- yodon 4y ago
  > What you are advocating for it a system where professors can do anything they want and them simply blackball the student who makes a legitimate complaint and have all their professor friends do the same. No. I hear that you had bad experiences. That said, the right to challenge one's accuser dates back hundreds of years. It has survived as a foundational principle across millions of legal cases across all domains and including astronomical numbers of cases in which parties on either sides of the arguments have faced as much or more collusion risk than is claimed here. Anyone who thinks they can just type a few words into an internet comment thread and construct a legal system that better handles all the subtleties and realities of actual proceedings than we have in our court system today is either mistaken or the greatest legal mind in millennia. The problem is not that we need you to try to invent a better system than the US legal system. The problem instead is we need to stop allowing bogus pretend legal systems that administrators at universities and similar institutions have tried to put in place using similarly naive legal theories. Those administrators suffer from the same hubris as anyone who thinks they can just sit down and write up how to do a functioning legal system in a paragraph or two. Each such system is deeply flawed in a different way, but all are deeply flawed. Real world accusations are always hard and messy, regardless of the domain, and coming to the correct resolution is never as easy as a one sentence "correction" to hundreds of years of jurisprudence would like to imply. The "legal" systems constructed by these administrators are indeed deeply flawed, but arguing against core legal principals that have formed the foundations of legal theory for hundreds of years is not likely to be the path to improvement (and if it were to be, one is probably better off taking that once in a millenium legal insight in other directions of far greater impact to the world than complaining about a particular university's poorly conceived dispute structure).

by yodon 4y ago

blindriver 4y ago

Good point. I think at some point anonymity needs to be lifted regardless, maybe if the case is strong enough, or if the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad faith.

xienze 4y ago
> or if the accusation appears to be fraudulent or in bad faith. How are either of those things determined? “Bad faith” seems to be a tool used to dismiss accusations without any objective basis, and determining if a claim is fraudulent may very well depend on the accused being able to rebut a claim based on knowing who the accuser in question is.
cld8483 4y ago
Not permitting the accused to know what they are being accused of is always done in bad faith. If the accused were guilty, then they'd already know who the victim is and already know who the accuser is, so hiding the accuser does nothing. Hiding the accuser is only ""useful"" when the accused is actually innocent. The entire point of hiding the accuser is to deny the wrongfully accused of the opportunity to defend themselves. Such systems are weapons created by and for bureaucrats to cement their power.
- erosenbe0 4y ago
  Mostly true. Though certain property crimes or conduct violations such as vandalism, ripping down flags, graffiti, and the like might just have the institution itself as the complainant.
- rebeccaskinner 4y ago
  > If the accused were guilty, then they'd already know who the victim is and already know who the accuser is That’s only true if the accused knows the potential accusers and there is a small enough number of potential accusers that it could be reasonably narrowed down.
  - kneebonian 4y ago
    Then maybe I go a step farther if the violation I commit is so innocuous as to be incapable of identifying a pool of possible victims of this violation; unless the victim themselves self selects to report that they were harmed by the violation. Doesn't that indicate that maybe I didn't actually do anything that bad?
- Clubber 4y ago
  That's a really good point. The only counter would be the Catholic Church child molestation scandal. There were so many victims, I think hiding the accuser would have value. I admit that is an extreme circumstance.

lliamander 4y ago

> When an anonymous accusation has the potential to be career ending for the accused I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. At most, it can be cause to investigate further. We do have whistle-blower protection laws, and I think those serve an important function in our legal context.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
> I think this is only a problem when people treat such accusations as evidence or proof of wrongdoing, which they absolutely are not. There's the way we think the world should be, and then there's reality. Please let me know when you find the planet where this conversation takes place "Mr. Smith, the teacher, was just accused by a student of sexual assault. But it's just an accusation, there's no proof, so we'll begin an investigation, but in the meantime everything will go on as prior with Mr. Smith teaching his students." And in fairness, if you had a kid in Mr. Smith's class, would you want him teaching your kid, even if the result was "Well, we did an investigation but we couldn't find any additional proof beyond the accuser's word, so all is back to normal."

lettergram 4y ago

> which doesn't apply here but was very thoughtfully designed There are many people (and quite a bit of case law) who believe the constitution governs everyone in every situation. If it’s for the people and by the people, then it’s to protect “the people” from government (which is “the people”). This includes private entities. Particularly, private entities receiving public funds (which Stanford is). Anyway, in this particular case, free speech laws pretty much dictate you can’t seek reprisal for what people read.

freejazz 4y ago
Are you saying that the constitution outright applies to private entities the same as it applies to the government? and that is so, because the government consists of people?

keneda7 4y ago

But the reverse is also true. Professors have the power to ruin a students career before it even starts. I am a product of public schools and two state colleges. I saw tons of professors that used their personal feelings of a student to determine their grade. Sometimes this would work in the students favor, sometimes it would work against the student. Until no professors are doing that (I would say from my experience over half are) there absolutely needs to be anonymous reporting on faculty. What you are advocating for it a system where professors can do anything they want and them simply blackball the student who makes a legitimate complaint and have all their professor friends do the same.

yodon 4y ago
> What you are advocating for it a system where professors can do anything they want and them simply blackball the student who makes a legitimate complaint and have all their professor friends do the same. No. I hear that you had bad experiences. That said, the right to challenge one's accuser dates back hundreds of years. It has survived as a foundational principle across millions of legal cases across all domains and including astronomical numbers of cases in which parties on either sides of the arguments have faced as much or more collusion risk than is claimed here. Anyone who thinks they can just type a few words into an internet comment thread and construct a legal system that better handles all the subtleties and realities of actual proceedings than we have in our court system today is either mistaken or the greatest legal mind in millennia. The problem is not that we need you to try to invent a better system than the US legal system. The problem instead is we need to stop allowing bogus pretend legal systems that administrators at universities and similar institutions have tried to put in place using similarly naive legal theories. Those administrators suffer from the same hubris as anyone who thinks they can just sit down and write up how to do a functioning legal system in a paragraph or two. Each such system is deeply flawed in a different way, but all are deeply flawed. Real world accusations are always hard and messy, regardless of the domain, and coming to the correct resolution is never as easy as a one sentence "correction" to hundreds of years of jurisprudence would like to imply. The "legal" systems constructed by these administrators are indeed deeply flawed, but arguing against core legal principals that have formed the foundations of legal theory for hundreds of years is not likely to be the path to improvement (and if it were to be, one is probably better off taking that once in a millenium legal insight in other directions of far greater impact to the world than complaining about a particular university's poorly conceived dispute structure).