4 ms·

Justice that is not bound by the letter of the law is not just at all.

by cornel_io 2y ago

marginalia_nu 2y ago
Why not?
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  Prosecutorial action not bound by the law is despotism, which is inherently unjust.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    Is prosecution the same as justice?
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      It calls itself the Department of Justice.
      - marginalia_nu 2y ago
        You'd think the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms would be a hoot, but alas there's more to a thing than its name.
        AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is intended to be concerned with alcohol, tobacco and firearms. What is the Department of Justice intended to be concerned with? Presumably not foreign policy.
  - staplers 2y ago
    Does unequal enforcement count as unjust? Seems you're purposely missing the point.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      Enforcing the laws unequally is unjust, and is the reason why having overbroad, overcomplicated and widely violated but rarely enforced laws is a mechanism of injustice. But large corporations typically have lawyers and then comply with the law, even while doing something you might not think they ought to be doing. Conniving of a way to get them anyway, instead of changing the law so it does what you intend, is either that same injustice (selective prosecution for a different offense than the thing that made you dislike them) or the overt despotism of making up the rules as you go along. There is really very little daylight between the two of them except that people seem a lot more inclined to go along with the first one when it gets them the outcome they want.
antihipocrat 2y ago
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  What would you propose instead? That someone who steals the bread from your table can't be convicted of anything? We tried something like that recently and the results were pretty toxic.
  - sfn42 2y ago
    If someone needs to steal food and sleep under a bridge I think we can do better than convicting them.
    - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
      That's a proposal not to change the policy that theft is uniformly illegal.
    - inglor_cz 2y ago
      Yeah, but people who shoplift expensive non-edible items don't neatly fall into the "poor paupers" category. I would even call them predators preying on small shops and their owners. At the end of the day, most theft in the developed world is not motivated by mere poverty, but harder-to-address things like having a drug habit. I don't really see the case for decriminalization of theft in general. I do see a case for financing research into drug dependence and treatment thereof - the current (unexpected) results around GLP-1 agonists seem to indicate that there is a pharmacologic way to treat addiction. But that is somewhat orthogonal to the original criminal law problem.
  - monkeyfun 2y ago
    You're missing the essence. That those who are desperate and poor can be punished easily, swiftly, harshly, but those who are wealthy tend to avoid punishment and when it even occurs it is with herculean effort, sluggish, and limp. An easy comparison of sorts is that often the penalty for stealing millions or even billions as a white collar criminal will be lower (or functionally lower) than that for stealing hundreds, or the punishments for nonviolent drug crimes (to remove the aspects of possible violence). Or, to focus on the quote's notion about sleeping under a bridge -- it's often that penalties exist exclusively harming the poor and uninfluential, but which are trivial to get around if you have resources. A desperate rich person laments they had to pay for an overpriced room and were so robbed -- A desperate poor person may sleep in wretched conditions only to be penalized by a law that was virtually never going to affect the rich person to begin with. (I don't mean to open up any debate about e.g. homelessness either, as there's nothing noble about most modern mentally-ill homeless severe-addicts; i implore you to look at the deeper structure of the quotation / expression)
red1reaper 2y ago
Justice without law is lynching Law without justice is tyranny
- staplers 2y ago
  Finally someone gets my point..
blueflow 2y ago
What a person considers just or unjust is a matter of personal preference. Half of this thread doesn't make any sense...
staplers 2y ago
Who said it wasn't?

Justice that is not bound by the letter of the law is not just at all.

marginalia_nu 2y ago

Why not?

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
Prosecutorial action not bound by the law is despotism, which is inherently unjust.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  Is prosecution the same as justice?
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    It calls itself the Department of Justice.
    - marginalia_nu 2y ago
      You'd think the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms would be a hoot, but alas there's more to a thing than its name.
      - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
        The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is intended to be concerned with alcohol, tobacco and firearms. What is the Department of Justice intended to be concerned with? Presumably not foreign policy.
- staplers 2y ago
  Does unequal enforcement count as unjust? Seems you're purposely missing the point.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    Enforcing the laws unequally is unjust, and is the reason why having overbroad, overcomplicated and widely violated but rarely enforced laws is a mechanism of injustice. But large corporations typically have lawyers and then comply with the law, even while doing something you might not think they ought to be doing. Conniving of a way to get them anyway, instead of changing the law so it does what you intend, is either that same injustice (selective prosecution for a different offense than the thing that made you dislike them) or the overt despotism of making up the rules as you go along. There is really very little daylight between the two of them except that people seem a lot more inclined to go along with the first one when it gets them the outcome they want.

antihipocrat 2y ago

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
What would you propose instead? That someone who steals the bread from your table can't be convicted of anything? We tried something like that recently and the results were pretty toxic.
- sfn42 2y ago
  If someone needs to steal food and sleep under a bridge I think we can do better than convicting them.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    That's a proposal not to change the policy that theft is uniformly illegal.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    Yeah, but people who shoplift expensive non-edible items don't neatly fall into the "poor paupers" category. I would even call them predators preying on small shops and their owners. At the end of the day, most theft in the developed world is not motivated by mere poverty, but harder-to-address things like having a drug habit. I don't really see the case for decriminalization of theft in general. I do see a case for financing research into drug dependence and treatment thereof - the current (unexpected) results around GLP-1 agonists seem to indicate that there is a pharmacologic way to treat addiction. But that is somewhat orthogonal to the original criminal law problem.
- monkeyfun 2y ago
  You're missing the essence. That those who are desperate and poor can be punished easily, swiftly, harshly, but those who are wealthy tend to avoid punishment and when it even occurs it is with herculean effort, sluggish, and limp. An easy comparison of sorts is that often the penalty for stealing millions or even billions as a white collar criminal will be lower (or functionally lower) than that for stealing hundreds, or the punishments for nonviolent drug crimes (to remove the aspects of possible violence). Or, to focus on the quote's notion about sleeping under a bridge -- it's often that penalties exist exclusively harming the poor and uninfluential, but which are trivial to get around if you have resources. A desperate rich person laments they had to pay for an overpriced room and were so robbed -- A desperate poor person may sleep in wretched conditions only to be penalized by a law that was virtually never going to affect the rich person to begin with. (I don't mean to open up any debate about e.g. homelessness either, as there's nothing noble about most modern mentally-ill homeless severe-addicts; i implore you to look at the deeper structure of the quotation / expression)

red1reaper 2y ago

Justice without law is lynching Law without justice is tyranny

staplers 2y ago
Finally someone gets my point..

blueflow 2y ago

What a person considers just or unjust is a matter of personal preference. Half of this thread doesn't make any sense...

staplers 2y ago

Who said it wasn't?