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FTA: > It has long been one of the fundamental pillars of our system of law that when one commits a crime against another, they are made to give restitution to
by ggchappell 12y ago
FTA:
> It has long been one of the fundamental pillars of our system of law that when one commits a crime against another, they are made to give restitution to their victims.
Except it isn't. I'm not sure where he got that idea. We punish convicted criminals, of course. But questions of crime are entirely between the accused/convicted person and the government. There is neither a tradition nor a mandate that a victim gets restitution; this idea is certainly not a "pillar".
- logfromblammo 12y agoThat largely depends on what "we" you are implying when you say "our". Civil law places government in the position of mediator and arbitrator, whereas criminal law has the government as prosecutor, investigator, and punisher. I am almost entirely certain that he meant our system of civil courts, based on Anglo-American Common Law. But that system is not deployed automatically for all crimes, and is especially tricky when the government itself is the defendant. A few years alternating between legal land and solitary confinement can knock a few screws loose. Even if the guy was the scummiest of black hats, I tend to frown rather severely on the government breaking its own laws for the purpose of severely punishing an individual for something routinely ignored when done by campaign-contributin' corporations. In short, the government abused its power to capriciously and arbitrarily stomp on somebody, and that somebody should be compensated for his damage. As is obvious from the writing, he's due for some psychological rehabilitation and therapeutic shoulder de-chipping.