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What Do You Owe The Law?
In some ways, I’m one of the nuttier libertarians on Ricochet, always willing to put in a good word for David Friedman and his anarcho-capitalist theories. But I’m also a law-and-order gal: when people come together, it’s easy for me to see that they benefit from agreeing to some rules to guide their conduct (one of the reasons I sympathize with anarcho-capitalists: they, too, believe that rulemaking is such a ubiquitous feature of human behavior that there is a market for law). Moreover, I’m a lawyer’s kid, which means I grew up thinking of due process as a moral good.
For many reasons, I attempt to cooperate with the law. When our home was burgled, though nothing expensive was stolen, I took extensive notes, with accurate hand-drawn pictures of stolen items, and spent several days’ worth of time trying to expedite police action on my case. Not because I thought I’d ever get my stuff back, but in hopes that, if I cooperated with the police quickly, the burglar might actually be caught, and other residents spared the pain we had just been through. Despite my efforts, it took half a year for the police to follow up. The police refused to accept my notes and drawings at the time the case was fresh, and, months later, when a police detective finally took interest, my family had bigger problems to deal with, and we no longer could spare time to help. The material I prepared for the police still sits, collecting dust, on a shelf, a casualty of bad timing.
Even the bohemian crowd I ran with in college made efforts to help the police when we could. We were, for the most part, science and engineering students – the squarest kind of bohemian. When a pervert was roaming the village, half-climbing through women’s windows at night in order to cop a feel, we offered our ground-floor apartment in a rickety, easy-to-break-into house to the police for a stake-out. In retrospect, perhaps this wasn’t a practical offer, but who am I to judge? All I know is we tried to assist them, but were told nonetheless that the police would take no action: it seemed that this fellow (and he was a fellow – I remember his knuckly, hairy hands hovering over me) would have to completely enter someone’s abode and do something even worse before the police would care. Or whatever “We can’t act until he escalates” means.
Even so, when we found a piping plover trapped in a water intake, we called the police again (animal control). The signage posted around the intake had warned of the dire consequences of entering without permission, after all. The police response – a piping plover is too small to shoot, “so it’s not our problem” – is one I almost sympathize with. Or would have, if the poor plover hadn’t gotten himself sucked into the water intake of a generally sleepy town. Moreover, when “Officer Friendly” visited our elementary school when we were kids, he assured us that policemen were friendly, the kind of guys who rescue kittens from trees, not cruelly mock citizens’ attempts to rescue injured birds. Well, the plover was rescued in the end, spirited away in the middle of the night by some college kids willing to break the law, climb into that intake, then transport an endangered species across state lines (undoubtedly a violation of the migratory bird act, too) to a shelter willing to care for the remainder of its natural life. In retrospect, a fine time was had by all (even the bird acquiesced to the long car trip with aplomb). Even so, it left our trust in the law just that much weaker.
I’ve reached the point where interacting with police – for any reason – unnerves me. As Theodore Dalrymple notes, the minor infractions of a basically law-abiding type like me offer bureaucratically-minded enforcers easy pickings. Nonetheless, my respect for the due process of law remains largely intact. Perhaps because I’m a lawyer’s kid. Or perhaps only because I’ve had the good fortune to avoid testifying in court.
When I read then, an account of someone blatantly lying to the court – and not to protect others’ reputations, either, but to defame them – it’s hard for me to sympathize. What reason could possibly be good enough to justify such behavior? According to many on this site, though – and people I assumed were even bigger sticklers for for the rules than I am – “keeping the baby I promised to someone else” may be one such reason. I realize I’m not a mother yet, but this surprised me. It leaves me wondering in what other ways the people who chide me for my “anarchic” libertarian ways might also believe that their own moral principles leave them above the law.
So I ask you, fellow Ricochetoise, what do you believe you owe the law? And what, specifically, do you believe that you don’t owe the law?
When you know you’re breaking the law, how do you justify it to yourself? How do you justify others’ contempt for the law, like that of the woman who allegedly lied to the court to keep her baby?
Do you draw a distinction between ignoring the law for expedience (“I can’t get this permit, but I need to keep working anyhow”) and high moral principle? If you do, how, and if you don’t, why?
Published in General
In any society, general respect for laws will be undermined by:
Many other fundamental problems should be added to that list. All of the above have become normal in the American legal system. And I didn’t even touch on our absurd penal system, which also plays a role in respectability of law.
well… I’m not sure where to start. I largely agree with your premise (except inasmuch as you were asking a question) about law enforcement, but my own experiences have been so varied that I’ve ultimately come to the conclusion that we’re all human, in spite of our best efforts. I have friends who are police officers, but I’ve also spent a night in jail due to some particularly bad officers who made decisions that were even worse than the ones I made to get arrested in the first place. I’ve written at length (ok, generally in snarky side-notes) about the imperfections in our legal profession, but it is always coupled with the reality that there is simply no better alternative. I think we could make tweaks here and there; you make an excellent point about regulatory bureaucrats, though. Officer friendly acted as a resource for small communities, but then he wasn’t too terribly worried about the binders of laws that establish his varied enforcement duties, and he also wasn’t as worried about being personally sued or targeted for the way he did his job. In short, I think the same principle applies to police as it does to the government-at-large; that is, the broader their powers become, the worse is brought out. A good first step would be to eliminate virtually all of that regulation you’re talking about. That could reestablish trust by giving us officer friendly as opposed to officer nanny with a ticket-book. He could help, rather than simply enforce mundane laws that even he doesn’t quite understand.
I feel some obligation – because I’m pretty well acquainted with my own foolishness, and know that my moral intuitions sometimes prove wrong.
Moreover, I feel a moral obligation to those who love me to stay out of needless trouble, though you might classify this obligation as practical, rather than moral:
I’m with Spengler and Godel on this one. Understanding less vs. fewer is just basic self-respect. I suppose if we’re trying to deconstruct we could go back even farther than 1481 and start grunting at one another as well.
You neglect the third category: People who rationally decide that government employment is the best economic option available to them, but have zero interest in either altruism or the exercise of power over others.
e.g. The person behind the counter at the DMV doesn’t make your head spin with bureaucratese because they relish exercising power over others, but rather because their primary goal is to follow the rules and collect a paycheque. (Following the rules usually being considered a good “conservative” value.)
How so? Why is it not simply an arbitrary distinction between synonyms invented by a single man in 1770?
When people return to speaking English as they did in 1770, give me a call.
If the rule is that common usage is the deciding factor at any given time, that means that using less to indicate countable items is perfectly acceptable usage in 2015, since it is exceedingly common.
If, on the other hand, the rule is that hiſtorical uſage is the deſiding factor, that ſtill means using less to indicate countable items is perfectly acſeptable uſage ſince it has far ſtronger hiſtorical preſedent.
If etymology is the deciding factor, then less is a synonym for meadow.
And, if it matters, I’m agin ’em. Mathematicians don’t bother with the distinction. Even when we restrict ourselves to counting numbers only, we say, “less than or equal to”, not “fewer than or equal to”. I try to use “fewer than” as a nicety around those who believe it matters, but my inmost brain simply doesn’t care about the distinction anymore – my ancillary lobes must remind me of it as an act of etiquette.
By that logic, all language is arbitrary distinction between various sounds. As I said, we could deconstruct all the way back to grunts and hand signals, but as it stands, we do have an established language, and the removal of very fine arbitrary distinctions (such as between less and fewer) doesn’t serve us any more than the addition of less-fine arbitrary additions of things like ebonics and slang. On a more serious note, I do think that language is a decent (though not perfect, and certainly not exclusive) indicator of self-respect.
Perhaps etiquette has more value than you think. :) Mistheocracy, for instance, is walking upright in a properly-tailored suit as he carries his shaken martini. It isn’t for nothing.
Hey, are you discriminatin’ against my legless status here? Do you think it’s etiquette to remind a gal she has no legs? Don’t get speciesist on me.
I think it is with the utmost tolerance that I treat your species, given its track record. But people just aren’t grateful.
Great piece, Midge.
The transition of police from protectors subservient to the public into tax collectors and confiscators of personal property is dangerous to the rule of law.
I too now fear seeing cops in my rear-view mirror.
Superfluity does not vitiate.
Vitiate, verb, to spoil or impair the quality or efficiency thereof.
Thanks, my word of the day since I had to look it up. And a very good GRE word if I do say so.
It’s hard to answer this question with the totality of all law in mind. Are there laws I break? Yes, and willingly so. Why? Because I have deemed them to be unjust when measured against Natural Law and thus not worthy of adhering to. The obvious example of this is speed limits, but that might be a bit difficult to convince others that they violate Natural Law. The others involve gun laws, such as restrictions on magazine capacity. How is it that the state can determine that magazine size is a predictor for criminal activity? They obviously cannot. How is it that they can restrict the means in which I protect my property, my family, or myself? This is a violation of Natural Law in my eyes and therefore not worthy of following. No one is a criminal simply because their rifle holds 10 or 20 rounds, no matter what the state says. There are other examples that one could find throughout the legal system in the US, but that was my specific example.
I have been this way for a long time. I do not hold police to the same esteem as many in the Conservative movement.
Yes, you’ll have a hard time convincing me that Natural Law gives you more insight into maximum safe speeds than the traffic engineers have. Or that it’s inherently unjust to limit your speed in the interest of the safety of others on the road.
That said, I’m more open to the idea that speed limits designed to reduce your fuel consumption are “unjust when measured against Natural Law and thus not worthy of adhering to”.
Here, I think, is part of the problem. We have long ago ceased viewing cops as a reactive force in society. Now we want them to predict crime and stop it before it happens. Well in order for them to be able to do that, we, as a society, must be willing to give up to a semi-totalitarian system where the laws are arbitrary based on the whims of the person wearing the badge. (Incidentally, this is part of my objection to enforcing speed limits.) When laws can be enforced arbitrarily, we cease living in a free society. When cops are allowed to determine criminal activity based on things that are explicitly criminal, then we live in a totalitarian society. Law enforcement should be reactionary and not proactive. I think this would be the first step to healing the divide that exists between law enforcement and the black community. Instead of cops being able to just “stop and frisk” based on nothing other than zip code, they should react to the community’s desire to see criminals caught when an actual crime is committed.
See that’s the thing. You have already determined that I do 80 in residential areas and swerve in and out of traffic on the highway. I do not. But when traffic is flowing why should I be forced to do only 60 as opposed to 65? It’s more of a danger to bunch cars up on the basis of keeping them at an arbitrarily determined “safe” speed then it is to allow for faster traffic to be in the left lanes and slower traffic in the right lane. Furthermore, the ability to sue and the dramatic increase of insurance premiums would be a much better weapon against unsafe driving than speed limits.
I never determined that. You deemed speed limits “unjust” on the basis of Natural Law. I merely argued that the state has a legitimate interest in limiting speeds for the sake of public safety. Not everyone has your judgment and not everyone drives as you do.
You may be right about 60 vs. 65 — on a particular stretch of road — but even if you are, that’s not a question of Natural Law or individual judgment. What have the traffic engineers recommended, and on the basis of what evidence? You assume something is arbitrary when it may in fact be grounded in evidence. I don’t know one way or the other, but when it comes to traffic safety, I’m going to give the presumption to the State until I see actual evidence that a [EDIT: traffic] law is in fact arbitrary.
No. By my logic any arbitrary deviation from common historical usage which can be traced to a single person with little rational justification for the deviation (or who even acknowledges that it is a deviation) probably shouldn’t be authoritative.
You know, kinda like allowing Bruce Jenner to redefine the word “woman”.
OK, so far I’m getting the impression that what the Ricochetoise believe they owe the law is grammar ;-)
Sorry about that!
As I happen to be the neologist in this particular case, I reserve the right to insist upon the correct spelling of my name.
misthiocracy: rule by the employees (from the Greek, misthios=paid servant, kratos=power or rule)
mistheocracy: hatred of rule by priests (from the Greek, miso=hatred, theos=god, kratos=power or rule)
;-)
Miss Theocracy: The Iranian entrant in the World Muslima pageant.
The quantity of deaths in traffic accidents is independent of various traffic laws and has actually been determined to adhere to Smeed’s Law. The reason it is independent of traffic laws is that Smeed’s Law has been found to be predictive in 62 different countries as of 1995.
Smeed believed that ultimately the relationship was more a statement of acceptable risk within the human population.
It’s “Ricochetti.” Sheesh.
[self forehead slap]
You had an encounter with the Collegetown Creeper?!? Wow. That’s one of my main memories from my first semester in Ithaca. Not encountering him, just the fuss. (He was a local pervert who would sneak into girls’ apartments in the night, scare them and run away.) The police may not have been energized but the good citizens of Ithaca certainly were. I lived on the Commons and I remember seeing protests of the creeper on the main streets! (Smallish ones, not traffic-halting bonanza protests. Still, it was a thing for awhile.) I was kind of bemused; I figured if this was Ithaca’s version of high crime drama I was probably pretty safe there.