Why law WILL fail

[nyse]

Retrospectively, I feel that my previous threads on this subject were destined to fail also, because I was placing the ‘cart before the horse’. People can’t objectively consider an alternate form of justice, while they still wrongly believe the current law is working. I’ve been accused of using ‘twisted’ logic and ‘circular’ answers to questions, but my ‘straight’ discussion only seems so to you—because it’s unlike the ‘warped’ view of law that you still believe is ‘on the level’.

Here are some examples of your ‘obtuse’ opinions on The Law.
1. While firmly asserting that you are ‘free’, you allow law to treat you as a ‘slave’ with rules and punishments.
2. While trusting in the law ‘protecting’ people, you’re willing to turn a blind eye to law only really protecting its own sanctity.
3. Amid the growing unrest, increasing violence, and rising crime, you desperately trust in the law’s ability to reverse the trend—when it hasn’t even able to keep lawlessness in check in the first place.
4. You devotedly espouse the law’s illogical theory by downplaying how effective the human conscience might be if enabled (by a form of justice other than Law).

This thread is entitled ‘Why law WILL fail’ and I assure you that law will collapse—but good riddance when it goes.

1. People in general are becoming ever more disdainful of the police, the authority, and the law. You may refuse to examine my cited cause as being because of the ‘serfdom’ inherent in the law’s theory, but what other possible causes are there?
2. Sociopaths (or lawopaths) now amount to 5% of the population (according to Beer_Wench and I’m not quibbling). Under the law, trying to ‘crack down’ on these can only be accomplished by installing sterner law enforcement on the other 95% as well. That will only cause the percentage to increase as the police state shoves more people over the lawopathic brink.
3. Law has encouraged and supported a world where the greedy are making life to expensive for the needy to live in (non-law justice would reverse that by putting people first). Law has enabled an unjust court system where money buys the verdicts and people will reach a boiling point. Remember the Rodney King case?
4. Law is like the emperor’s invisible clothing. It’s only there because you think it is and when a few more people realize that, the rule-of-law WILL be consigned to a museum of dark ages folklore where it belongs.
5. Most (or all) people DON’T feel that the law applies to them (hence the opinion that they aren’t a slave to it). Many support the law only in hopes that it applies to OTHER PEOPLE, and because it allows society to punish—whereas they don’t have that right singularly.

Julius Cesar crossed the Rubicon, though he knew it was breaking the law. There are times when previously accepted concepts must be questioned and this is one of them. To address our social ills and move into our future, justice must cross the Rubicon.

 

[dele]

To exist as part of a society we must all adhere to certain behavioural codes to co-exist. Laws generally do not dictate what we can do, but rather what we cannot. Without law, people would do whatever they liked without thinking of the impact it would have on others. That's why laws exist... to deter people from stealing your car, killing you for your dinner, polluting the air with excessive chemicals, drinking and driving, etc...

I'm not suggesting that laws are perfect and infallible. They were written by man, so there's bound to be a lot of mistakes. Especially in certain Western super-powers, but I digress. History has shown us that when there is no law, people always step up and create their own, usually to the benefit of themselves.

I am intrigued by your ideas and would like to hear more because I simply do not understand your position. Is there a certain law you find problematic, or perhaps a certain country's laws, or is it the concept of laws in general?

 

[bookworm fellow]

I don’t get your point, nyse, although I agree with many principles you’ve launched. But if I say I don’t get your point it’s because I don’t know if you’re saying all the legal systems are bad, or if it’s about your land’s legal system only, or if you suggest law should be abolished (??)… yet you’ve said some things that I’d like to comment.

Firstly, you’ve said

While firmly asserting that you are ‘free’, you allow law to treat you as a ‘slave’ with rules and punishments.

Well, it’s natural to all of us to think we’re free, since every individual is born free and the only thing that can change this personal status is a valid judicial sentence. It’s not the crime that make the murderer blamed or gives him the status of criminal, but the court decision that says so. If I had killed a guy five minutes ago and no one have noticed it yet, I would still be an innocent individual. I don’t know where you live, but I’d say you’re from any common law civilization, what means you probably don’t work with the “Law Pure Theory”. This theory consists in an abstraction of the law. In other words, it separates the law from the social facts. This is the doctrine we follow in the law academic works performed in the nations under the reign of the civil law system. I will not get inside the matter about the theories or speculations concerning if the man is inborn bad or good. This philosophical issue, which as far as I know was firstly discussed by T. Hobbes in “The Leviathan”, will not make much difference in my ideas exactly due to this abstraction performed by the Pure Theory. So I do believe all of us who were never condemned by a valid judicial sentence have the right to “firmly assert that we are free”.

Now, when you say we allow law to treat us as slaves I don’t know if I got your point. One thing is the law-only discussions. For these ones, we adepts of the Pure Theory can do that abstraction I talked above. But when you say we became slaves of the law, then we have to abscond the law-only view because now we are entering a sociological discussion, and such abstraction is no more possible or even handy. Anyway, I don’t think we are slaves of the law. I see law only as a tool for maintaining the social order. Law is necessary; otherwise, we would be living in the Hobbes’ so called state of nature where each one would freely kill, rape, eat, steal each other. Oh yes, now I said “Hobbes”, mate. Because now we’re in a sociological discussion, what makes Hobbes ideas opportune. So I’d say we are not slaves of the law; we are protected by it. That doesn’t mean I believe Justice is perfect. No, I don’t. And I think no one would be ingenuous enough to think so. Maybe those who say Justice is perfect or even very close from perfection are hypocrite because the law might be useful for their economic or strategic interests. But, no one could believe Justice is perfect. You say we are slaves from the law and I think you mean we are fated to act under a form we do not want to comply with, but we had to. That could make sense. But I must say this is not a imperfection of the law itself, but a result of the social situation as a whole. Law, as I said, is supposed to protect us from ourselves: you will not kill your neighbour if you hate him for the same reason he will not kill you. The social contract mankind “signed” once says each individual can not make any harm or vengeance to other one even if the first was previously assaulted by the second. The punishment, according to such “contract” is a job for the State, not for the individuals. And - in an attempt to complete Hobbe’s theory - the state will only punish an individual if he disobeyed any law, trough a valid judicial sentence based in a legal investigation, concerning the due process of law. (That makes me remember Kafka’s “The Trial”, a literary piece that does a nice critique to the issue of the non observation of the due process of the law.) But since law is created by those who rule and not by the people, we must admit eventually there will be situations in which we’ll be facing a specific law that brings no good for us but still we have to obey it. That’s not a law issue, but a sociological issue, as you realize.

Amid the growing unrest, increasing violence, and rising crime, you desperately trust in the law’s ability to reverse the trend—when it hasn’t even able to keep lawlessness in check in the first place.

Law has encouraged and supported a world where the greedy are making life to expensive for the needy to live in (non-law justice would reverse that by putting people first). Law has enabled an unjust court system where money buys the verdicts and people will reach a boiling point. Remember the Rodney King case?

Exactly, mate! See, this may happen in almost all the nations around the world not because the law itself is bad, but because who create the law are the rich, or the members of the church, or the members of the communist party, or neo-liberal bourgeoisie, whatever. (Observe that I have no intention of adopting any peculiar political view! We are already working with juridical and sociological issues and we do not need another academic field to enlarge our discussion, so forget about the political matter. I am in an apolitical speech.) Each nation has its peculiar social organization, and consequently each society will have a different class that rules and it’s basically this very class that will create the law. They will do it directly and explicitly in some nations, and they will do it obscurely, trough lobby in others. It doesn’t matter how. The point is that it’s the society’s most important and ruling people who will create law, I mean, who will in fact interfere in the legislative process. The miserable ones who are in the jails obviously are not the society ruling class. So they will face many difficult situations since the day they are born. Law will not be for their will, but for the others’. They will have to take part in the crime, drugs… and so on.

This thread is entitled ‘Why law WILL fail’ and I assure you that law will collapse—but good riddance when it goes.

I don’t think law will ever collapse simply because there will be no civilization without law. If so, we would live as beasts in a jungle; or like the bestialized individuals Thomas Hobbes figured out in that fine work entitled “The Leviathan”. I don’t think law is perfect but I surely don’t want it to collapse.

Otherwise I’d surely love it if the law changed its bad aspects. And the only way to this happen is trough the people’s willpower that can be put in practice trough smart votes or trough revolutions in extreme cases.

I myself am not 100% comfortable with the law configuration in my homeland - and I can see you’re as well not comfortable with the situation in your’s. But I’m surely not one of the most prejudiced with the law in my country. I’m a middle-class individual. But the poor ones… oh those are in an awful situation. Most of them can’t even read or write. They don’t have the habit of the reading… Their only way of obtaining information is the TV. The TV! Damn. The TV channels are owned by the rich; the rich are careless about the poor situation; but the rich owners of the TV channels are obviously smart and use the TV programming to convince the poor to vote someone who will govern for any interest but surely not the poor’s. It don’t brings much harm for me. But even so I’d like the poor to had the chance to avoid people to use their own poverty situation against their own interests. The only I could do was to think about it in the next elections… well I got time to decide it.

 

[nyse]

To exist as part of a society we must all adhere to certain behavioural codes to co-exist.

To exist as part of society we all must adhere to our moral consciences. By Codes I presume you mean laws, but those we could and should do without because the 'rule-of-law' is causing much of the civil unrest.

Laws generally do not dictate what we can do, but rather what we cannot.

Either way, laws are a major and unecessary instigator of societal ills. (One law that dictates what we must do is the one that forces us to pay income tax--like a slave does.)

Without law, people would do whatever they liked without thinking of the impact it would have on others. That's why laws exist... to deter people from stealing your car, killing you for your dinner, polluting the air with excessive chemicals, drinking and driving, etc...

I disagree. Laws are to keep people subservient to a government--period. A much better way of deterring people, is to remove the shortcut that people use to skirt around their good consciences, by eliminating prohibitions. A justice system based on protections would have the same teeth that laws do, but without the harmfull side effects of slavery/serfdom/royalty inspired 'laws'.

(However, I will agree that 'laws' could be kept as they apply to non-human entities, like corporations--which are created by laws and which don't possess the same intrinsic rights of freedom that people do).

I'm not suggesting that laws are perfect and infallible. They were written by man, so there's bound to be a lot of mistakes. Especially in certain Western super-powers, but I digress. History has shown us that when there is no law, people always step up and create their own, usually to the benefit of themselves.

History, and the present is showing us that law isn't working anymore, if it ever even did. People need to boldly step into our future by abandoning 'law', in favor of protection and justice.

 

[dele]

A much better way of deterring people, is to remove the shortcut that people use to skirt around their good consciences, by eliminating prohibitions. A justice system based on protections would have the same teeth that laws do, but without the harmfull side effects of slavery/serfdom/royalty inspired 'laws'.

It would help a bit if I knew whose laws you object to... I live in Canada and am pretty happy with our system, in spite of our current leaders. Most of our laws come right out of England's constitution. There are procedures in place to make more laws or get rid of others as the times change and needs grow.

Please explain what you mean by a justice system based on protection. I have no idea how this might work, but I am genuinely interested. How do you deal with people who don't follow their moral conscience? How do we decide whose moral code is right and whose is not? Do we appoint someone to decide? Do we let the majority decide? Sounds familiar somehow...

History, and the present is showing us that law isn't working anymore, if it ever even did. People need to boldly step into our future by abandoning 'law', in favor of protection and justice.

So history shows that lawlessness leads to bloodshed and pillaging. History also shows that laws tend serve the rich and powerful more than the middle and lower class. I guess the question here is which is the greater evil. So far I've heard nothing to suggest there is a better system. Certainly improvements could be made to the legal system, but abolishing it is not the answer.

On a lighter note, I do see one advantage to having no law: no more lawyers!

 

[nyse]

Please explain what you mean by a justice system based on protection. I have no idea how this might work, but I am genuinely interested. How do you deal with people who don't follow their moral conscience? How do we decide whose moral code is right and whose is not? Do we appoint someone to decide? Do we let the majority decide? Sounds familiar somehow...

I live in Canada (at least part of each year) as you do. I described what protective justice is in a thread called 'prohibitive law versus protective justice' but the participants seemed to find my description of it unclear.

So history shows that lawlessness leads to bloodshed and pillaging. History also shows that laws tend serve the rich and powerful more than the middle and lower class. I guess the question here is which is the greater evil. So far I've heard nothing to suggest there is a better system. Certainly improvements could be made to the legal system, but abolishing it is not the answer.

On a lighter note, I do see one advantage to having no law: no more lawyers!

Protective Justice isn't 'lawlessness'. It's a system where a process other than law keeps a better order than law does. It doesn't mean that lawyers would be gone. Rather, they would be actually serving the betterment of society by assisting in the process of ACTUAL justice.

 

[nyse]

I don’t get your point, nyse, although I agree with many principles you’ve launched. But if I say I don’t get your point it’s because I don’t know if you’re saying all the legal systems are bad, or if it’s about your land’s legal system only, or if you suggest law should be abolished (??)… yet you’ve said some things that I’d like to comment.

<<I didn't ignor you. Real life called me away before I finished composing a reply to your post.>>


I'm not sure why so many people have difficulty understanding my point. It's not that complicated, but it does require thinking outside of the box. Yes, I think law should be utterly abolished, as its fundemental concepts are the root of its problems. You can't rid your garden of a weed, just by clipping its leaves.

Well, it’s natural to all of us to think we’re free, since every individual is born free and the only thing that can change this personal status is a valid judicial sentence.

Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom. By granting an authority the (purported) ability restrict freedoms for some, you've allowed them to impinge on your own and set the stage for people in general to resent the authority--as many of us now do. You may have meant to imply that this 'loss of freedom' was incarceration, but the prisoner is still 'free' within his cell to do whatever he wishes (that is possible for him to do). The point I'm making is that our justice system could still do what we need it to do--but without the irrational slavery concepts.

It’s not the crime that make the murderer blamed or gives him the status of criminal, but the court decision that says so. If I had killed a guy five minutes ago and no one have noticed it yet, I would still be an innocent individual. I don’t know where you live, but I’d say you’re from any common law civilization, what means you probably don’t work with the “Law Pure Theory”. This theory consists in an abstraction of the law. In other words, it separates the law from the social facts. This is the doctrine we follow in the law academic works performed in the nations under the reign of the civil law system.

I'm from Canada. Pure law or impure law , it makes no difference--rule and punishment IS what law is and THAT is the problem.

I will not get inside the matter about the theories or speculations concerning if the man is inborn bad or good. This philosophical issue, which as far as I know was firstly discussed by T. Hobbes in “The Leviathan”, will not make much difference in my ideas exactly due to this abstraction performed by the Pure Theory.

I haven't read T. Hobbes, but the theories on whether man is born good or bad is precisely where we need look to find a justice system that works. The Christian philosophy, that law is largely grounded on, attests that 'all men are sinners'. Christanity also claims that Christ is the king of kings, so they presume that god has granted a (religious) right to make laws and inflict punishment in advance of the divine court--but no such inherent right exists.

Conversely, one can argue that children are born good but a system of laws, with its built in slavery concepts, causes lawbreaking in people seeking freedom.

Exactly, mate! See, this may happen in almost all the nations around the world not because the law itself is bad, but because who create the law are the rich, or the members of the church, or the members of the communist party, or neo-liberal bourgeoisie, whatever. (Observe that I have no intention of adopting any peculiar political view! We are already working with juridical and sociological issues and we do not need another academic field to enlarge our discussion, so forget about the political matter. I am in an apolitical speech.) Each nation has its peculiar social organization, and consequently each society will have a different class that rules and it’s basically this very class that will create the law. They will do it directly and explicitly in some nations, and they will do it obscurely, trough lobby in others. It doesn’t matter how. The point is that it’s the society’s most important and ruling people who will create law, I mean, who will in fact interfere in the legislative process. The miserable ones who are in the jails obviously are not the society ruling class. So they will face many difficult situations since the day they are born. Law will not be for their will, but for the others’. They will have to take part in the crime, drugs… and so on.



I don’t think law will ever collapse simply because there will be no civilization without law. If so, we would live as beasts in a jungle; or like the bestialized individuals Thomas Hobbes figured out in that fine work entitled “The Leviathan”. I don’t think law is perfect but I surely don’t want it to collapse.

Law itself is the basic fault that all the others problems rely on to exist. By fixing justice, we are curing societal ills--including a strong innoculation against corruption.

 

[nyse]

A picture is worth a thousand words, so try to envision how the law works.

Have your mind see two people. One is a prospective victim and the other intends a harm. A knife flashes and one drops to the floor.

Law does NOT see the same thing as you just did. Law supposedly interjected itself, and it was hurt when the knife flashed.

How can we possibly expect any justice from law, when law doesn't see things as we people do?

 

[nyse]

Please explain what you mean by a justice system based on protection. I have no idea how this might work, but I am genuinely interested.

Protective justice takes the realistic view that a wrong/crime/harm/threat occurred between two people (or sides)and the justice system works as a nuetral party to determine the actions that will best serve the protection of all people, including the one(s) directly hurt, the one(s) who did the hurting and those who could be harmed in the future--based on the unbiased projection the situation.

Law does not have the inalienable right to prohibit and punish. No indiviudual in society has that right, so how can this non-right be conferred to the government--and be translated into an authority to prohibit and punish?

Each person does have the right to defend themself and that right can be granted to society to use for the protection of all.

 

[bookworm fellow]

I'm not sure why so many people have difficulty understanding my point.

In deed, I saw many people saying they did not understand your point in other topics. Firstly I myself tough I was another one who did not get your point. But now I realize there are two possible explanations for this weirdness: A) we all did understand you, but we did not agree with you. So the matter is about agreeing with your ideas, not about understanding it. And why don’t we agree with you? I’ll speak for myself: It’s impossible to agree with you because you point a premiss that logically should support a conclusion but then you don’t expose this conclusion or you expose a conclusion that is not related to that previously premiss. So it gets hard to agree with you, what does not mean your ideas are necessarily wrong, but simply that they are not being explained in a logic way; or maybe B) the matter is not about agreeing with you, but actually about understanding you. And this would be due to the same reason that your ideas are not clearly exposed.

Let’s see this full statement of yours:

Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom. By granting an authority the (purported) ability restrict freedoms for some, you've allowed them to impinge on your own and set the stage for people in general to resent the authority--as many of us now do. You may have meant to imply that this 'loss of freedom' was incarceration, but the prisoner is still 'free' within his cell to do whatever he wishes (that is possible for him to do). The point I'm making is that our justice system could still do what we need it to do--but without the irrational slavery concepts.

Now let’s split it for a better understanding:

When you say “Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom” you’re announcing that even the state should not strip a criminal’s freedom. I got your point. I don’t agree. But after announcing such idea, you should justify it. So maybe I or other readers could agree. Unfortunately you do not justify it, as we are going to observe in your following lines. So you have pointed a premiss without the logical expected conclusion.

You continue exposing your thoughts: “By granting an authority the (purported) ability restrict freedoms for some, you've allowed them to impinge on your own and set the stage for people in general to resent the authority--as many of us now do.” This sentence does not justify why the state should not strip a criminal’s freedom. And I agree that by giving an authority the facility to restrict freedom for some, I am allowing this authority to strip me from my own freedom. And I am not uncomfortable with that. I’m not better than the others and just like them I have no right to keep my freedom if I perform a crime. If I want the guy who stole my car or raped my girlfriend (these are examples, not based in real events!) to be busted why would I think if I did the same to him I would be innocent? That would make no sense. That would not be what we call “justice”.

Then you say “You may have meant to imply that this 'loss of freedom' was incarceration”. That was a new premiss. Yes, for me “loss of freedom” means incarceration, for sure, concerning I do not support the death penalty.

Continuing: “but the prisoner is still 'free' within his cell to do whatever he wishes (that is possible for him to do).” In deed. In other hand he could not harm the innocent people outside the jails again. I know he would still be able to harm other condemned individuals inside the detention centre. This happens all the time. But still this awful reality does not justify why this criminal should continue to live between the innocent people outside the prison (or, in other words, this awful reality does not justify why the state/authority should not strip this individual’s freedom). The best thing to do was to improve these detention centres security.

And then you finish this quoted paragraph by saying that “The point I'm making is that our justice system could still do what we need it to do--but without the irrational slavery concepts.” This should be the conclusion for your premises, but it isn’t. You say “our justice system could still do what we need it to do” but you don’t say how it could do what we need it to do; and you also don’t say what do we need it to do. Because since you’ve said an authority should not strip any individual’s freedom (“Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom.”) and presuming the law as the judicial system would be such authority, I see no other function for this authority. So, again, what do we need it to do?

I haven't read T. Hobbes, but the theories on whether man is born good or bad is precisely where we need look to find a justice system that works.

I can’t figure out how to find a justice system that works without taking in consideration the English T. Hobbes ideas and also other scientific/sociological theories concerning this theme, even the Italian Cesare Beccaria. These are the classics and there are lots of other newer great works related. Even today there are many minds taking their time to solve this hard issue.

The Christian philosophy, that law is largely grounded on, attests that 'all men are sinners'. Christanity also claims that Christ is the king of kings, so they presume that god has granted a (religious) right to make laws and inflict punishment in advance of the divine court--but no such inherent right exists.

This issue would be more relevant in the Feudal Ages and the Early Modern Times, when in most of the nations the king was taken as the representative of God in Earth. But after many historical revolutions (for example: The French Revolution) the Church was separated from the government and the sovereign was not subordinated to the Catholic institution anymore. So the Christian matter you’ve pointed can not be used for justify the idea that law is bad, primarily in your land Canada, a well illustrated nation.

Conversely, one can argue that children are born good but a system of laws, with its built in slavery concepts, causes lawbreaking in people seeking freedom.

Unfortunately I don’t know the Canadian legal system neither the Canadian history, so I confess I had never heard of slavery in Canada and I don’t know how its law is related to the slavery concepts.

Anyway, if you say so, such problem is firstly a sociological issue rather than a juridical issue, as I’ve previously said in another topic. If Canadian law is really based in slavery concepts I got to say it’s an awful thing to heard. My own country is unfortunately historically marked with the slavery and even so I (and all other law students or authors) don’t think our law is built in slavery concepts (what doesn’t mean we disagree that even nowadays there are many unwell social characteristics present in our society that are remnants of the slavery times).

Law itself is the basic fault that all the others problems rely on to exist. By fixing justice, we are curing societal ills--including a strong innoculation against corruption.

And here are you again saying law is bad without giving us the opportunity to agree with you. You gave the premises but omitted the conclusion of your theory. If law is bad, what should be done to avoid this ill? I’m sure the simple abolition of law would not help anyhow and I bet you agree with me, because you know what would be the consequences of that since I’ve already commented the T. Hobbes theory, which is so obvious that many other people in other threads exposed the same basic though just by thinking and without taking Hobbes as inspiration.

So I ask you, mate, to build your theory in a solid way, concerning the logical of any speech. I’m really interested in an other possible alternative for improving people’s life quality and if your theory is based in any other sociological or legal texts you should also link them to us so you would have an argumentative enforce and people that did not understand your ideas will be able to know more about it.

 

[dele]

A picture is worth a thousand words, so try to envision how the law works.

Have your mind see two people. One is a prospective victim and the other intends a harm. A knife flashes and one drops to the floor.

Law does NOT see the same thing as you just did. Law supposedly interjected itself, and it was hurt when the knife flashed.

How can we possibly expect any justice from law, when law doesn't see things as we people do?

The reason law exists is to see things from a perspective that people don't. If you and I both witnessed that fight, we might take 2 entirely different things away from it. I might see a man getting brutally slain, but if you were more observant, (or perhaps closer to the scene, or had a better field of vision) you would have seen an assault where the victim ended up killing his aggressor in self-defense. Law serves the purpose of determining which of us is right and exacting the relevant punishment and/or compensation.

Protective justice takes the realistic view that a wrong/crime/harm/threat occurred between two people (or sides)and the justice system works as a nuetral party to determine the actions that will best serve the protection of all people, including the one(s) directly hurt, the one(s) who did the hurting and those who could be harmed in the future--based on the unbiased projection the situation.

So once again, please explain the difference between law and protective justice. Perhaps if you gave some solid examples where protective justice serves society better than law... from what I can glean, they are the same thing, but protective justice is ambiguous enough to do nothing and everything at once.

Law does not have the inalienable right to prohibit and punish. No indiviudual in society has that right, so how can this non-right be conferred to the government--and be translated into an authority to prohibit and punish?

Each person does have the right to defend themself and that right can be granted to society to use for the protection of all.

If that's the case, your ideals are doomed from the get-go. How do you propose to maintain order without giving anyone the right to do so?

 

[nyse]

I wouldn't mind if someone disagreed on the basis of their having understood first, but the questions and comments show me that comprehention has been missed. I don't know how to breach that wall of misunderstanding--I've tried every way I can think of.

When you say “Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom” you’re announcing that even the state should not strip a criminal’s freedom. I got your point. I don’t agree. But after announcing such idea, you should justify it. So maybe I or other readers could agree. Unfortunately you do not justify it, as we are going to observe in your following lines. So you have pointed a premiss without the logical expected conclusion.

You're disagreeing without first comprehending. Even the state cannot strip a person of freedom. The state doesn't have to. We can put a dangerous person into a cell without stripping him of his rights, or making him slave to an ideal. We simply have to do so for a protective rationale, instead of a punitive one. There is a big difference in that the state isn't making people 'slaves' to the concept of law.

You continue exposing your thoughts: “By granting an authority the (purported) ability restrict freedoms for some, you've allowed them to impinge on your own and set the stage for people in general to resent the authority--as many of us now do.” This sentence does not justify why the state should not strip a criminal’s freedom. And I agree that by giving an authority the facility to restrict freedom for some, I am allowing this authority to strip me from my own freedom. And I am not uncomfortable with that. I’m not better than the others and just like them I have no right to keep my freedom if I perform a crime. If I want the guy who stole my car or raped my girlfriend (these are examples, not based in real events!) to be busted why would I think if I did the same to him I would be innocent? That would make no sense. That would not be what we call “justice”.

You always retain the intrinsic freedom that God gave you, me and everyone. Law tries to make people believe in it, and that it has the right to take freedom away, but it doesn't and it never will.

You all seem certain that law has the right to make itself the master and set the rules/punishments, but can you logically tell me where it derives this 'right' from? You as an individual haven't the authority to tell me what I must/mustn't do, so how can society multiply 'zero' right by however number of people in a nation, and arrive at a ''right'? Zero times any number remains zero. Law does not even make mathematical sence.

Then you say “You may have meant to imply that this 'loss of freedom' was incarceration”. That was a new premiss. Yes, for me “loss of freedom” means incarceration, for sure, concerning I do not support the death penalty.

Continuing: “but the prisoner is still 'free' within his cell to do whatever he wishes (that is possible for him to do).” In deed. In other hand he could not harm the innocent people outside the jails again. I know he would still be able to harm other condemned individuals inside the detention centre. ... The best thing to do was to improve these detention centres security.

Yes, the detention should be improved to a livable standard and the guards shouldn't have the mentality that the inmate is being punished. He/she is being protected from commiting wrongfull deeds, just as surely as we are peing protected from his/her hurtfull/threatening actions.

And then you finish this quoted paragraph by saying that “The point I'm making is that our justice system could still do what we need it to do--but without the irrational slavery concepts.” This should be the conclusion for your premises, but it isn’t. You say “our justice system could still do what we need it to do” but you don’t say how it could do what we need it to do; and you also don’t say what do we need it to do. Because since you’ve said an authority should not strip any individual’s freedom (“Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom.”) and presuming the law as the judicial system would be such authority, I see no other function for this authority. So, again, what do we need it to do?

We need justice to protect people unbiasedly. This is something that law is utterly incapable of doing. Law only protects itself and any accused person is always facing the prosecution AND the judge (of the law) as his adversaries. IE The law declares that it, and not the victim, was injured (broken) party.

I can’t figure out how to find a justice system that works without taking in consideration the English T. Hobbes ideas and also other scientific/sociological theories concerning this theme, even the Italian Cesare Beccaria. These are the classics and there are lots of other newer great works related. Even today there are many minds taking their time to solve this hard issue.

I've said before that I haven't read Hobbes, nor would I need to if you give me a very quick gist. What little you've said about him tends to suggest that the Hobbes' system is a case in point of why we must have law. (I do know that most (if not all) works on law are highly slanted in favor of law. Even the works against law seem to suggest that law could be a wonderful system if improved. In my opinion, that is all Sophist propaganda and horse manure. Law is a very bad system and in fact, it's the worst attrocity ever perpetrated against mankind--bar none.

You've said I don't substanciate, so I'll expand on my last statement. Law is a crime against humanity! Law is why (most) sociopaths exist. A killer like Cho at Virginia tech is railing against law, and trying to hurt law, but people are injured instead. Law is why police are overly violent, they're not focused on defending people (which should include the arrestee), instead they are 'upholding' a foul and inanimate concept/entity (the law). Law is why people have less respect for police and the government because in their deepest soul (or subconscious minds), they know that law is their oppressing master. Down with law!

This issue would be more relevant in the Feudal Ages and the Early Modern Times, when in most of the nations the king was taken as the representative of God in Earth.

... even so I (and all other law students or authors) don’t think our law is built in slavery concepts ...

Firstly, law students are gearing themselves up for a career of milking the law as their cash cow, so why would they ever utter a word against law? You should cite a more credible group.

As to the slavery of law, what valid argument do you and these other law students present? Rules and punishments are either a slave concept or a parental one. Since the government didn't give birth to me, we can scratch the familial justification. Serfdom, complete with the lords rules and punishments, stems from the belief that if a person can command or pay enough swordsmen, then he has the right to issue rules and punishments. Isn't it about time that civilization outgrows that wrong notion? Yes, those who believe that law should exist are slaves to it--I'm not.

And here are you again saying law is bad without giving us the opportunity to agree with you. You gave the premises but omitted the conclusion of your theory. If law is bad, what should be done to avoid this ill? I’m sure the simple abolition of law would not help anyhow and I bet you agree with me, because you know what would be the consequences of that since I’ve already commented the T. Hobbes theory, which is so obvious that many other people in other threads exposed the same basic though just by thinking and without taking Hobbes as inspiration.

Please don't tell me what I think, especially when you're so completely wrong about what I've been saying. Abolishing law would be the very best thing that society could do for itself. Obviously we would need a system to replace law with, but the twisted notion that a concept (law) sits between a victim and a victimizer must be eradicated.

Here is a law scenario for you to imagine. Suppose that my anti-law sentiments were to land me afoul of the law. (even when I had done nothing else but to believe and speak on abolishing law). How would my case be tried? I don't acknowledge a judge's authority, because my strongly held opinion and even my religious faith tells me that law is despicable. How can you claim to support freedom of thought and expression, when you watch me convicted only for my anti-law views?

What will happen when others share my conviction (double meaning intended)? When enough do, then law will finally be gone.

A government (the aparatus of lawmaking) belongs to us, so why are <we> only slaves to it?

So I ask you, mate, to build your theory in a solid way, concerning the logical of any speech. I’m really interested in an other possible alternative for improving people’s life quality and if your theory is based in any other sociological or legal texts you should also link them to us so you would have an argumentative enforce and people that did not understand your ideas will be able to know more about it.

I'd be more than happy to and I've tried in other threads to do so but until you can understand exactly what about law I detest, my discussion seems to only fall on law-worshipping ears.

 

[nyse]

The reason law exists is to see things from a perspective that people don't. If you and I both witnessed that fight, we might take 2 entirely different things away from it. I might see a man getting brutally slain, but if you were more observant, (or perhaps closer to the scene, or had a better field of vision) you would have seen an assault where the victim ended up killing his aggressor in self-defense. Law serves the purpose of determining which of us is right and exacting the relevant punishment and/or compensation.

Why must there be a fictional entity to do that? Why can't a judge acting as a neutral third party make a decision based on what actually happened, and not on some bizarre notion of supposed damage done to this precious law non-entity?

So once again, please explain the difference between law and protective justice. Perhaps if you gave some solid examples where protective justice serves society better than law... from what I can glean, they are the same thing, but protective justice is ambiguous enough to do nothing and everything at once.

In an altercation between two people, the law presumes that one broke a prohibition. The victim is basically removed from the trial, except as a witness, because the law usurps the harm. According to law theory, the ONLY thing the assailant did was to BREAK A LAW.
Conversely...
Protective justice presumes that two sides were involved and on behalf of society, it adjudicates between them. The investigation and trial may show that one person is a treat to others and it takes appropriate actions to protect the victim AND other people.

The imaginary entity built by law creates an avenue for people to side-step their consciences. It also paints a target, for a malcontent to vent his frustrations at the law, on innocent people.
Conversely...
Protective justice removes the rediculous concept of a law intervening. It places protections on people instead--which wipes out the conscience detour and the bull's eye on our backs.
<NOTE--there is currently no method of determining how much crime would be stopped before it happens--but there WILL be some and that alone is an improvement. I personally believe that God (or the natural order) gave us ALL good consciences to enable us to live together in harmony. When we let our justice system employ the conscience, instead of nulifying it, MOST crimes and wrongs against people might just disappear.>

One person does NOT have the right to tell another what he may or may not do, and punish him if he does/doesn't--that is slavery. One thousand people together may have the 'power' to employ slavery concepts--but that society still doesn't have the RIGHT to rule or punish.
Conversely...
Each person DOES have the right to defend themselves and when that right is assigned from each member, society DOES have the collective right to take protective actions.
<NOTE Protective justice does what even Lincoln didn't do--it abolishes slavery.>

Law's preposterous suggestion is that a situation between people can be adequetly covered by a simple yes/no of whether a law was broken. For example, if a man assaults another, the law will ponder an decide if the action occurred and whether or not it fit the definition of 'assault'.
Conversely...
Protective justice has the court veiwing events from both sides. It will determine if an assault did occur, but also whether it was unprovoked or otherwise. If the victim was taunting, then he may also be deemed a threat to short-fused individuals and dealt with accordingly.

Law has the courts and the police ONLY upholding the statutes, to the harm of the people. The courts could be defined as a place with no justice, where lawyers go to make money. Police are only concerned with getting their names in the papers for being heros or for a minor reduction in the crime stats.
Conversely...
Protective justice finds the police doing a REAL investigation (as opposed to one that only looked at whether a law was hurt). The court is doing what we all wish it did--and behind closed doors because sensational media exposure unjustly violates people who were wrongly (and even rightly) accused.

If that's the case, your ideals are doomed from the get-go. How do you propose to maintain order without giving anyone the right to do so?

You do that by granting the justice system the authority to take actions in PROTECTION of PEOPLE. I definately won't consign myself to slavery, just to give the government the power to preserve a 'law'. Justice needn't be at the cost of freedom.

 

[helgi]

I think you've pointed out legitamate questions. That is, you've made the law seem questionable, whether there is or is not a better alternative to law.

What would you say about Clockwork Orange? Does it serve as a poor example of protective justice? It seems like a false example, because it internalizes the prohibitions where inhibitions were lacking

 

[dele]

I think I understand you now. It's a very interesting theory, but you're making the fatal mistake of assuming that everyone is born with the same moral code. The only way your theory would work in the real world would be in a small community with similar-minded people. When you put in factors like different styles of living and different religious backgrounds, it is too easy for people to disagree over the simplest of matters. In Toronto, just a couple weeks ago, a man murdered his daughter because she refused to keep her head covered in public. No doubt most of us would agree that is a heinous crime, yet that practice is common-place in too many parts of the world.

So who decides if it was a crime or not? Some would say yes, others would say she got justice for forsaking her religious beliefs. (I am not trying to start a religious debate, just illustrating a point.) The only way your system would work is if someone decides if it is a crime or not to set the precedence. Once that happens, you have a law. The only difference is in the name.

 

[bookworm fellow]

nyse, when I asked you to build your theory in a solid way, you said:

I'd be more than happy to and I've tried in other threads to do so but until you can understand exactly what about law I detest, my discussion seems to only fall on law-worshipping ears.

I got to say this was the solidest topic of yours I’ve ever read. That’s great. Anyway, I still disagree with you because, despite its solidly redaction, you’ve still did not pointed a workable institution (or anything else you would propose) to maintain the social order if a nation somehow conquest such utopian lawless regime--and I am not using this derivative form of the word “utopia” in a pejorative context. Maybe it is evident, but the fact is that many people tend to relate “utopia” to any fairytale-looking state characterized by opposition to the sovereign. That seems not to be the case here, unless you crown your theory with the central idea, which is how to avoid that each individual would behave well and not harm the others? And you have been close to that, when you write:

Abolishing law would be the very best thing that society could do for itself. Obviously we would need a system to replace law with, but the twisted notion that a concept (law) sits between a victim and a victimizer must be eradicated.

You recognize that something has to replace the law. I insist that in a land without law, even thought some individuals may be innately good, we can’t deny that many others may be bad. So we have to recognize that people would eventually fight for resources, all of them: ones for defending them against the others’ attacks; and others will fight for accumulating more resources, concerning the abolition of law would not enable the abolition of human greed. So we would have a free-for-all war field taking place in the society. And if you agree that law must be replaced by something, what you’ve called a system to replace law with, well mate, differently from the other related topics, it seems in this one the debate is getting somewhere, I mean, It’s being fruitful. Not that I’m necessarily going to agree with you in the end. But I’m starting to understand what this theoretic proposal of yours is about. Actually, I’ve already understand it. But it’s worthless until you explain what this system to replace law with would exactly be and how it would be put to work in practice.

The thing is that designing such system is surely a hard and--as far as I know--unprecedented work. I’ve never heard of a social organization scheme that really could work in law’s replacement. The idea of abolishing law itself is not innovative. I think any not guilty defendant in a trial would think the same. So I wonder how many people would have said law is bad in the human history. I don’t say law is god. Maybe I’d say it’s not perfect. But it’s unquestionably necessary for maintaining the order. It’s not perfect, in deed, but if we do not have a better method to maintain the order, it’s impossible to perform the simple abolition of law. Otherwise, we would find ourselves in the primitive Hobe’s state of nature, that although you’ve not read about, I insist in cit it again simultaneously because it’s opportune in this context and because I’ve explained in what it consists. So we have that law can be a very efficient tool for the order maintenance goal. The result of the adoption of the traditional law system rests in how a nation will make use of the law: by choosing the right or the wrong legislative body and government for the administration of their interests. So we are turning back to that matter I talked above (in a preceding topic) about not mistaking the law issues with the social issues. But this theme is already exhausted, isn’t it? So let’s keep my writing in this system to replace law with matters. The fact is that order must be maintained, always, with or without law. And you choose the second option, I mean, you believe that you found the key to do it without law. That’s a great initiative. But it’s up to you to turn in a pertinent theory. Do you understand what I’m saying, mate? You’re now supposed to elaborate a whole new system of social organization for maintaining the order! The many lines that you posted up till now were basically just to say law is bad, and also why. Those were not innovative ideas and I believe a great fraction of those who said they were not understanding you did actually understand your point, that law is bad and why. Maybe some were confused with the two nominations you gave to the traditional law and your utopian system to replace law with, whose are respectively “law” and “protective justice”. Anyway, your point still is that law is bad and should be abolished so this better and just new system would replace the law. What is missing is to crown your theory. Once you’ve make it, such ideas would become a real utopia, in the non-pejorative acceptation. It would be susceptible of some people’s agreement or not. No matter of what, it would be a complete theory and complete theories are supposed to be right or respected, even if there is another theory that says the contrary and that is simultaneously taken as right. That’s how the things are in the non-mathematic sciences. But if you can not solve the puzzle set by your abolition of law proposal, then that amount of topics you’ve posted will have no more relevance then the thoughts of those miserable ones who are in trial even being sure of their blamelessness, but still defenceless against the system. I’ve never been in such situation, but since I like Kafka and I’ve read “The Trial”, I do have an idea about how it might feel.

An important note that may be set is that you don’t have any way out to conclude your theory if not by designing this so called system to replace law with. At least, I don’t see any. Because saying that men are good, or that men will obey their god, beliefs, ethics or what ever given reason that would mean they will not fight each other like beasts once law is abolished would not be a smart way out. The humankind is necessarily bad. That’s a fact and reality attests it.


(Oh, I've just realized there is a lettering limit for each topic so I'll have to continue my explanation in another topic)

 

[bookworm fellow]

(Continuing,)

Also, saying that this system to replace law with would consist in an individual who brought harm to anyone to have his punishment decided by the society as a whole or even by a society’s representative, without observing any written law is not a way out as well. If your system to replace law with would consist in such thing, then I would say nothing would have changed with the abolition of the law and the adoption of the protective justice. That would be due to three reasons: Firstly, because an individual to have his penalty to be decided for a people’s representative would be the same as this individual to be judged by a Court’s judge. And if the individual is judged by the society as a whole, this statement persists, since it would be still the same as a judge or maybe a jury. The only possible difference would probably be the physical inability to make it possible to each individual of the society to interrogate that individual under trial (I don’t know if you would create also a new word for replacing “trial”), due to the enormous quantity of individuals some urban centres have. And even if this problem could somehow be solved, yet there would be another problem to solve. I wonder how many crimes happen during a day in a huge city like LA, NY, Toronto, Moscow, Rio, Shanghai. If each individual of any huge urban centre alike had to take part in a trial or, in other words, in the decision of an individual’s penalty, well it would not be a very interesting routine, would it? I can figure out people voting if a strange is guilty every five minutes… The prefecture staff or whoever else would probably enable an online service so people would be able to take note of the facts and to vote trough pagers or portable phones, but it would still be very annoying to do, huh? They would have to do it maybe each 10 or 15 minutes… Don’t you forget that there are not only the criminal trials, but also the civil trials. And the third reason would be that even if the individual were judged without taking in consideration any written law, or even without any consuetudinary law, yet he would be being judged under the schedule of another kind of law. And this kind of law I’m talking about is the folk law. Yes, each individual has his own ideas of bad/good, right/wrong, etc. For the ancient Sparta people (at least, for most of them, probably) killing a sick or invalid baby was a good thing. Nowadays, we do not think this way. But if we don’t, it’s because we have adopted a law that prohibit it and shared by the great majority of our society’s individuals. This law will not be written in any paper after the law abolition. But it will still remain standing in our ethics. The same can be said about the abortion: some think it’s inadmissible, others say it’s not so bad or its ok to be done, if the foetus feel no pain, or if the mother is poor, etc. What I’m saying is that it will be in vain to simply destroy all the legal texts, all the codes and constitutions, or even kill all judges and lawyers if the future criminals will still be being judged under the modes of laws, or rules. A different type of law. And in the end, this “different” kind of law is not different from the law we have in 2008, because this nowadays law is basically a result of a writing and typing process of the ethic laws we share as naturally as we share our homeland language. Such weightings of possibilities I’m pointing may sound sarcastic, but that’s not my intention. These issues I figured out above are relevant if you are going to deal with the design of a new system to replace law with. And I bet that there are lots of key factors alike that you’ll have to face if you really have a proposal for crowning your utopia. Otherwise--I must repeat--it will keep as relevant as any other thoughts of the men under trial…

By the way, statements of your own pen contribute to enlarge the difficult grade to the achievement that is to give coherence to your theory, as we’ll see below:

Nothing can strip a soul of his/her freedom.

And also:

Even the state cannot strip a person of freedom.

So a criminal (or any individual that would have harmed another one, if the word “criminal” would not make any sense in your utopia) must have a non-traditional penalty. He/she may not go in jail. So in your utopia the criminals would have to be submitted to another kind of penalty or punishment. And I suppose such punishment could not be death, because that would be another way to strip the individual of his freedom. Maybe, for some religions that I don’t know well (no hypothesis should be discarded) the death is not a loss of freedom… But if in this new system of protective justice you are proposing the freedom can not be striped, so no matter of what is your religion (I don’t have an idea of what’s your religion and please remember that this is not important for anyone to know such private information if you mind telling!) this utopia may not take any religion as its major religion. If freedom is absolute, then no one can be compelled to convert in any religion that would preach death is not a strip of freedom. In abstract, incarceration and death penalty are incompatible with the protective justice system. Your utopia would have to maintain only the usage of the alternative punishments. There are many alternative punishments being applied today, like being legally compelled to paint a wall, distribute food to the poor, etc. If these alternative punishments are not a loss of freedom to freely walk and to go anywhere, in the other hand they represent a strip of freedom to have the right not to do what we don’t want to do. And even if, although compelled, the individual is remunerated for that, still it’s a loss of freedom. So how is it going to be, mate?

(Oh, this lettering limit issue again. Lets keep the theme in the next topic, mate)

 

[bookworm fellow]

(continuing,)

Now leaving aside these so far unfixed imperfections of your ideas, I got to say that at least in one thing I totally agree with you. And it’s about the security and life conditions inside the prisions, what brings us to a very important matter: the functions of the punishment. So here are two nice statements of you:

the detention should be improved to a livable standard and the guards shouldn't have the mentality that the inmate is being punished. He/she is being protected from commiting wrongfull deeds, just as surely as we are peing protected from his/her hurtfull/threatening actions.

and

We can put a dangerous person into a cell without stripping him of his rights, or making him slave to an ideal. We simply have to do so for a protective rationale, instead of a punitive one. There is a big difference in that the state isn't making people 'slaves' to the concept of law.

I totally agree that punishment would be more effective and also more human if the prisoner were brought under detention to be set under resocialization treatment. I believe many individuals that perform horrendous crimes reach this bestialized personality due to the probably as-well-horrendous events he/she had to face in his/her life. People already born in poor, disgraceful and violent areas tend to acquire a violent posture so they can fight the violence that surrounds them for surviving. They are trained (or socialized) to behave like this the same way non-miserable and non-poor people are socialized to behave “as humans, not animals” and also to sue, instead of killing, etc. So the detention centres would better develop a treatment to correct this socialization deficiency, or--in some critic cases, depending of the violence level of the area where the criminal grew up--to start a socialization treatment in those who were not given the circumstances or state of affairs to develop the capacity to live as humans, respecting and being respected, but not killing for money, dugs, or even for food, when the hungry is so much that it hurts. Such poor areas I’m talking about could be the American ghettos, the Brazilian favelas, the Palestine and Israel frontier area, the land inhabited by rival ethnic groups somewhere in Africa (ever heard of a pandemonium known as Rwanda?) or any other places alike. Individuals born in areas like these acquired a bad, insufficient or inexistent socialization. So it’s ridiculous to expect them to behave as those ones born in richer areas. By the way, this may be one of the reasons why some ethnic groups whose, due to social or religious issues, are excluded from civilizational facilities like education, health and whatever else a man needs, tend to have the most considerable proportions of representatives in the prisons.

The perfect way to submit a criminal to resocialization, so he would be “taught” how to behave in a post modern society, is a very hard thing to determinate. That makes your attempt to give coherence to your theory even harder. Besides, the punishment concepts varies according each type of state it’s applied. For some wise jurists among the History, the punishment is a necessary ill.

Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Hegel believed that the punishment was necessary to correct this appalling social phenomenon that is the crime, for protecting the other individuals and their individual freedom. But if Kant used ethic arguments to justify that statement, in the other hand Hegel used juridical arguments. Kant said the criminal as a human being can’t be used as an object or a facility. So the function of the punishment could not be to serve the interests of the society, otherwise the condemned would be being used as an object. So, for this thinker, the punishment should be used only for making the prisoner suffer so he would pay for his fault. Differently, for Hegel the punishment may be used for avoid new crimes: if people see what happens to the guy that performed a crime today, they will not perform crime in the future because they don’t want such punishment for themselves. Note that for both theorists there are no worries about resocializing the criminals under detention. Their theories only work in favour of those who are free. So I don’t agree with them.

I think the criminal must be striped of his freedom, what you disagree with. But as I realize, we both agree that the prisoner must be resocialized. I presume it since you say “the detention should be improved to a livable standard and the guards shouldn't have the mentality that the inmate is being punished”. I guess that’s nearly what you meant. If so, our ideas can be compared with Von Liszt’s, who believed the punishment have three objectives: A) intimidation (to avoid both the prisoner and the society to perform a crime again, by making all them fear the punishment; B) neutralization of the dangerous criminal individual; and C) correction, or in other words, resocialization.

As you can see, your law abolishment theory must be worked out. You must design and explain in a logic way this system to replace law with. If not, it will be only an utopia, and now I say an utopia in the pejorative context, since it would not even have a logic conclusion. One thing is to want something; other is to make it possible. I’d like a world without pollution, war or poverty. Who wouldn’t? But I just want it. I can’t find how to do it. You, for your turn, want the abolition of law, because you think law is bad. Then I ask you: can you create the project of a system that would be better and different from the law we already have?

 

[nyse]

I think I understand you now. It's a very interesting theory,

Ahhhh. It feels great having someone say that! Can you think of any ways that I could've expressed it? I was trying, but people seemed to think I was in favor of seeing rapists and killers run wild.

but you're making the fatal mistake of assuming that everyone is born with the same moral code.

I'm certain most people have good morals but law is actually causing much wrongdoing. I'm an optimist and I think that when law is expunged, by a about face in the theory of dealing with societal disputes and 'crime', that even more people will be better behaved. There is really only one way that we will find that out.

The only way your theory would work in the real world would be in a small community with similar-minded people. When you put in factors like different styles of living and different religious backgrounds, it is too easy for people to disagree over the simplest of matters. In Toronto, just a couple weeks ago, a man murdered his daughter because she refused to keep her head covered in public. No doubt most of us would agree that is a heinous crime, yet that practice is common-place in too many parts of the world.

So who decides if it was a crime or not?

A 'crime' is whatever an individual feels wronged about or threatened by. If a person feels threatened by a neighbor's pit-bull, then they report that and the police unbiasedly investigate. The court (preferably staffed by local people) weigh the situation and rule/remedy accordingly--it doesn't take having a specific 'anti-pitbull' law in place. If the police/court determines that the dog is a negligable threat and that the owner is keeping the dog responsibly, then the complaint is denied--but everyone knows why and that justice acted to protect people.

The only way your system would work is if someone decides if it is a crime or not to set the precedence. Once that happens, you have a law. The only difference is in the name.

We already have a good idea of what a crime is (rape, murder, theft, assault, etc) and that would serve as a good base. Protective justice would then evolve, as 'tort law' did with each gound-breaking case creating a precidence. The beauty of that would be that a justice system would be finding better ways of bringing justice, instead of a parliament passing laws (that make them popular with various blocks of voters). The world would still need 'lawyers' but even they might enjoy doing a respectable job in a system that actually provided justice and societal protection. (Lawyers are people too--They and their children have to live in this increasingly violent and crime ridden society.)

 

[nyse]

nyse, when I asked you to build your theory in a solid way, you said:



I got to say this was the solidest topic of yours I’ve ever read. That’s great. Anyway, I still disagree with you because, despite its solidly redaction, you’ve still did not pointed a workable institution (or anything else you would propose) to maintain the social order if a nation somehow conquest such utopian lawless regime--

This is precisely why I'd like to discuss this. To find a solid workable alternative. Society REALLY needs to develop a replacement because law IS failing. People are chafing at the dark-ages law, but government and police are only tightening the screws on the pressure-cooker.