A question (mostly) for AC'ers, about the rule of law.

[VarlosZ]

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As for the OP, instead of exceptions to the law in special cases, where there is an opening for corruption, I would prefer the law to be revised. That way it can more appropriately handle the situation, and still be universal and applied to everyone.

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While that would certainly be better than just disregarding the law when one feels like it, codifying that kind of open-ended discretion still leaves the door open to corruption.

[Paragon]

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While that would certainly be better than just disregarding the law when one feels like it, codifying that kind of open-ended discretion still leaves the door open to corruption.

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Definitely. Corruption is always a significant threat with our current governments. This is one of the reasons I'm an ACist...

[Copernicus]

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While that would certainly be better than just disregarding the law when one feels like it, codifying that kind of open-ended discretion still leaves the door open to corruption.

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Definitely. Corruption is always a significant threat with our current governments. This is one of the reasons I'm an ACist...

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And corruption isnt a threat in ACland? If so, only because the definition of "corruption" is changed. The ability of wealth and power to influence is greater under AC than under a representative democracy.

[nietzreznor]

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I wasn't asking about private citizens obeying the law, though that's an interesting related topic. I was asking about state officials who are tasked with enforcing the law. So, in the cow example from the OP, would you prefer that the people in charge of ordering diseased cattle to be slaughtered decided to look the other way? On the one hand, this particular cow is quite important to some people, and there's no reason to think that the temple would be unwilling or unable to segregate it from other animals (plus, if you're an AC'er, you don't think the state should have the ability to slaughter livestock to begin with). OTOH, allowing the executors of the law to diverge from it opens the door to poor judgement and corruption. So which interest is more important: having the state butt out of people's lives in a given case, or enforcing strict fidelity to the law by officials, thereby making government less odious in the long run?

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I would always rather that people did what was right rather than what was wrong, so I would rather that nobody slay the sacred cow (regardless of whether they work for the 'state' or not) in the stated conditions. This seems little different than, say, how I would some IRS agent X didn't collect taxes, even though the law stated he/she should (we'll assume the law actually does require this, since I am skeptical).

I'm not sure why you think it would be better in the long-run for people to act in accordance with unjust laws--why would following unjust laws uniformly give us better results than acting justly regardless of the law?

[VarlosZ]

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I'm not sure why you think it would be better in the long-run for people to act in accordance with unjust laws--why would following unjust laws uniformly give us better results than acting justly regardless of the law?

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Because it's not a matter of following the law absolutely or disregarding it absolutely, but rather about the law being selectively disregarded at the whim of its enforcers. One may think that a government of laws like the kind we have now is a bad thing, but a government of the same scope that is ruled by whim rather than laws will tend to be much worse, even if those whims occasionally reach a better outcome than the law would have.

What I have in mind here are fairly minor and/or routine things such as the case in the OP. My argument may not hold in more extreme cases -- i.e., when massive harm can be avoided in a given case, or if a law is particularly monstrous and there's some hope of changing it, or of widespread disobedience. Allowing a certain amount of discretion in criminal law enforcement also seems like a good idea to me, though I'd have a hard time explaining why.

[Copernicus]

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I wasn't asking about private citizens obeying the law, though that's an interesting related topic. I was asking about state officials who are tasked with enforcing the law. So, in the cow example from the OP, would you prefer that the people in charge of ordering diseased cattle to be slaughtered decided to look the other way? On the one hand, this particular cow is quite important to some people, and there's no reason to think that the temple would be unwilling or unable to segregate it from other animals (plus, if you're an AC'er, you don't think the state should have the ability to slaughter livestock to begin with). OTOH, allowing the executors of the law to diverge from it opens the door to poor judgement and corruption. So which interest is more important: having the state butt out of people's lives in a given case, or enforcing strict fidelity to the law by officials, thereby making government less odious in the long run?

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I would always rather that people did what was right rather than what was wrong, so I would rather that nobody slay the sacred cow (regardless of whether they work for the 'state' or not) in the stated conditions. This seems little different than, say, how I would some IRS agent X didn't collect taxes, even though the law stated he/she should (we'll assume the law actually does require this, since I am skeptical).

I'm not sure why you think it would be better in the long-run for people to act in accordance with unjust laws--why would following unjust laws uniformly give us better results than acting justly regardless of the law?

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"Unjust" is in the eye of the beholder, so selective following/enforcement substitutes inividual values for community values, which is not what a representative democracy is all about.

[nietzreznor]

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Unjust" is in the eye of the beholder, so selective following/enforcement substitutes inividual values for community values, which is not what a representative democracy is all about.

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Well, what people *view* as just or unjust will be different for different people (or different cultures, etc.), but since I'm not a moral subjectivist I don't find this especially troubling. As I said, I don't think there is anything to be lost when individuals (even those who compose the State) act justly, even if it disagrees with the law--and what is 'just' is not merely what someone feels to be just, but what actually is just.
(An IRS tax collector may very well feel that what they're doing is just, but I don't much care, since what they're doing is *actually* unjust, and we should rid of the world of real injustice, not merely perceived injustice.)

[nietzreznor]

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One may think that a government of laws like the kind we have now is a bad thing, but a government of the same scope that is ruled by whim rather than laws will tend to be much worse, even if those whims occasionally reach a better outcome than the law would have.

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Perhaps I'm confused, but it seemed to me from the OP that laws weren't being randomly disregarded. I thought that some individuals who were part of the State were sometimes acting in accordance with justice rather than with the letter of the law. This might pose some problems if we're saying that they are instead acting according to what they think is just (and, since they uphold the State, we might assume that they're generally wrong about what constitutes justice [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]), but if they're actually being just then I don't see how this could be bad, since they aren't acting out of sheer whim but rather in accordance with virtue.

[Phil153]

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You can keep your cow but you are fully liable for any damage (read spreading TB) that it does up to and including taking away your fancy temple to pay the bills. We'll then see how sacred the cow really is.

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This works providing people are sane, rational, and good estimators of risk.

[MidGe]

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You can keep your cow but you are fully liable for any damage (read spreading TB) that it does up to and including taking away your fancy temple to pay the bills. We'll then see how sacred the cow really is.

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This works providing people are sane, rational, and good estimators of risk.

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And are capable of paying the total costs of the risk, following successful litigation. No point in suing someone who has no money, as any lawyer will tell you! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

This is another absolute failure of AC ideology.