Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!caip!nike!ucbcad!ucbvax!UOFT01.BITNET!ASPDMM From: ASPDMM@UOFT01.BITNET Newsgroups: mod.legal Subject: BITNET mail follows Message-ID: <8607280948.aa14448@SEM.BRL.ARPA> Date: Mon, 28-Jul-86 09:39:00 EDT Article-I.D.: SEM.8607280948.aa14448 Posted: Mon Jul 28 09:39:00 1986 Date-Received: Mon, 28-Jul-86 21:21:00 EDT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The ARPA Internet Lines: 113 Approved: info-law@brl.arpa Dear John Gilmore, I'm afraid your idea of an ordered society leaves much to be desired, and is further reinforcement for my thesis of an educated voting populace. > My view of the main problem is that people > wrote the law as a way to control other people. I > don't want to be controlled. It is precisely because people don't want to be control- led that we must have laws. Do you think that the Bill of Rights was written to protect the wealthy land owners who wrote it? Hardly. The Bill of Rights, and arguably all laws, are written to protect the interests of the minori- ties, the "discrete and insular" minorities typically lack- ing the political and economic power to assert their rights on their own. In the early sixties, the Ku Klux Klan didn't want to be controlled either. But thank God, and the dili- gent effort of an army of lawyers in the court system, they were. Our freedom is intimately tied to the conduct of others. If I, not wishing to be controlled, choose to shoot you dead for sport, then I have acted as freely as I can imagine. But what has happened to your freedom? Absolute freedom is a concept of little value in structuring the relationships among people. The law is the best approach to limiting ab- solute freedom only to the extent that the greatest number of people may enjoy the highest degree of freedom possible. > Another problem is that recently the law has > been trying to fix blame for things to specific > individuals, and provide specific redress to peo- > ple who claim to be injured. Recently you say? As recently as the 17th century eng- lish courts have experimented with systems of adjusting the relationships between citizens. It becomes necessary, when one person is injured by another, to determine whether it is fair, or "equitable" (as in courts of Equity), to transfer the cost of the harm from the victim to some other person. In Las Vegas, a hotel is required to have lifeguard per- sonnel on duty while the guests are using a pool of greater than a certain depth. This is to protect the guest from dying, a very serious harm indeed. One hotel, wishing to avoid the cost of a lifeguard, posted a sign which said "NO LIFEGUARD ON DUTY". A young boy who could not read slipped into the pool area and was drowned. Now, if the hotel could avoid a DUTY imposed by law sim- ply by posting a sign announcing their intention to disre- gard the law, what would happen to our ordered society? No, the hotel was at fault, and was ordered to pay damages. Bravo. Without such controls, you could not be sure of the food you eat being safe, of the structural soundness of your home or automobile, the quality of care from your physician, or any relationship in which you are forced to interface with another human being. Those well-read on the subject know of the "New Zealand" plan, which limits damage awards and levies a tax against each citizen to create a fund from which those damage awards are paid. Again I say that if the current system is not acceptable, put in a new one, work with the old one, but for God's sake, don't just sit there and bitch. > Another recent bad trend (still reading?) is > the idea that you should be arrested and jailed > for "looking like you are about to commit a > crime". E.g. if you drive down the road drunk, > you are jailed. You haven't killed any kids, you > haven't sideswiped any trees, you were just driv- > ing down the road and it's time to go to jail. Unless I missed something, it is illegal to drive drunk, whether or not you hit someone and kill them. Why? For the same reason that it is illegal to set time bombs in crowded public buildings. The real harm is not the action, but its logical and probable consequence. Must we wait until the bomb is detonated before arresting the person who planted it? Do we then excuse criminals who are caught in the act of committing a crime because their crime is inchoate? I hope we never come to that! > PS: The idea that you, the citizen, are re- > sponsible for knowing the text and meaning and > current interpretation of every law on the books > is another great fuckup in the current law. Not > even the judges and lawyers and congresspeople > know this stuff, how is the average citizen ex- > pected to? No citizen is expected to know all the laws and their current interpretations. Nobody does. The fact that many cases go to appeal is an indication that even lawyers can't agree on what these interpretations are, let alone know them all. My paradigm was a bit more . I can see no jus- tification for people not even knowing how their vote was cast (remember the union election I mentioned?). Nor can I see allowing important issues to be decided by people who have no idea what the issue is, when all that is required to find out is to read a paper, or watch the news. That hardly requires a Juris Doctor of every citizen, since the news is aimed at a third grade level of understanding. P.S. The reason that Congress is made up of lawyers is that 215 million non-lawyers voted for them. Dave Massey