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From: adam@mtund.UUCP (Adam V. Reed)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.misc,net.legal,soc.singles
Subject: Re: Re: Evidence and Pornography Legislation
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Date: Fri, 19-Sep-86 17:09:06 EDT
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Posted: Fri Sep 19 17:09:06 1986
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Adam Reed:
> >Now we get into questions about the ethical foundations of the law.
> >Legal punishment means depriving a person, at least temporarily, of the
> >rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  One of the ethical
> >foundations of western society is the presumption that no one ought to
> >be deprived of these rights without a demonstration, beyond a reasonable
> >doubt, of having caused harm to another person.
Mark Terribile:
> Not quite true.  If there is reason to believe that a harm is likely to
> result, restrictions related to the magnitude of the harm may be imposed.
> Drunken driving is a classic example.

When caught, the drunk driver has already harmed the owner of the road,
violating the owner's conditions on its use; and impairing the value of
the road by making it more dangerous, and therefore less useful to other
drivers; and thus less valuable to the owner. The fact that in some
countries the "person" owning the roads, and thus harmed by the drunk
driver, is the government, does not vitiate the applicability of the
above principle.

> Also, the reasonable doubt requirement
> does not hold in the construction of statutes, nor does it hold in limiting
> the rights guaranteed by the Amendments to our Constitution.  There criteria
> such as ``immediate and overwhelming harm'', ``compelling interest'', etc.,
> come into play.

Those are legal criteria, not ethical principles. The whole point of
civilized government is to bring laws into conformity with ethical
principles, and not the other way around.

					Adam Reed (mtund!adam)