Three quick takes from the other side of the fence:
An Ohio prosecutor takes a salary cut and takes a part time job in order to keep staff when times are tough. You’ve got to respect someone who puts their money where there mouth is.
The Arizona prosecutors on the case of the 8 year old boy (who turned 9 last week) charged with murder have announced that they will not oppose a motion to suppress statements taken without an attorney or parent present, but only on condition that they can use it on cross if the child says something different. What a deal. As if the defense needs the prosecution’s approval.
Prosecutor Tom McKenna, who blogs at Seeking Justice, informs that the failure to obey laws, all laws, is an act of immorality. That means that nothing is really mala prohibita. I always wondered whether that “keep to the right except to pass” thing should have been part of the 10 Commandments. Now I know.
As Tom puts it, if we can start breaking laws because they aren’t immoral, where does it stop?
And when a habit of casual disrespect for the law is winked at, or worse, elevated as some kind of “I did it my way” statement against “the Man,” one wonders where the line will ultimately be drawn with respect to which laws must be obeyed.
This is the “but for” version of morality, brought to you by your favorite moral Congress and Legislature. So be careful and don’t piss off your deity by jaywalking today.
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In Texas, where one in 21 adults is in prison, on probation or on parole, there are 2,324 separate felonies on the books (including eleven involving oysters), several thousand more misdemeanors sprinkled about, and municipalities lard on literally thousands more local, ticket-only offenses.
Insisting that we assign equal moral weight to each of those infractions is not a serious suggestion. I’m sure it’s similar in other states, and the federal regulations by comparison are even worse.
If McKenna asks “where does it stop,” I’d reply, “where does this overcriminalization fetish stop?” Why must we criminalize every social harm, even supplanting commercial regulation with criminal liability?
To use an economic metaphor, McKenna is concerned that wide swaths of the public don’t respect the law, but we’ve devalued it by passing too many laws the way printing extra money devalues the currency. The solution is not hammering every wrong doer with the same force as if they’re a murderer, but to reduce the number of things we criminalize to increase the social value of the ones that remain, the way a central bank restricts money supply to increase a currency’s value.
“but we’ve devalued it by passing too many laws the way printing extra money devalues the currency.”
excellent point
I have a right and a duty to disobey laws which I find “immoral”. The end game for this “fetish”, as you put it, is that everything becomes illegal until you get specific permission by a controlling authority to engage in that particular activity. Resistance is a necessity under those conditions. But resistance should start well before that point is reached.
“America” is an idea whose immortality is not guaranteed. Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
When was the last time our tree fed off a tyrant?