Re: "Contempt" charges likely to increase

["E. ALLEN SMITH" <EALLENSMITH@ocelot.Rutgers.EDU>]

From:	IN%"unicorn@schloss.li"  "Black Unicorn" 13-APR-1996 11:57:34.92

>Are you planning on affording them due process rights?

	Due Process rights are an interesting question in this regard. One,
self-defense goes up against due process, particularly lethal self defense. One
liberal justification for various bans or limits on lethal self defense (i.e.,
those against potentially lethal defense against property crimes - including
preventing the criminal from making away with his stolen property) is that the
criminal does not get due process. In such a case, it's usually reasonably
obvious to the victim that self-defense is necessary, although others (such as,
so far as I can tell, in the Goetz case) may not realize it.
	Two, who's going to apply the trial? As you've noted regarding
overturning contempt charges, judges are very rarely willing to consider each
other wrong (outside of the realm of appeals), much less sentence each other.
Another instance of how judges tend to resist even the appointed mechanisms for
removal can be found in the recent judicial commentary regarding a threatened
impeachment for another judge; while they were correct in that case, the
instance is instructive. This is a common tendency inside the government in
general; cops are very loyal to one another, even when they're crooked. Seldom
is anyone but an internal body (Internal Affairs) permitted to go after a cop
(except with massive opposition by the police department), and even they are
hated.

>How about a trial, or does it merely take a single bidder with money to have
>someone offed?

	The risk of innocents dying is a valid problem, and is the major reason
that I have not "endorsed" assasination politics. The essential question is
whether more innocents will die under such a system than do now, or under
other proposed (non-violent) alternatives. The latter would be preferable, _if_
they work. As yet, I have hopes that they will; others, such as Mr. Bell, are
more pessimistic.

>Sounds like tyrrany of the rich to me.

	Unfortunately, it isn't. I say unfortunately because a tyrrany of the
rich would be preferable to the tyrrany of the (incompetent) majority we've
got currently; even the provisions in the Bill of Rights are removable by a
super-majority. Of course, a tyrrany of no-one at all would be preferable, but
I'm not sure if there's any way to do that.

>> To whatever extent it exceeds those limits, and to 
>> whatever extent the public can't get justice to prevent those violations, 
>> why would the public be obligated to accept them?

>Really Mr. Bell has recognized something important, though I'm not sure 
>even he realizes it.  Specifically, that when his allies are so few in 
>number he must resort to general terrorism and low intensity conflict to 
>have any hope of success at all.

	This is essentially the moral problem of ends justifying the means; I
do not regard this difficulty as solvable in any provable manner.
 
>> To believe otherwise is to believe that the government has some sort of 
>> special dispensation to violate the law.  I don't believe this; it wouldn't 
>> surprise me to hear that you do, however.  Which is it?

>I don't believe anyone has any special dispensation.  It's all a question 
>of who can get away with it.  For all your moaning and whining, you are 

[irrelevant material deleted]

	Essentially, can we stop _everybody_ from getting away with it, as you
put it, or just some people? And if the latter, who should we stop?
	-Allen