Judges, as H.L. Mencken said, are law students that mark their own papers. Any honest lawyer (oxymoron?) will admit that, in their opinion, the severity of a judgement is dependent on the judge – which in turn is determined by the subtle social biases to which the mammal is inclined. In the main, an experienced barrister is the one who ascends the bench, bringing with him all the prejudices that are used to forge a career in double-speak and obscurantism.
Like the biblical Pharisees and modern-day priests, lawyers today read the law that is available to everyone and find ways to favourably interpret it. Hard cases, it is said, make bad law. Lobbyists unwittingly force the hand of the legislature when cases are brought that require a ruling. Can deaf couples intentionally choose deaf embryos? By forcing the issue, dangerous precedents can be set – the judge may be strong-armed into making a black-and-white decision of one with several shades of grey.
To illustrate, take Paedophilia. Ask yourself a few of the following questions and see how biased you might be. Is paedophilia a mental disease? If so, can it or should it be cured? Using whatever criteria you used to come to a conclusion, is homosexuality a mental disease should be cured if possible? So let’s imagine that we agree that it is a pathology of the mind (paedophilia), and that the afflicted person has no choice as to his sexual preference for infants and toddlers. I think that in the case of pederasty, the employment of self-control or complete abstention is the ethical option for these sick people. Those who kidnap and rape the children are morally reprehensible and should be imprisoned. Now, if it is a sickness, a compulsion – an uncontrollable urge – what use to ‘punish’ them? Prison can’t rehabilitate them, unless of course, you think they are being intentionally aberrant in their sexuality.
So let’s take the above issue and translate it into a real legal ethical issue. Now, let’s imagine I were to hook a large sample of men up to some kind of polygraph device that measured sexual attraction, and then paraded a variety of women from a wide spectrum of ages. Now, if a brought out a suitably voluptuous 16 or 15 year old girl (Rolling Stones drummer Bill Wyman dated 13-year old Mandy Smith) – I would wager that they would elicit a response consistent with those above the arbitrary watershed age of 17. Even if the ages were disclosed beforehand, I suggest that there is no conscious intentionality of response, and that these men would be a slave to evolution and their mammalian heritage. Nobody would accuse these men of having a psychopathology – it is a purely natural response. The lawmakers of yesteryear needed to make a guideline age in order to prevent creepy old men sleazing on innocent young women that could be manipulated. So, what is my point? the law is a guideline. Having sexual intercourse with a girl on her 17th birthday completely exculpates the would-be rapist. Ever since Gillick competence and Fraser guidelines were introduced in England, it has made a mockery of the legal that a claim that, no matter what, an ‘underage’ girl cannot consent to sexual intercourse. It is my belief, therefore, that a judge should use his discretion and not be beholden to arbitrary criterion of age or otherwise. Common law is based on the reasonable man principle, which is the objective standard used to ascertain whether the claim being made is reliant on the letter, rather than the spirit of the law.
Bill Wyman of the Rolling Stones dated 13 year-old Mandy Smith....Paedophile?
As documented here before, the revered American judge, Oliver Wendel Holmes was guilty of several appalling miscarriages of justice. In a landmark case, Schenck Vs The Unites States He ‘interpreted’ the law in such a way that he felt that handing out anti-war leaflets in Yiddish to prospective Jewish volunteers in World War I was the equivalent of shouting falsely shouting ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theatre. Finding them guilty of treason and the death penalty, this was a grossly spurious inference made despite the first amendment. Let’s not forget Buck vs Bell, which made the sterilization of the ‘mentally unfit’ compulsory. Holmes stated that ‘3 generations of imbeciles is enough’, after relying on a psychiatrist to determine that a 1-year old baby ‘showed signs of feeble mindedness’.
Oliver Wendell Holmes: Overrated douchebag
We have all heard cases of intruders suing the victim of the robbery. In Ireland and England, the Occupier’s Liability Act states that if a person is in the process of robbing you and say, cuts him/herself of a jutting rusted nail, that the occupier can be liable. If that’s the law, then as Mr. Bumble says in Oliver Twist, ‘the law is an ass’. It is a disgrace that a homeowner/landowner could be sued by someone on the basis of ‘reasonable forseeability’. It is a disgrace, and although there are clearly reasons why certain provisions must be made, I refuse to be conscripted into subscribing to the idea that this is ‘just’. I do not believe that people should ever be ‘made an example of’ in court.
Everyone knows the story of Rosa Parks, but the real catalyst for civil rights and lesser known case is that of Emmet Till. Having been acquitted of murder, the two murderers (scumbag Mississipi racists) gave an interview describing how they perpetrated the grisly slaughter. Double-jeopardy can also be an ass (O.J. Simpson almost pulled off the same trick, offering to write a book ‘I DID IT’ with ‘if’ in tiny font – the slimeball Rupert Murdoch realised that this was below even his ridiculously low standards)
OJ's tasteless book
At the end of the day, there are lots of flaws in the law, but think it is the spirit of the law – the general intention of it – that matters, not the bullshit standard that they simply have to lay down as a guideline.
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