Legal exegesis
[Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
The question I am stuck on when trying to wrap my head around the legal profession is perhaps the critical question of which interpretation of "the law" is the correct interpretation at any specific point in time. Concepts such as "the spirit of the law" confuse me (and probably many others) as these seem particularly senseless and open to subjective interpretation. Can any of us truly know what the lawmakers were thinking when they wrote the laws? I don't claim to, but the concept of "spirit of the law" requires not just an ability to do mind reading but an ability to do it on people in the past.
The concept "letter of the law" is a lot more straight forward. If we are asked to follow the letter of the law then basically everyone is a criminal. This is why I interpret the justice system as a consequence distribution mechanism. This consequence distribution mechanism in my opinion does not necessarily produce justice and is amoral.
The law is amoral and the justice system as we know it is a method of consequence distribution
If I believe the law is amoral then it is not really my concern whether a law is ethical or unethical. The purpose of the law is to make us follow it. The role of the citizen is to follow the laws in an effective manner. Effective manner in this case would mean to know which laws are stupid to break (due to statistical probabilities) and which laws are the grey areas. This requires keeping watch on the law enforcement community, the law enforcement trends, the current moods, the current sentiment of the justice network (this justice network includes police, judges, informants, anyone with a professional or personal stake in or ties to that system).
To a certain degree everyone is involved with these systems on some level. You may not be the cop, or the informant, or the judge, but you may find yourself on the jury. You may not be the criminal, but you may be the tax payer funding the arrests. The ideal (in my opinion) is to avoid being in the position of the criminal, which for most people means following most laws most of the time. Why do I make the claim that the law is amoral?
If we look at history we can see many instances where systemic racism has corrupted entire institutions. The justice institution is not immune to this and in the opinion of many has been corrupted by institutional racism for years. An expression of this could be the Jim Crow laws, or the vagrancy laws. People who suffered through these injustices (posing as justice) can understand exactly why the law is amoral.
What if the law is not only amoral but the justice system is just a tool of consequence distributon? If we see the institution for what it is based on what it does (how it operates) then the main function of the justice system as we know it is not rehabilitation. The main function currently is consequence distribution. If a group of people with political influence decide there must be a law then they can criminalize another group of people indirectly. This has happened in the past with the vagrancy laws, it continued with the drug laws, and it is still happening today via various "tough on crime" laws. The outcome of these amoral laws isn't to make people better, or protect innocent people from dangerous people, but merely to punish people whom other people agree deserve to be punished.
Conclusion and initial thoughts
- Legal exegesis refers to the manner in which laws are interpreted. An average person cannot interpret the laws or even the constitution because this activity is reserved for constitutional scholars, legal scholars, the Supreme Court.
- The law is amoral. Laws are not in any way connected to right and wrong, or consequentialism, or morality. Laws are simply rules enforced by law enforcement agencies, intelligence agencies, etc. Rules exist to be followed whether you personally agree with the morality of them or not and if you do not think the rules are moral there is no known way to petition to stop the immoral laws from being enforced. In other words you either follow the rules or face the consequences with no legal means of expressing your conscience (unless you'd like to be a political prisoner).
- The justice institution exists as a consequence distribution mechanism. It is like a machine which successfully distributes desired consequences against undesired behaviors. The machine isn't anyone's friend and anyone can become a victim of it so the only thing most people who do not want to be given ugly consequences do is seek to avoid the sharp edge of the sword. The means of doing that vary from individual to individual based on circumstances of course.
What does this all mean? It means the choice is yours whether you want to take risks by breaking laws or follow the laws. The point of this post is to highlight the fact that there is a historically backed disconnect between morality and the law. The point of this post is also to highlight that the justice institution does not rehabilitate. Mass incarceration is an expression of exactly what is wrong with the justice institution. Mass incarceration is an unfortunate feature of an institution corrupted by racism (racist memes) and various forms of bias which still exist today. In fact evidence currently suggests that this institution is about to evolve into something even worse as AI is now capable of predicting criminality and IQ from faces.