NationStates Jolt Archive

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

It only works in the movies.

Maybe...If it's Batman

Have you been watching The Boondock Saints (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boondock_Saints)?

Our legal system is defined by those rules and if broken it would fall apart. What happens when they lynch an innocent man because they thought the evidence was good enough? The chance for abuse and mistakes is too high and wouldn't be worth it anyway.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

Although I generally disapprove of vigilantism, I do feel that the lynching of public officials should be considered political speech and protected by the Constitution.

No, the reason we have a justice system is to make sure that

A) A true crime has been committed
B) The person accused is actually the person that committed it
C) That the punishment fits the crime

Vigalanties circumvent all of these conditions and as a result have and can cause terrible pain to innocent people and families. There is no call for them and these people rather then taking the law into their own hands should be working at Judicial review and making sure that the Justice system preforms ITS duties

You can argue that it can be ethically correct. You can't argue that it can be legally correct.

UpwardThrust, in the situation of a person having seen another commit a crime and not being punished for it by the law.

UpwardThrust, in the situation of a person having seen another commit a crime and not being punished for it by the law.

What crimes? and in what capacity should they be the judge of what the punishment should be.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

oh..so you think it would be justice to kill no matter the crime?

Punishment needs to fit the crime. Can't have people running around with their own "version" of justice.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

Absolutely not.

Of course not. I'm not saying that people who steal tires should be shot, but rather people should not be afraid to pull a weapon on them and wait for the police instead of just waiting for them to show up after you call and do nothing.

More citizens arrests.

Of course not. I'm not saying that people who steal tires should be shot, but rather people should not be afraid to pull a weapon on them and wait for the police instead of just waiting for them to show up after you call and do nothing.

More citizens arrests.

Citizen arrests are a COMPLEATLEY different beast from vigilantism

Of course not. I'm not saying that people who steal tires should be shot, but rather people should not be afraid to pull a weapon on them and wait for the police instead of just waiting for them to show up after you call and do nothing.

More citizens arrests.

That's not what you said though..I bolded your words that would seem to suggest killing..
I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

It only works in the movies.
You got that right!!

Damske, yes in those two cases. An admitted child molester or an armed robber in the act.

We talk about mass shootings for instance. There was a big debate about the fact that guns were outlawed on the Virginia Tech campus, unlike a similar situation where the gunmen was stopped by armed students who didn't just call the police and hide.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished.

Actually it recently happened. Two guys murdered a convicted child molester. He was convicted many years ago for having sex with a 14 year old while he was 17.

Well in the case, unless it was a rape, I would say they picked the wrong target.

A 17 year old with a 14 year old isn't exactly the same as a 30-40 year old with a preteen.

Well in the case, unless it was a rape, I would say they picked the wrong target.

A 17 year old with a 14 year old isn't exactly the same as a 30-40 year old with a preteen.

And who's idea of reasonable are we supposed to go on? thats EXACTLY the problem the people that killed this guy were either acting on incorrect information, assumptions, or thought that this guy deserved it

With vigilantism who the fuck decides what is reasonable?

Damske, yes in those two cases. An admitted child molester or an armed robber in the act.

We talk about mass shootings for instance. There was a big debate about the fact that guns were outlawed on the Virginia Tech campus, unlike a similar situation where the gunmen was stopped by armed students who didn't just call the police and hide.

Thats not vigilantism either ... if someone HAD a gun and shot this person that is called SELF DEFENSE which is completely different than vigilantism as well.

Upward, once again I'm talking about reasonable people and not stupid cowboys.

Well if you go looking for the gunmen and don't just hide or call the police, I would consider that to be in the same category.

Upward, once again I'm talking about reasonable people and not stupid cowboys.

Well if you go looking for the gunmen and don't just hide or call the police, I would consider that to be in the same category.

But that is the point.

Vigilantes are reasonable people in the movies.

There was a big debate about the fact that guns were outlawed on the Virginia Tech campus, unlike a similar situation where the gunmen was stopped by armed students who didn't just call the police and hide.
And your answer would be to have millions of guns in schools across the country? :eek:

Damske, yes in those two cases. An admitted child molester or an armed robber in the act.



In the act of what? The robber has not committed murder. Just because he waves a gun around? You can't just go around killing people because you THINK they will murder. Either way..killing a murderer just makes you a murderer yourself. Gonna shoot yourself afterwards?

As for killing a child molester? Don't think so.

See..different people have different ideas of what punishment should fit the crime. That is why we have our justice system.

And your answer would be to have millions of guns in schools across the country? :eek:

It could work. We just have to make sure the teachers have body armor and full automatics....

Well in the case, unless it was a rape, I would say they picked the wrong target.

A 17 year old with a 14 year old isn't exactly the same as a 30-40 year old with a preteen.

And you don't see how this underlines the problem with vigilantism?

Go ahead, mull it over for a second. We'll wait...

Upward, once again I'm talking about reasonable people and not stupid cowboys.


And who is to say they would be reasonable?

Upward, once again I'm talking about reasonable people and not stupid cowboys.

Well if you go looking for the gunmen and don't just hide or call the police, I would consider that to be in the same category.

You would be wrong at least legally ... if there is a clear and present threat to you or to or another it is self defense not vigilantism

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

http://www.class.uh.edu/history/cox/1302album/slides/lynching.jpg

http://facstaff.uww.edu/mohanp/lynched.jpg

http://the4233-01.fa02.fsu.edu/lynching.jpg

some history on it

http://youtube.com/watch?v=PwM_mmA4YDc

It could work. We just have to make sure the teachers have body armor and full automatics....
Oh yea.....a war zone!!!

Getting ready for school:

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/spenc148/iceblog/rocket4.jpg

Markeliopia......

You might get yourself in trouble posting graphic images such as those.

Ouch those pictures are hard to look at. :(

CanuckHeaven you know that blacks were lynched for being criminals, not for being black right? Blacks lynched other blacks for being criminals.

Despite all the fairy tales and a few incidents, it just didn't happen.

Whites were lynched too because they were criminals.

Showing pictures of black men who were lynched does not make them innocent victims or validate any of those stories. You can show people a picture of a serial killer who was shot with no story attached and it will make them appear an innocent murder victim, which is what they do with lynching photo's. They just rely on shock value.

Part III: Lynching

In the 1890s an average of 187 lynchings occurred every year, mostly in the South. That's roughly two a week, year in, year out.

Once or twice a week African Americans in the South would read or hear about someone, perhaps someone they knew, being chased with dogs, brutally beaten, then hung or burned alive.

If we think about this sort of lynching at all, we typically think of it as the actions of a few "rednecks," under cover of darkness; the actions of a violent minority. This is a comforting belief, and it would indeed be a comfort if it were true. But it is not.

These lynchings in the 1890s were not just hangings, at night, by a few, but systematic festivals of torture. Typically crowds of several hundred or a thousand would gather to watch as the citizens each took their turn at the victim--breaking bones, burning the skin, ripping flesh with pincers. The crowd would carry off souveniers. In this link, including audio, Florida native "William Brown" recalls the lynching he was forced to witness, and th momentos the crowd carried away.

"In those days," recalled a black Mississipian, "it was ‘Kill a mule, buy another. Kill a ******, hire another. They had to have a license to kill anything but a ******. We was always in season."

Reasons for lynchings, compiled by the journalist and civil rights activist Ida B. Wells, included: "insubordination; talking disrespectfully; striking a white man, slapping a white boy, writing an insulting letter, a personal debt of fifty cents, a funeral bill of ten dollars, organizing sharecroppers, being too prosperous" But in popular fantasy the excuse given for lynchings was usually rape--the bogey of rape dominates the lynch mentality.

At the 1893 lynching of Henry Smith in Texas, 10,000 people, some brought by special excursion trains, reportedly gathered to watch as Smith, accused of raping a child, was tied to a chair on a mobile platform labeled "Justice" and driven around town.

The murdered girl's father then proceeded to systematically torture him with hot irons, first burning the skin off the soles of his feet and then moving up. When the Father tired, other relatives took over. Smith's tongue was burned out to silence his cries, then his eyes put out. Finally his body was burned. A photographer took pictures, and reportedly a gramophone record of the whole proceeding was made.

At the 1919 lynching of John Hartfield, the accused rapist was chased by dogs, shot a number of times and captured. There was no trial. Newspapers in Vicksburg, Tennessee carried headlines: "3,000 WILL BURN NEGRO. JONH Hartfield WILL BE LYNCHED BY ELLISVILLE MOB AT 5 O'CLOCK THIS AFTERNOON. NEGRO JERKY AND SULLEN AS BURNING HOUR NEARS." The crowd arrives with picnic baskets, and carried off souvenirs of the body.

Again, we might like to believe that lynchings were done by "rednecks" in dark of night. But lynchings were more often either tolerated, or encouraged or actually led by respectable pillars of the community.

Former US Senator William V Sullivan declared in 1908: "I led the mob which lynched Nelse Patten and I am proud of it. I directed every movement of the mob and I did everything I could to see that he was lynched."

"Pitchfork" Ben Tillman, Governor and later Senator from South Carolina, in 1892 declared "Governor as I am, I would lead a mob to lynch the negro who ravishes a white woman." One of Tillman's speeches on the subject can be found here.

Southern leaders often cited the idea of the black male rapist as the justification for lynching, which is puzzling, since as Wells' investigation shows, lynching was much more often for trivial offenses like those listed above. Wells believed that white men developed these theories of the predatory black male because they were unwilling to admit that white women sometimes freely chose black men as their partners. Some historians have argued that lynching sent a dual message: one the one hand, a clear message to African Americans, but also a message to white women that their conduct, their choice of words of friends or sexual partners, was a matter of explosive and dire importance. In other words, some historians suggest that the intent of these lynchings was also to keep women down.


http://www.ferris.edu/jimcrow/links/misclink/1890s/

A load of bullshit designed to confuse people. They were criminals.

People weren't lynched for no reason outside of Hollywood.

CanuckHeaven you know that blacks were lynched for being criminals, not for being black right? Blacks lynched other blacks for being criminals.

Despite all the fairy tales and a few incidents, it just didn't happen.

Whites were lynched too because they were criminals.

Showing pictures of black men who were lynched does not make them innocent victims or validate any of those stories. You can show people a picture of a serial killer who was shot with no story attached and it will make them appear an innocent murder victim, which is what they do with lynching photo's. They just rely on shock value.

Don't be a fool, also I posted a link to a documentry right under the pictures

here it is again http://youtube.com/watch?v=PwM_mmA4YDc

A load of bullshit designed to confuse people. They were criminals.

People weren't lynched for no reason outside of Hollywood.

So white supremacy violence ended right after the civil war? What was the Klu Klux Klan about?

A load of bullshit designed to confuse people. They were criminals.

People weren't lynched for no reason outside of Hollywood.Bullshit, my great great grandfather was lynched for merely being alive. He was no criminal.

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research on lynching and those stories are bullshit. There were lots of abuses and I'm sure innocent people lynched, but people didn't go out and round up blacks or anyone else to be lynched. They were accused criminals and the stories about talking back to a white man or looking at a white woman have no basis outside of fiction. It's complete bullshit. It's possible it happened, but it was one very huge exception.

It's like some of the myths about the American Indians. Every single movie about American Indians it seems has some reference to diseased blankets for instance, which comes from one isolated incident where one case of blankets was infected with smallpox which also infected the people transporting them were distributed. It was not done on purpose, yet that story has been told a million times as if it were fact and happened all the time.

It's racist propaganda.

CanuckHeaven you know that blacks were lynched for being criminals, not for being black right? Blacks lynched other blacks for being criminals.

Despite all the fairy tales and a few incidents, it just didn't happen.

Whites were lynched too because they were criminals.

Showing pictures of black men who were lynched does not make them innocent victims or validate any of those stories. You can show people a picture of a serial killer who was shot with no story attached and it will make them appear an innocent murder victim, which is what they do with lynching photo's. They just rely on shock value.

You have to be absolutely insane to believe that, talk about wishing things away

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research lynching and most of those stories are bullshit.

It's like the myths about the American Indians. Every single movie about American Indians it seems has some reference to diseased blankets for instance, which comes from one isolated incident where one case of blankets was infected with smallpox which also infected the people transporting them were distributed. It was not done on purpose, yet that story has been told a million times as if it were fact.

It's racist propaganda.

In that case there are allot of self hating whites

oh will I'm going to bed

Markeliopia, you can be positive of that. Ignorant self-hating whites are a dime a dozen.

Getting back to the original topic...

When an obvious miscarrage of justice occurs, it may, may be permissible for the community to take justice into their own hands. IMHO.

A load of bullshit designed to confuse people. They were criminals.

People weren't lynched for no reason outside of Hollywood.
I can see why you are a proponent of vigilantism, and your arguments demonstrate good reasons why it should never be legalized. :eek:

http://usera.imagecave.com/Kormanthor/Earth349/225px-Batmanlee.png
Batman Rocks

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research on lynching and those stories are bullshit. There were lots of abuses and I'm sure innocent people lynched, but people didn't go out and round up blacks or anyone else to be lynched. They were accused criminals and the stories about talking back to a white man or looking at a white woman have no basis outside of fiction. It's complete bullshit. It's possible it happened, but it was one very huge exception.

It's like some of the myths about the American Indians. Every single movie about American Indians it seems has some reference to diseased blankets for instance, which comes from one isolated incident where one case of blankets was infected with smallpox which also infected the people transporting them were distributed. It was not done on purpose, yet that story has been told a million times as if it were fact and happened all the time.

It's racist propaganda.

You may want to do your research some more

How about the lynchings of Thomas Moss, Calvin McDowell, and Henry Seward in Memphis?

They were lynched for no more then having a successful grocery store

Yeah you may want to go back and actually learn something this time

Vigilantism is an anathma to civilized society and should not under any conditions be allowed, condoned, or justified.

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists. The story about them being lynched for being successful comes from one militant black woman with a political agenda. I told you, I've done my research. Those stories are complete fiction.

You can trivialize anything. Maybe the charges were false, maybe not, but the point is that they were lynched for being accused rapists, not because they were black.

I can say that Tim McVeigh was executed solely for being a white man who opposed the government. It doesn't make it true.

Wouldnt be a good idea, if some mobs kills a guy who is actually innocent... No, that wouldnt be a good idea.

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists.

Yeah, and the fact that they were black and in the deep south had nothing at all what so ever to do with them getting accused of a crime :rolleyes:

To parrot this line of "it wasn't because they were black it was because they were accused of a crime!" while completely and totally ignoring the fact that a likely reason they were accused of anything was because, wait for it, they were black in a deeply racist society, is the height of stupidity and willful ignorance.

Do you honestly and truly believe that the fact that of all the many black men who were lynched for being "accused" of a crime, none of them were accused soley because they were black, as a convenient excuse to "string up a ******"?

Are you shitting me? Are you THAT ignorant of history?

That's the whole point.

What if he is guilty, is it wrong?

A person clearly guilty gets away with murder on a technicality and then say a relative of the victim kills him, is it truly wrong?

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists. The story about them being lynched for being successful comes from one militant black woman with a political agenda. I told you, I've done my research. Those stories are complete fiction.

You can trivialize anything. Maybe the charges were false, maybe not, but the point is that they were lynched for being accused rapists, not because they were black.

I can say that Tim McVeigh was executed solely for being a white man who opposed the government. It doesn't make it true.

Ahhh so the trick is it is alright if they are accused falsely at the time of the hanging?

Bull shit you are just highlighting another problem with lynching, shooting a lot of holes in your own theory are you not?

Neo, it's possible, but you can't just make an assumption like that. The three men in this case were accused of an actual rape that happened, it's not a fictional rape. Maybe the real three black rapists got off and the wrong men were lynched, I'll say it's possible.

Parroting a militant black woman claims on behalf of her own friends is enough for college sociology classes, not for me.

You are just assuming that they were accused falsely, you don't know for certain, it was over 100 years ago. The whole point is that they were lynched for rape, not for being black.

Yeah, and the fact that they were black and in the deep south had nothing at all what so ever to do with them getting accused of a crime :rolleyes:

To parrot this line of "it wasn't because they were black it was because they were accused of a crime!" while completely and totally ignoring the fact that a likely reason they were accused of anything was because, wait for it, they were black in a deeply racist society, is the height of stupidity and willful ignorance.

Do you honestly and truly believe that the fact that of all the many black men who were lynched for being "accused" of a crime, none of them were accused soley because they were black, as a convenient excuse to "string up a ******"?

Are you shitting me? Are you THAT ignorant of history?
No shit just because the mob came up with some false excuse it does not mean they actually believed in that excuse

How do you know it's false? Because one of their friends, a militant black writer says it was?

So Mumia is innocent too, because he says so? Please.

an actual rape that happened, it's not a fictional rape.

You are just assuming that they were accused falsely, you don't know for certain, it was over 100 years ago.

So let me get this straight. We can't know for certain that people accused of an alleged rape 100 years ago didn't do it, but you know, for certain, that the rape actually occured.

Somehow we can't possibly know whether they were falsly accused or not, but we know, for a fact, that this woman was actually raped by 3 black men.

Riiiight. Pathetic.

Fail.

Neo, it's possible, but you can't just make an assumption like that. The three men in this case were accused of an actual rape that happened, it's not a fictional rape. Maybe the real three black rapists got off and the wrong men were lynched, I'll say it's possible.

Parroting a militant black woman claims on behalf of her own friends is enough for college sociology classes, not for me.
You are not the litmuss of what is right or wrong ...

Either way do not like that example

How about Emmett Till
Who's "Crime" was to act suggestively towards a white woman.

How do you know it's false? Because one of their friends, a militant black writer says it was?

So Mumia is innocent too, because he says so? Please.

How do you know it's true? Because some woman said it was?

So they are guilty, because you say so? Please. :rolleyes:

Pathetic.

Wait a minute, let's make sure I got this right. Did Princy here, advocate of vigilantism, say that the lynchings were acceptable because we can't prove that they didn't do it...

Here I thought that before we punish someone, especially by killing them that the standard not be that we can't prove they didn't do it, but rather we be damn sure we are able to prove that they did. And not merely take the word of some person as adequate proof of anything

Because otherwise princey, I just saw you murder someone 5 minutes ago.

That's the exception I'm talking about. And he sexually harassed a woman and was killed for it. It was racial, but it was the exception, not the rule. He was shot and not lynched by an angry husband BTW. People have been killed for doing far less to another man's wife and it was only a big deal to the rape pimps.

If I went to the Hill District and sexually harassed the wife of a black store owner, I'd expect to be shot, I'll tell you that. And I guarantee that I'd be the one blamed for it.

His father was an undisputed rapist and a murderer who was executed by the way.

That's the exception I'm talking about. And he sexually harassed a woman and was killed for it. It was racial, but it was the exception, not the rule. He was shot and not lynched by and angry husband BTW.

And this somehow is supposed to be in support of vigilantism? You're only showing why it should never be allowed.

And this somehow is supposed to be in support of vigilantism? You're only showing why it should never be allowed.

No kidding he has gone on to show in great length what is wrong with vigilantism lets thank him for showing us why it should never EVER be accepted in a civilized society.

Wait a minute, let's make sure I got this right. Did Princy here, advocate of vigilantism, say that the lynchings were acceptable because we can't prove that they didn't do it...

Here I thought that before we punish someone, especially by killing them that the standard not be that we can't prove they didn't do it, but rather we be damn sure we are able to prove that they did. And not merely take the word of some person as adequate proof of anything

Because otherwise princey, I just saw you murder someone 5 minutes ago.

You see, "innocent until proven guilty" only applies to proper Aryan folks. Dem dirty negroez don't deserve due process, cause every one of them monkey bitches deserves to be lynched. [/HSH Price Eric]

So because 100+ years ago there might possibly have been someone lynched for a crime they didn't commit that vigilantism is wrong and unacceptable?

Ok. And Pirated is only doing what people like him do, make it all about character assassination and racist white caricatures. It's worked well enough.

So because 100+ years ago there might possibly have been someone lynched for a crime they didn't commit that vigilantism is wrong and unacceptable?


Yes.

This has been another edition of brief answers to stupid questions.

So because 100+ years ago there might possibly have been someone lynched for a crime they didn't commit that vigilantism is wrong and unacceptable?

Ok.

The fact that vigilantes generally don't follow such ideas as "innocent until proven guilty" or even basic due process and that it easily opens itself up to abuse on such matters as race (such as what happened in the south at that time), makes it unacceptable.

Zayun, my entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.

And this has just been a distraction from the original topic, but I don't mind setting people straight about myths.

Neo, it's possible, but you can't just make an assumption like that. The three men in this case were accused of an actual rape that happened, it's not a fictional rape. Maybe the real three black rapists got off and the wrong men were lynched, I'll say it's possible.

Parroting a militant black woman claims on behalf of her own friends is enough for college sociology classes, not for me.

You are just assuming that they were accused falsely, you don't know for certain, it was over 100 years ago. The whole point is that they were lynched for rape, not for being black.

So if we can't prove that someone is innocent, then it's ok for them to be killed? You're assuming guilty until proven innocent, and that can lead to some problems...



By the way everyone, this is actually Zayun. My first nation died because I think I didn't log in to the actual game for too long, but I'm back!

By that thinking, any innocent man that's wrongfully convicted in a court of law makes the entire system invalid.

You can't invalidate all vigilantes based on the mistakes of some.

Zayun, my entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.

To which anyone with even the slightest understanding of history and society can respond "there is a very good likelihood they were falsely accused simply because they were black"

And this has just been a distraction from the original topic,

Considering how stupid your original topic was, you should be happy for any distraction from it.

but I don't mind setting people straight about myths.

Yeah, call me when you actually start doing that. Unfortunatly for you, talking about history actually requires the ability to think critically about things.

My entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.

And this has just been a distraction from the original topic, but I don't mind setting people straight about myths.


Setting aside the fact that, in all likely hood, the accusations against them were almost entirely due to their race, I'd like to point out the key word: accused. Innocent until proven guilty. Anything else is a mockery of justice.

Do you really think that humanity has changed so much that vigilantes would suddenly respect the ideas of due process and of proof of guilt, when they didn't a century ago? Are you seriously that naive?

You mean like accepting the fact that they may have actually been rapists and the tale about them being hung for being successful was manufactured to the fit the political agenda of a militant black writer?

That kind of critical thinking?

Zayun, so then why were white people lynched and why did blacks lynch other blacks if racism was the big role in it all?

By that thinking, any innocent man that's wrongfully convicted in a court of law makes the entire system invalid.

You can't invalidate all vigilantes based on the mistakes of some.

:rolleyes:Right, because a court system with due process and rights of the accused is really in any way comparable to one person/mob being judge, jury, and executioner, and the law always uses the death penalty. (Not that I'm entirely convinced it ever should, but that's another topic and isn't entirely relevant.)

You can't invalidate all vigilantes based on the mistakes of some.

We can invalitate all vigilantes because the system they are in does absolutly nothing to prevent the mistakes of some becomming the willing ommissions of many.

Courts do occassionally convict innocent people, this is true. People are human, and humans make mistakes.

However there are systems in place to minimize this to the greatest extent possible. Due process, rules of evidence, criminal procedure, the rights of the accused, all of these things exist for a reason, to prevent that from happening as much as possible.

Vigilantism has no such protections. It has no such provisions. It doesn't try to minimize the weakness of the human condition and our capacity for error. if anything, it exploits it

Zayun, my entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.

And this has just been a distraction from the original topic, but I don't mind setting people straight about myths.

That's empirically denied. In just about every single lynching in the Deep South, rascism played a huge role. And in any case, even if race wasn't a factor (which it certainly was), they still weren't proven guilty. That's the problem, I could say that you raped a child and go to your house and kill you for it. Is that the kind of system you want?

Zayun, so then why were white people lynched and why did blacks lynch other blacks if racism was the big role in it all?

So, would you confidently say blacks and whites were lynched in proportion to their percentage of the population, that is, if 20% of the population was black and 80% was white, ~20% of lynchings would be of blacks and ~80% would be of whites?

You mean like accepting the fact that they may have actually been rapists

You betray yourself. May have been. Not proven, not even, most likely. Merely, MAY have been.

Let's set aside race for a moment and pretend it had nothing to do with this. Men were killed because they may have been rapists. No standard of proof, no rights of the accused, no reasonable doubt, no 5th amendment, no protections against cruel and unusual punishment, no evidentiary hearings, nothing.

They were killed because they may have been rapists, and nothing more.

THAT is what is wrong with vigilantism, and that is why it should never be allowed.

Alright, I'm going to bed, I've always helped expel enough myths and 19th century lynchings really have nothing to do with modern vigilantism.

The topic remains, is a person justified in taking the law into his own hands at times?

I vote YES.

The topic remains, is a person justified in taking the law into his own hands at times?

I vote YES.

Then you are a fool.

Zayun, so then why were white people lynched and why did blacks lynch other blacks if racism was the big role in it all?

I believe I saw some statistics on lynchings. I can't remember exactly, and if anyone can bring up exact statistic from somewhere, that would be great. But from what I remember, blacks were lynched in far greater numbers then any other group. And, of these lynchings, the majority of them were racially motivated. Furthermore, even if some blacks lynched other blacks, or some whites lynched other whites (both of these scenarios less frequent than whites lynching blacks), the lynching is still not justified. Because...

Lynch - to put to death, esp. by hanging, by mob action and without legal authority.

The defintion of lynching is that it is essentially illegal. It allows for someone to kill someone else based on allegations. Should we go lynch George Bush because some people say he was behind 911?

Then you are a fool.

Agreed.

I can't be arsed to actually reply in full, this topic is already too stupid.

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists. The story about them being lynched for being successful comes from one militant black woman with a political agenda. I told you, I've done my research. Those stories are complete fiction.

You can trivialize anything. Maybe the charges were false, maybe not, but the point is that they were lynched for being accused rapists, not because they were black.


Zayun, my entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.

And this has just been a distraction from the original topic, but I don't mind setting people straight about myths.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wK_3I0MiAP8

Oh yea.....a war zone!!!

Getting ready for school:

http://blog.lib.umn.edu/spenc148/iceblog/rocket4.jpg

That guy looks suspiciously like my software engineering lecturer. Is that guy from Australia?

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research on lynching and those stories are bullshit.

Prove it, or you're the one shoveling manure.


Despite all the fairy tales and a few incidents, it just didn't happen.


And the Ku Klux Klan is a myth according to you I bet.

Oh wait. I get it. Denial of mob lynchings for questionable "crimes", advocation of vigilantism, including lynchings, denial of racially motivated mob violence under the guise of "vigilantism".

You just want to start lynching Negroes and aren't happy cause the laws won't let you.


Ok. And Pirated is only doing what people like him do, make it all about character assassination and racist white caricatures. It's worked well enough.

You mean like accepting the fact that they may have actually been rapists and the tale about them being hung for being successful was manufactured to the fit the political agenda of a militant black writer?

Pot, meet Kettle. Except you're looking in a mirror.

That's the whole point.

What if he is guilty, is it wrong?


You may be guilty of being a serial killer. I am not certain. But I'm going to end your life here and now. Just in case. No foul eh? [/sarcarsm]

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished.

So, say a guy sees someone commit a crime, and kills him. Then there's a investigation into the killing. How does the investigator know the vigilante's actions were justified, and that it wasn't just a plain old murder? Does he just take the guy's word for it?

When everybody is killing each other for percieved crimes, how do you tell who's right from who's wrong?

It doesn't work.

A number of mistaken assumptions underly the support for general-case vigilantism.

1) The vigilante is an accurate arbiter of what is right and wrong
2) The vigilante knows how to diffuse any given situation without making it worse
3) The vigilante will always act on rational judgement
4) The vigilante never uses his power for personal gain

Since we can trust none of these to hold, its grounds are necessarily considerably weakened.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

Not generally no.

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward.

Not really, because if they are clearly guilty, then a single piece of evidence or a blood sample won't be all the proof there is.

Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Beating up a bully essentially makes you the bully and then you've completely contradicted your original purpose of your action. By beating up the bully, you are creating a society in which beating up is encouraged.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

Lynching got a bad name because it generally involved mobs of people getting together to kill someone, when they didn't have enough evidence.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood

If a child molester is out and about, then either

1) They aren't child molesters.
or
2) They have already paid in full for their crimes.

You gotta trust the system for the system to work.

Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

So, instead of random mobs a random person?

How is that any better?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=wK_3I0MiAP8

I was just thinking of Monkey Dust when I was reading this thread.

"By the powerws invested in me by News International I pronounce you guilty of paedophilia! Under the basic principles of English law, every man is innocent until speculated guilty!"

Apparently HSH Prince Eric thinks that the Paedofinder General has a good point to make...

I'm also reminded of the time a group of vigilantes vandalised a woman's house because they found out she was a paeditrician.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?
If said citizens wouldn't continuously confuse stuff like "pediatrician" with "pedophile"...

Short and simple: Hell no.

It does not belong in a society which lives under the rule of law.

Alright, I'm going to bed, I've always helped expel enough myths and 19th century lynchings really have nothing to do with modern vigilantism.
Too bad you've done nothing of the sort in this thread.


The topic remains, is a person justified in taking the law into his own hands at times?

I vote YES.
You should read your own posts. You've presented a compelling argument against vigelantism yourself, you see...


http://usera.imagecave.com/Kormanthor/Earth349/225px-Batmanlee.png
Batman Rocks

Spammers rock even more! :D

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u275/Gravlen/NSG/spamlight114lx.jpg

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

No. Except in some very rare circumstances.

I'd like to point out the thread isn't off topic, if vigilaniasm didn't work 100 years ago why would it work now

I'd like to point out the thread isn't off topic, if vigilaniasm didn't work 100 years ago why would it work nowBecause now vigilantes have access to high-tech crime labs?

I believe in Citizen's Arrests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_arrest), but I'm not cool with this whole Vigilante Justice thing..

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

There have been too many cases of people trying to kill child molesters but picking the wrong person and murdering innocent people.

It looks nice on paper, but the reason that guilty people can go free sometimes is because the justice system has a necessarily high threshold for determining guilt. In the law, you have to prove that someone is guilty. If people start killing those that they just think are guilty, well, they'd best be prepared to stake their lives on it, because they really are just murderers.

You should know it's a bad idea when you can't generalize the rule.

A vigilante thinks, "If I see a person murder someone and go unpunished, I should kill the murderer."

The problem is, he can't will that everyone should behave this way: if he thinks, "Anyone who sees someone commit murder and go unpunished should kill the murderer," then he's going to will that anyone who witnesses his vigilante "justice" should have it out for him.

Clearly that's not what he means. He wants to make an exception for himself. He wants to punish others, but he himself does not want to be subject to the law--the law of the land, or even his own law.

I don't trust anyone who wants a blanket legal exception for himself. I certainly don't trust him with judgments about the life and death of another.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

Hell yes.

Thats not vigilantism either ... if someone HAD a gun and shot this person that is called SELF DEFENSE which is completely different than vigilantism as well.It's only self-defense if they were threatening your life.

Shooting someone for stealing your tires is murder. Shooting someone before he can shoot you is self-defense.

Upward, once again I'm talking about reasonable people and not stupid cowboys.Then you're contradicting yourself.

Reasonable people respect the justice system. Stupid cowboys become vigilantes.

Analogy: a reasonable President respects the Constitution. A stupid cowboy thinks he can do whatever he wants. ;)

You would be wrong at least legally ... if there is a clear and present threat to you or to or another it is self defense not vigilantismThis was in response to "going looking for the gunmen."

Sorry, not self-defense. That's murder.

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research on lynching and those stories are bullshit.Perhaps you'd like to post your sources, then?

It's racist propaganda.That's what I'm expecting, yes, but I'll wait to see what you have.

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists.HSH Prince Eric is a rapist!!!!

There, now you're an accused rapist.

I can "accuse" a person of anything I want. Think of Salem, then substitute "rapist" for "witch," and you catch my meaning.

Meanwhile, we're talking about a Southern mindset that had no category for consensual sex between black men and white women: that was rape.

EDIT: Incidentally, the same society had no category for the "rape" of a black woman by a white man. Couldn't happen.

A person clearly guilty gets away with murder on a technicality and then say a relative of the victim kills him, is it truly wrong?Yes.

Others may say it is "morally" right but legally wrong, but I'm going to say it is both morally and legally wrong.

The illegality of it should be obvious: we have legal protections for a reason, and trivializing them as "technicalities" belies their importance to our legal system. If people are allowed to take matters into their own hands every time the Fourth Amendment reins in police behavior, then we degrade our own constitutional principles.

But it is also morally wrong because you are making an exception for yourself. When you murder the murderer, do you believe your victim's family has the right to hunt you down?

Do you?

If you do, then you are admitting the legal chaos your rule would impose.
If you do not, then you are making an exception for yourself, and that cannot be upheld on moral grounds.

Zayun, my entire point was that they weren't lynched for being black, they were lynched for being accused rapists.Distal cause, proximate cause.

Your assertions are becoming repetitive and therefore boring. Come up with something new, or source up with something legitimate explaining how Southern lynchings weren't really racist. (Good luck with that one.)

By that thinking, any innocent man that's wrongfully convicted in a court of law makes the entire system invalid.No, it doesn't.

Every wrong conviction is a reason for concern: a system with fewer wrongful convictions is clearly better, on at least this ground, than a system with more wrongful convictions.

Of course, there are other factors to take into consideration: if we didn't convict anyone at all, there would be no wrongful convictions, but obviously this wouldn't be a very good legal system.

Societies strike a balance between dispensing just punishment to those who deserve it and protecting the innocent by enforcing procedural rules that attempt to make the system as fair as possible.

While there are many key features of modern legal systems, I think that there are two fundamental principles that capture our basic sense of justice: 1) the accused is presumed innocent until proven guilty; 2) the procedures and standards of evidence are a matter of public knowledge, so that the accused may make an informed and appropriate defense.

Vigilantism violates both of these principles. It has no "procedure" other than the personal judgment of the vigilante.

You can't invalidate all vigilantes based on the mistakes of some.I don't. I invalidate all vigilantes based on the manifest principles of vigilantism: 1) an accusation is as good as a conviction; and 2) the accused is accorded no defense.

Vigilantism supplants the rule of law with the rule of the mob. At the same time as the fact that I oppose vigilantism, I support the individuals right to immediate self-defense.

At the same time as the fact that I oppose vigilantism, I support the individuals right to immediate self-defense.Naturally. Still, self-defense needs to be defined narrowly--and, for that matter, the definition needs to be clarified in the popular culture.

There are still far too many redneck wing-nuts who believe the old, "If you break into my house, I can shoot you" line.

...With vigilantism who the fuck decides what is reasonable?

I do, anything else would be illogical :D

What I'll never understand is how the proponents of vigilantism think their vision of justice would actually play out. For one things, if you are rejecting the fundamental principles of our system of justice, denying procedural rights, violating the precepts of natural justice...then what, are you just going to retain the definitions of 'crime' as they are? Scrap all the safeguards of our system, and just keep the definitions? I doubt it. I simply do not believe that a person supporting vigilantism has the capacity to understand the need for certain classes of crimes, outside of the most sensational, rape, murder and so on.

And frankly, someone lacking that kind of capacity doesn't have the capacity to be judge, jury and executioner. I'd say that's my biggest beef. It seems that the most unintelligent among us wish to be granted the power to literally make these life and death decisions. Is it any wonder sane people say no?

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood.

You know, it's people like you that make me oppose the sex offender registry.

Furthermore, vigilantism is retarded. I would not trust a random guy off the street to do knee surgery on me, I would not trust a random guy off the street to fix my toilet, and I sure as hell would not trust a random guy off the street with my life.

Naturally. Still, self-defense needs to be defined narrowly--and, for that matter, the definition needs to be clarified in the popular culture.

There are still far too many redneck wing-nuts who believe the old, "If you break into my house, I can shoot you" line.

Quite, quite. I like using the word "immediate" when discussing self-defense, as it implies a temporal and physical nearness, and its responsive nature.

Naturally. Still, self-defense needs to be defined narrowly--and, for that matter, the definition needs to be clarified in the popular culture.

There are still far too many redneck wing-nuts who believe the old, "If you break into my house, I can shoot you" line.

Of course you can be shot if you break into someone's home. How would the home-owner know if you have a weapon?

Of course you can be shot if you break into someone's home. How would the home-owner know if you have a weapon?It's not as simple as rhetorical questions make it seem.

Foremost, it doesn't matter if he does have a weapon. It's still murder unless he actually threatened you with it.

You can brandish a weapon at an intruder, threaten to shoot, and so on, but you cannot simply shoot him unless your life is in imminent danger.

It's not as simple as rhetorical questions make it seem.

Foremost, it doesn't matter if he does have a weapon. It's still murder unless he actually threatened you with it.

You can brandish a weapon at an intruder, threaten to shoot, and so on, but you cannot simply shoot him unless your life is in imminent danger.

Well I don't think you should just shoot him, but if you did it'd be easy to say he ran at you in the dark, so you fired away.

It wouldn't be murder, it be defending yourself, your family, and your property from an intruder.

But still, I agree you shouldn't just shoot. Maybe just beat the shit out of the intruder and tie him up for the police to haul away. That'd work.

Well I don't think you should just shoot him, but if you did it'd be easy to say he ran at you in the dark, so you fired away.And you think our police are so incompetent that they cannot tell with some confidence whether he was, in fact, rushing at you?

You don't think they'll make an attempt to find witnesses who may be able to tell them that the lights were on?

It wouldn't be murder, it be defending yourself, your family, and your property from an intruder.Whether or not it would be murder would be for the justice system to decide.

But still, I agree you shouldn't just shoot. Maybe just beat the shit out of the intruder and tie him up for the police to haul away. That'd work.In the latter case, at least you won't go down for murder. Just battery. I suppose you can live with that.

Well I don't think you should just shoot him, but if you did it'd be easy to say he ran at you in the dark, so you fired away.

It wouldn't be murder, it be defending yourself, your family, and your property from an intruder.

But still, I agree you shouldn't just shoot. Maybe just beat the shit out of the intruder and tie him up for the police to haul away. That'd work.

Or, use the minimum force necessary to defend yourself and others. For example, once you've restrained the intruder, you don't continue to "beat the shit" out of him.

And you think our police are so incompetent that they cannot tell with some confidence whether he was, in fact, rushing at you?

You don't think they'll make an attempt to find witnesses who may be able to tell them that the lights were on?

Whether or not it would be murder would be for the justice system to decide.

In the latter case, at least you won't go down for murder. Just battery. I suppose you can live with that.

pfft. Someone breaks into my home they are at least getting few punches and kicks. I really doubt the police care that much about a few bruises on a damn thief/potential rapist/murderer.

Or, use the minimum force necessary to defend yourself and others. For example, once you've restrained the intruder, you don't continue to "beat the shit" out of him.

No, no, no. Beat the shit of the dude and then tie him up. Or, just beat the shit of them and let them go. They would have learned their lesson.

Or, use the minimum force necessary to defend yourself and others.That's half the principle. There is also the principle of proportionality.

If I threaten to break your nose, and there is no way you can defend yourself besides killing me, the "minimum force necessary" principle does not protect you. You cannot justify the use of lethal force to protect yourself from less-than-lethal harm.

pfft. Someone breaks into my home they are at least getting few punches and kicks. I really doubt the police care that much about a few bruises on a damn thief/potential rapist/murderer.Maybe not, though departments with a real "law-and-order" mentality are known to prosecute such offenses.

If not the police, you'll still have civil charges to deal with.

No, no, no. Beat the shit of the dude and then tie him up.You can only hit him enough to restrain him. If you're still kicking him while he's on the floor, you're in the wrong. Or, just beat the shit of them and let them go. They would have learned their lesson.I'm sure they'd be pleased with that. You get to "teach them a lesson," and they get to sue you for battery.

Probably get more money that way than burgling the place!!

By that thinking, any innocent man that's wrongfully convicted in a court of law makes the entire system invalid.

You can't invalidate all vigilantes based on the mistakes of some.

But you see, every wrongful conviction that comes to light demonstrates a problem with the system. The system can then be improved upon. Just take a look at all of the people that are being set free from prison by the Innocence Project. That's an improvement in the system.

While the system may be imperfect, it can always be improved upon because it is a system. Individual vigilantes who take the law into their own hands do not constitute a system. The problems inherent in vigilante justice are well known, and the only way to address them is to institute a system by which they can be regulated and held accountable. And to do that would make vigilantes just another police force. And since we already have a police force that would make vigilantes either redundant or obsolete.

That's half the principle. There is also the principle of proportionality.

If I threaten to break your nose, and there is no way you can defend yourself besides killing me, the "minimum force necessary" principle does not protect you. You cannot justify the use of lethal force to protect yourself from less-than-lethal harm.

Very true, but I can't think of many situations where the only way you can defend yourself from non-lethal force would be with lethal force. When said situations do come up, though, then you certainly would not be justified in taking life.

I suppose it could have one of two effects.

Either a lot less crime because, let's face it, I'd think twice about stealing a grape from a bin in the grocery store if I knew that at any second a pissed off produce clerk having a bad day could shoot me and not suffer any consequences since I was after all stealing. And that's just a grape.

OR. Complete and utter chaos would reign and people would be getting killed for no reason other than saying, "Yo momma's so fat... (fill it in)". Leaving the idea of what constitutes as a crime in the hands of the average person is a horribly frightening concept indeed.

Very true, but I can't think of many situations where the only way you can defend yourself from non-lethal force would be with lethal force.I'm much bigger and stronger than you. If I've determined to break your nose and you have a gun, it's probably the only way you're going to stop me. But if you do and I die, it's murder.

Still, you are certainly correct that in reality such situations occur on the margins. I only raised the point to emphasize that the standard is two-fold: minimum force necessary, but proportional to the threatened harm.

For clarity's sake, it's not always about murder. If I'm trying to spit on you, you might be justified in pushing me away, but not in hitting me with a baseball bat.

Maybe not, though departments with a real "law-and-order" mentality are known to prosecute such offenses.

If not the police, you'll still have civil charges to deal with.

You can only hit him enough to restrain him. If you're still kicking him while he's on the floor, you're in the wrong. I'm sure they'd be pleased with that. You get to "teach them a lesson," and they get to sue you for battery.

Probably get more money that way than burgling the place!!

How the fuck would they get money from breaking and entering? They would have broken into my damn house. I would defend my property and either turn them over to police, or tell them they could leave. I don't see how the hell any jury/judge would rule in favor of them.

And you don't kick a guy when he's down. I'd tell the guy to the the fuck out of my house. If he didn't I'd push him (assuming he didn't have a weapon). And possibly throw a punch or two to get him out of the house. How would he get money from that?

I'm much bigger and stronger than you. If I've determined to break your nose and you have a gun, it's probably the only way you're going to stop me. But if you do and I die, it's murder.

Still, you are certainly correct that in reality such situations occur on the margins. I only raised the point to emphasize that the standard is two-fold: minimum force necessary, but proportional to the threatened harm.

Shoot the dude in the leg. Geeze.

How the fuck would they get money from breaking and entering? They would have broken into my damn house. I would defend my property and either turn them over to police, or tell them they could leave. I don't see how the hell any jury/judge would rule in favor of them.I can, and they do. Because it's the law.

A person's offending against you does not give you free rein to do whatever you want to them. If it's legitimate self-defense, fine. But as soon as it becomes gratuitous, you have committed criminal acts for which the victim may also collect in civil court.

And you don't kick a guy when he's down. I'd tell the guy to the the fuck out of my house. If he didn't I'd push him (assuming he didn't have a weapon). And possibly throw a punch or two to get him out of the house. How would he get money from that?He probably wouldn't, but this is a very different scenario from the "beat the shit out of him" story with which we began. No?

Shoot the dude in the leg. Geeze.

In the U.S of A we shoot to kill.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

It wouldn't pan out in a good way.

I can, and they do. Because it's the law.

A person's offending against you does not give you free rein to do whatever you want to them. If it's legitimate self-defense, fine. But as soon as it becomes gratuitous, you have committed criminal acts for which the victim may also collect in civil court.

He probably wouldn't, but this is a very different scenario from the "beat the shit out of him" story with which we began. No?

Bah.

If a home owner gets sued, or charged because they beat up a burglar, then something is seriously WRONG with the law. Its because of retarded things like that I don't respect the law.

It common fucking sense that if you break into someone's home you run the risk of being shot or being beating the fuck up.

It SHOULD be common sense that home owners have the right to beat up burglars, for the simple fact they broke into the home. Burglars violate the sactity, privacy, and safety of the home. They deserve a good thumping, at least.

You know, it's people like you that make me oppose the sex offender registry.


It is also the wonderful reason why Megan's law is self-defeating. Barring even the fact that the sex offender registry has people on it for ANY sex offence. Including things like indecent exposure (having sex with your partner in secluded part of a park late at night, or even a car, does count) or sex between underaged consenting teenagers (cases where two 15 year olds have had sex and both have ended up on the sex offender registry). On a practical note, it's also counter-productive. If sex offenders believe they are going to get lynched as soon as they get out, they will just disappear.

Vigilantism is bad, because people aren't rational, they don't always make informed judgments (especially not mobs) and their authority is not legitimate, making a mockery of any form of justice system and rule of law.

If a home owner gets sued, or charged because they beat up a burglar, then something is seriously WRONG with the law. Its because of retarded things like that I don't respect the law.Why? Because homeowners should be the judge of what punishment a burglar deserves? Because you should be?

We have courts precisely because human beings are rarely very good judges in their own cases.

It common fucking sense that if you break into someone's home you run the risk of being shot or being beating the fuck up.It may be that I "run that risk," because a person whose things are being stolen is likely to feel provoked to violence. But feeling provoked because my things were stolen does not justify violence any more than feeling provoked because I was teased.

It SHOULD be common sense that home owners have the right to beat up burglars, for the simple fact they broke into the home.Okay, then. What's the standard? How will we know when it goes too far? Broken bones? Scars?

The problem in the law is that we need standards. The current standard is, "force enough to defend oneself, proportionate to the threat." What would yours be?

Burglars violate the sactity, privacy, and safety of the home. They deserve a good thumping, at least.Courts decide what criminals "deserve."

For that matter, even if you catch him in the act you still only have a suspected burglar on your hands, from the perspective of the law. Are you absolutely certain that every person who breaks into your home deserves exactly the same treatment? What if it were to turn out that this burglar was coerced into the crime by someone else, threatening his life or loved ones?

That may be a rare circumstance, but it makes the point clear: we only know what punishment is "deserved" after all the evidence is evaluated by a neutral court of law.

If you do not, then you are making an exception for yourself, and that cannot be upheld on moral grounds.

That doesn't seem to encompass the morality of this situation at all.

In retaliating for the murder of a relative, you need not legitimate all retaliations, just ones in response to unprovoked killing.

If I kill someone for killing my friend, that's at least on its face an act morally distinct from the original killing of my friend... and that means that the moral legitimacy of retaliation for my friend's murder is also quite distinct from the moral legitimacy of retaliating to my retaliation.

Of course, it does stress the importance of actually knowing what is going on... who is to say that my friend's killing was not, in fact, a retaliation in itself? As a practical matter, individuals taking the law into their own hands is unlikely to be a very effective way to ensure justice, both because of our limited knowledge and our proneness to prejudice... but its wrongness is hardly so straightforward, and in particularly exceptional circumstances, where the evidence is absolutely compelling, a good argument could be made for it.

That doesn't seem to encompass the morality of this situation at all.

In retaliating for the murder of a relative, you need not legitimate all retaliations, just ones in response to unprovoked killing.But whether or not it is "provoked" is exactly the kind of legal question answered by a court of law, which is exactly the sort of procedure the vigilante bypasses.

A drunk driver kills my daughter. I kill him. Was it provoked or unprovoked?

If I kill someone for killing my friend, that's at least on its face an act morally distinct from the original killing of my friend... and that means that the moral legitimacy of retaliation for my friend's murder is also quite distinct from the moral legitimacy of retaliating to my retaliation.Application of the general will cannot be so specific. Kantians have struggled with this for centuries, and the answer is always the same: I cannot simply "read my situation in" to the imperative. I must always make my claim general, not "if someone else were me, in exactly my situation, they would be justified, but in no other circumstance."

If I retaliate outside the judicial system, THAT is my imperative: that people should reach their own judgments about justice and act them out.

Again, what happens when I kill your friend because I thought he deserved death for something he did, and you disagree? As soon as you disagree, you have to regard his death as unjustified: it would only be justified if he deserved it, and we disagree about that. You now have, on the rule proposed, a justification for killing me.

That's madness.

Of course, it does stress the importance of actually knowing what is going on... who is to say that my friend's killing was not, in fact, a retaliation in itself? As a practical matter,It's not just a practical matter.

What is "actually knowing what is going on"? When you ask, "who is to say?" is there any other answer than "a court of law"?

in particularly exceptional circumstances, where the evidence is absolutely compelling, a good argument could be made for it.If the evidence is so compelling, an actual court conviction should be easy. If a conviction does not happen, it is not a power of individuals to decide that the evidence is "compelling."

The ONLY exception would be in cases in which the legal system itself is systematically corrupt, and to make this case you would need evidence outside of the fact that it's not ruling the way you'd like it to.

But whether or not it is "provoked" is exactly the kind of legal question answered by a court of law, which is exactly the sort of procedure the vigilante bypasses.

But that is a separate matter... there are principles dealing with what constitutes provocation and what does not, and then there is application to the actual specific case at hand.

I can accept the former--indeed, I can even accept the court's interpretation of that principle--without accepting the latter. I could instead reject their understanding of the facts of the case.

Application of the general will cannot be so specific. Kantians have struggled with this for centuries, and the answer is always the same: I cannot simply "read my situation in" to the imperative. I must always make my claim general, not "if someone else were me, in exactly my situation, they would be justified, but in no other circumstance."

Clearly I cannot reverse-engineer my justification: I cannot start from what I want to do and make my claim so specific so as to only allow that.

But I see no basis for declaring from the start that some distinctions are inadmissible... not if we accept other distinctions as legitimate, anyway. (Can I ever kill without legitimizing all killing? On what basis can we accept a distinction between self-defense and aggression if a distinction between retaliation and unprovoked killing is rejected out of hand?)

If I retaliate outside the judicial system, THAT is my imperative: that people should reach their own judgments about justice and act them out.

Isn't that what we always do? How can we avoid making our own judgments and acting on them? Even acceptance of the court's judgment constitutes that, if we do so on the basis of moral reasoning such as you have presented.

Surely we must be able to make a moral distinction between well-reasoned, well-supported positions and poorly-reasoned, poorly-supported ones?

Again, what happens when I kill your friend because I thought he deserved death for something he did, and you disagree? As soon as you disagree, you have to regard his death as unjustified: it would only be justified if he deserved it, and we disagree about that. You now have, on the rule proposed, a justification for killing me.

No, if I am honest I will acknowledge that I am a biased observer, and in any case my perspective (like everyone's) is limited: I cannot know that I am right in this case in a way sufficiently supported to justify killing you.

Unless, of course, your justification is particularly absurd--say, "He glanced at me." In that case, I can be quite sure that I am right and you are wrong, and that any judicial or legislative decision that says otherwise is illegitimate and unjustified.

Then I might be justified in acting... at least if you might well do it again, and no one else is about to stop you. And that's not madness.

What is "actually knowing what is going on"? When you ask, "who is to say?" is there any other answer than "a court of law"?

As I have said, I accept this line of reasoning, but only to a point.

The fact that we must take caution in exercising judgment, especially when others disagree, does not mean that we can never have good reason to be sure that we are right.

The ONLY exception would be in cases in which the legal system itself is systematically corrupt,

Yes, that is, I think, the clearest case. But your arguments would not even allow an exception then.

If I cannot kill in response to killing without accepting that I too can legitimately be killed, I cannot even do so when I know that the murder for which I am retaliating will not be judged justly by a systematically corrupt legal system.

If I cannot exercise judgment as to what is just outside of the judicial system without accepting that anyone can do so on any basis, I cannot even take the first step of recognizing that the judicial system is corrupt, let alone actually act on my own judgments.

and to make this case you would need evidence outside of the fact that it's not ruling the way you'd like it to.

Of course you would.

But that is a separate matter... there are principles dealing with what constitutes provocation and what does not, and then there is application to the actual specific case at hand.It doesn't matter what principles of judgment you adopt, so long as your practical maxim is that you should act on your own application of them.

Or rather, look at it this way: in a criminal accusation, justice demands that the accused has the opportunity to defend himself before a neutral court of law, and that this determination should be the only basis upon which to judge his guilt. Vigilantism denies this principle.

I can accept the former--indeed, I can even accept the court's interpretation of that principle--without accepting the latter. I could instead reject their understanding of the facts of the case.Exactly. And that's why it doesn't matter what principles of judgment you employ, because in the end the principle of vigilantism is that the vigilante is the only qualified judge.

Clearly I cannot reverse-engineer my justification: I cannot start from what I want to do and make my claim so specific so as to only allow that.But that's what you're doing. Your argument implies that you always begin with the notion, "but in this case he's really guilty."

But I see no basis for declaring from the start that some distinctions are inadmissible... not if we accept other distinctions as legitimate, anyway. (Can I ever kill without legitimizing all killing? On what basis can we accept a distinction between self-defense and aggression if a distinction between retaliation and unprovoked killing is rejected out of hand?)A slippery slope? This is beneath you.

In any event, what I'm saying is that courts make these distinctions: a court distinguishes between self-defense and aggression, and a court distinguishes between retaliation and unprovoked killing, if such a distinction is morally relevant at all--which it is not. We do not have the right to "retaliate" when we are injured: we have the right to take the case to court.

Note that I don't think individuals are entitled to make judgments about self-defense and aggression, either: if the justice system calls it self-defense, it's self-defense; likewise aggression.

Self-defense is a tough one because it's so widely misunderstood. Many people believe the legal explanation for the exception is one of "necessity"--people cannot be expected to allow themselves to come to harm (or even die) when there is something they can do about it, thus they are driven to violence "by necessity." But this interpretation has been rejected by courts and by legal theorists on numerous occasions, most notably those in which shipwrecks have led to situations in which some survivors must kill others in order to survive: these survivors have later been convicted of murder.

Rather, the favored explanation for the self-defense exception is one closer to "instinct" or "reaction": a person reacts to an attacker's action in a way that we would expect most people to react instinctively to prevent imminent bodily harm.

Thus, there is no parallel between the self-defender and the vigilante when it comes to "judgment." The self-defender does not judge, he reacts.

Isn't that what we always do? How can we avoid making our own judgments and acting on them?By subjecting ourselves to the collective judgment. Now you're equivocating on the definition of "ownership" (of a judgment).

Even acceptance of the court's judgment constitutes that, if we do so on the basis of moral reasoning such as you have presented.No, it doesn't, because I am perfectly capable of acting on the court's judgment even when mine differs: I may think the court reached the wrong verdict, but that doesn't mean I have to take matters into my own hands.

Surely we must be able to make a moral distinction between well-reasoned, well-supported positions and poorly-reasoned, poorly-supported ones?Yes. That doesn't mean we get to take justice into our own hands when the court makes a poorly-reasoned decision.

No, if I am honest I will acknowledge that I am a biased observer, and in any case my perspective (like everyone's) is limited: I cannot know that I am right in this case in a way sufficiently supported to justify killing you.

Unless, of course, your justification is particularly absurd--say, "He glanced at me." In that case, I can be quite sure that I am right and you are wrong, and that any judicial or legislative decision that says otherwise is illegitimate and unjustified.Really? What if I make a case for insanity? Or what if, having been convicted, the judgment of the court is that someone so "absurd" in his thinking deserves mercy? Are they simply "wrong"--or are you so sure that I "faked" insanity you're willing to kill me for it? Who are you to make that judgment?

Battered women often refer to the most absurd proximate cause for their final break. Does that mean justice does wrongly when it allows them the excuse or shows mercy?

Then I might be justified in acting... at least if you might well do it again, and no one else is about to stop you. And that's not madness.But it is. Your maxim is, "If a person kills for an 'absurd' reason and escapes punishment, I should kill him." It violates every principle of due process and proportionality.

The fact that we must take caution in exercising judgment, especially when others disagree, does not mean that we can never have good reason to be sure that we are right.When it comes to the judgment that another human being should die? I think it does.

To kill someone outside the bounds of the law is to take them as a means to an end rather than an end in themselves. It is revenge, not retribution.

Revenge is never morally justifiable. Retribution is, but retribution is a strictly legal function: guilt and desert must both be subject to public judgment.

Yes, that is, I think, the clearest case. But your arguments would not even allow an exception then.You know, I think you're right. I retract my judgment that one can exact retributive justice when the justice system is itself corrupt. Instead, while it is morally wrong to exact retribution as an individual, it becomes morally appropriate to declare war on the system using whatever means necessary.

If I cannot kill in response to killing without accepting that I too can legitimately be killed, I cannot even do so when I know that the murder for which I am retaliating will not be judged justly by a systematically corrupt legal system.That's right. Your obligation is to oppose the system itself, to replace it.

If I cannot exercise judgment as to what is just outside of the judicial system without accepting that anyone can do so on any basis, I cannot even take the first step of recognizing that the judicial system is corrupt, let alone actually act on my own judgments.You're equivocating again. Really, this post has been laden with fallacies.

But anyway... the judgment about the system is about holding it to its own standards--that is, to procedural standards. Are defendants getting equal treatment? Are some (of a particular race, perhaps) singled out? Is there evidence that the rules are applied in similar ways across similar cases, or is there evidence of bias?

I can judge all these things, and if I'm right about a judgment of corruption I will likely find others who will join the opposition. On the other hand, if the system is fundamentally fair--the procedure is being applied, in general, according to the rules--then I cannot take matters into my own hands when things don't go the way I want.

It is a very different judgment to say "The system is routinely unfair in the following kinds of cases or towards the following kinds of defendants," as opposed to "the system is wrong in this particular case." It may be that the latter is true (I am capable of making that judgment), but that does not give me a legitimate reason for action. If the system itself is unfair, however, that gives me a cause for action. I may oppose its unjust convictions, though I may not seek revenge in its unjust acquittals. More importantly, I must attempt to bring down the system, or reform it where reform is possible.

Or rather, look at it this way: in a criminal accusation, justice demands that the accused has the opportunity to defend himself before a neutral court of law, and that this determination should be the only basis upon which to judge his guilt. Vigilantism denies this principle.

That principle, yes--or at least it calls for exceptions.

But it need not deny all principles of judgment.

Exactly. And that's why it doesn't matter what principles of judgment you employ, because in the end the principle of vigilantism is that the vigilante is the only qualified judge.

To the contrary, the vigilante need not hold this at all. She need only accept that in cases with particularly compelling evidence, there is enough basis to act even extra-judicially.

As far as other cases, or even other aspects of the case, the vigilante can still submit to the system of laws--even if she disagrees with them. She can say, "I think this decision is wrong, but I don't have enough support for genuine surety, so I'll abide by the decision."

But that's what you're doing. Your argument implies that you always begin with the notion, "but in this case he's really guilty."

No, my argument begins with the notion that I have some kind of particularly good reason to believe that he is really guilty.

If we can act with rational judgment, on evidence, at all, then we must have some way of moving from "I believe he is guilty" to "I can really be legitimately sure that he is guilty"... and at least as a logical matter I see no reason why such a judgment is exclusive to court. (It may, of course, be the case that almost always the only place we can find evidence compelling enough is a court. But that is a different argument.)

A slippery slope?

No, it isn't.

Obviously some distinctions are legitimate and others aren't. I'm not denying the possibility of making that distinction. What I'm denying is the possibility of making that distinction beforehand: before subjecting the rule to universalization.

That would only be a slippery slope if you had provided another criterion for making the distinction, but you didn't.

In any event, what I'm saying is that courts make these distinctions: a court distinguishes between self-defense and aggression, and a court distinguishes between retaliation and unprovoked killing, if such a distinction is morally relevant at all

The distinction between my judgment and the court's is not an absolute one, however. It depends on two aspects: first, that the court's judgment is meaningfully fair and complete, and second, that my perspective and information, by contrast, is biased and incomplete.

Both of these elements, in particularly exceptional cases, need not hold. The legal system can be corrupt, and not meaningfully fair at all. My information could be thorough, my interpretation compelling. As an absolute rule, as opposed to a practical principle that applies to the vast majority of cases (and virtually all in a non-corrupt legal system), the distinction is not tenable.

Rather, the favored explanation for the self-defense exception is one closer to "instinct" or "reaction": a person reacts to an attacker's action in a way that we would expect most people to react instinctively to prevent imminent bodily harm.

So this is only a matter of a mitigation instead of a justification? To the extent that I am capable of acting with judgment in response to an imminent threat to my life, am I obligated to not resist?

By subjecting ourselves to the collective judgment. Now you're equivocating on the definition of "ownership" (of a judgment).

No, I'm not. You're missing the point.

I submit myself to the collective judgment on my judgment that doing so is morally required. I disagree with the court's decision on my judgment that it was wrong. Both of them are my judgments.

I go with the first and not the second only because I recognize that the first judgment is better-supported than the second: justice will be better pursued if I go with it than if I go with the other. I judge that the judicial system, in general, will be a better arbiter than me--it will make better judgments.

If you deny my capability of "measuring" my judgments, making distinctions between them on the basis of their support--distinctions that can then be carried into the universalization of the rule--then you deny my capability to do so in accepting the collective judgment in the first place. If you accept that I can place certain judgments over others on grounds of their support, then you must also accept that I can generate a rule far more limited than you have tolerated: something to the effect of "People may act on their own judgments of justice when the support for that judgment is particularly strong." Not otherwise.

No, it doesn't, because I am perfectly capable of acting on the court's judgment even when mine differs: I may think the court reached the wrong verdict, but that doesn't mean I have to take matters into my own hands.

Right, but you make this distinction because you value the process: you judge that deciding on cases judicially, according to the rule of law, is better than a system of vigilante justice, even if the system sometimes gets it wrong.

That's still a judgment, and one that is necessarily individual. You cannot rationally submit to the judgment of the court system without first individually judging that doing so is morally legitimate.

Yes. That doesn't mean we get to take justice into our own hands when the court makes a poorly-reasoned decision.

Not in and of itself, no. But it means that I need not accept full-out vigilantism to engage in it at all. That line of reasoning is a slippery slope.

Really? What if I make a case for insanity? Or what if, having been convicted, the judgment of the court is that someone so "absurd" in his thinking deserves mercy? Are they simply "wrong"--or are you so sure that I "faked" insanity you're willing to kill me for it? Who are you to make that judgment?

The original question was whether or not my friend deserved death, wasn't it? Whatever your mental state, if your justification is completely absurd I can make a legitimate judgment as to who is right on that question: I am, you are not.

Now, of course, as far as regards possible mitigating factors I cannot have this surety--not from the simple fact of the absurdity of your justification, anyway. I must have other compelling evidence. I am obligated not to act without it.

Battered women often refer to the most absurd proximate cause for their final break. Does that mean justice does wrongly when it allows them the excuse or shows mercy?

Of course not, but it does not give them this excuse on the basis of that proximate cause: it gives them an excuse on the basis of their overall situation.

When it comes to the judgment that another human being should die? I think it does.

Always? In war? In a society where the legal system has collapsed?

I'm not trying to distract the argument here with extreme examples. I'm trying to understand the principles at work. If you think killing extrajudicially is ever acceptable, when, and why? For that matter, if you think killing judicially is ever acceptable, what's so special about the courts that we can come up with such a "good reason" with some regularity in their case, but absolutely never as a potential vigilante?

You know, I think you're right. I retract my judgment that one can exact retributive justice when the justice system is itself corrupt. Instead, while it is morally wrong to exact retribution as an individual, it becomes morally appropriate to declare war on the system using whatever means necessary.

And that's not going to mean the deaths of innocent people? How can you possibly accept the legitimacy of violent revolution--I suppose that fits under "whatever means necessary"?--if you reject vigilante justice? Wouldn't such an action bring about a whole lot more extra-judicial killing?

If you can make the judgment that damage caused by the corruption of the system is so great that you can kill the people you know will be killed in a revolution, why can't you make the comparatively minor judgment (on compelling evidence) that a given individual is too much of a danger to society to permit him or her to remain unpunished, even if it means acting extra-judicially?

You're equivocating again.

No, I don't think I am. I'm pointing out the same slippery slope I did above. The only way your argument works is if we arbitrarily deny the possibility of making distinctions between individual judgments: if we can make an equivalence between any extra-judicial killing and any other extra-judicial killing.

Otherwise, as I have insisted from the start, I can universalize a very different, far more limited rule, one that is far more acceptable.

But anyway... the judgment about the system is about holding it to its own standards--that is, to procedural standards. Are defendants getting equal treatment? Are some (of a particular race, perhaps) singled out? Is there evidence that the rules are applied in similar ways across similar cases, or is there evidence of bias?

I suppose you're right about basic matters of formal equality. But that's not the only avenue for judicial corruption. What about the justness of the principles themselves? What if they are formally just, if in application they treat everyone equally, but in and of themselves they are unjust?

Can we make judgments about that?

Sometimes vigilantism is necessary in places were the police are corrupt and/or inefficient. Which is why there are groups like the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria.

That principle, yes--or at least it calls for exceptions.That principle [that justice can only be determined by a neutral court of law] is the only one relevant here.

But it need not deny all principles of judgment.No, it only throws out the first principle upon which society functions, viz. that individuals shall not take justice into their own hands.

To the contrary, the vigilante need not hold this at all. She need only accept that in cases with particularly compelling evidence, there is enough basis to act even extra-judicially.How can she possibly be consistent about this?

Legally, the vigilante is looking for an exception to homicide: when evidence is "particularly compelling," she may kill act extra-judicially. How is a court to judge her case? Assume that the victim's criminal case had been tried and dismissed, or the victim was acquitted: is a court of law now to accept that the vigilante's evidence was "particularly compelling" when a court has already found that it was not compelling enough for a conviction? That's ludicrous.

But perhaps the "particularly compelling" evidence was thrown out on the basis of a "technicality." This only compounds the court's problem: to accept the evidence in the current case, it violates the Fourth Amendment by proxy. In effect, police need not worry about evidence-gathering rules, because as long as they make a "compelling" case to the media, some vigilante will come along to take care of things... probably more cheaply and with more finality than the police could do on their own.

No matter who does it, it circumvents defendants rights. Defendants have rights because decent human beings recognize that dispensing punishment for criminal offenses is a serious business: the dispensers of justice must hold to procedures, rules to protect the innocent. It may be that sometimes a guilty defendant goes free, but we judge this a better world than one in which the innocent live in fear.

We set up systems of justice to administer these proceedings because the proceedings are important. If every time the police interrogate someone illegally or perform a search that will be thrown out, a vigilante can just pick up where they left off, we have no system at all.

As far as other cases, or even other aspects of the case, the vigilante can still submit to the system of laws--even if she disagrees with them. She can say, "I think this decision is wrong, but I don't have enough support for genuine surety, so I'll abide by the decision."But that's not the basis for our agreement with the decision. The whole point is to abide by the decision whether you agree with it or not, and no matter how sure you are that you are right.

No, my argument begins with the notion that I have some kind of particularly good reason to believe that he is really guilty.Enough with the abstractions. Give me a hypothetical. When do you think a revenge-killing is justified?

If we can act with rational judgment, on evidence, at all, then we must have some way of moving from "I believe he is guilty" to "I can really be legitimately sure that he is guilty"Sure. That doesn't mean we are justified in exacting punishment.

There are lots of criminal cases in which we can be "really legitimately sure" that the defendant is guilty: we have all the evidence, it's clear what happened, but the evidence was obtained illegally.

When evidence is obtained illegally, that seriously hurts a criminal prosecution--it may not succeed at all. But our absolute certainty that such a defendant is guilty still does not justify extra-judicial action--this would be to circumvent the standards of evidence and investigation that define a free society. It would erode the governmental interest in avoiding illegal searches: if they perform an illegal search and cannot get a court conviction, all they need to do is publicize the information and wait for a vigilante to take care of things. Indeed, they may prefer things this way.

... and at least as a logical matter I see no reason why such a judgment is exclusive to court.It's not, as a "logical" matter. But it is, as an ethical matter or as a matter of justice.

No, it isn't.For the record, it was the very definition of a slippery slope. You suggested that if I refuse one distinction, I have to refuse every other: but this is clearly a logical fallacy.

What I'm denying is the possibility of making that distinction beforehand: before subjecting the rule to universalization.But I'm not. I'm rejecting the distinction because the distinction itself fails generalizability as a maxim for action. I cannot will that everyone should take justice into their own hands when they are "really sure" their intended victim has committed a crime. I cannot will that everyone should retaliate when they have been provoked.

The distinction between my judgment and the court's is not an absolute one, however. It depends on two aspects: first, that the court's judgment is meaningfully fair and complete, and second, that my perspective and information, by contrast, is biased and incomplete.Not at all.

Courts often make judgments that are unfair or incomplete, and many individuals are (much of the time) capable of reasonably unbiased and complete judgments.

This is not the reason I accept a court's judgment over a private individuals. I will follow a court's unfair judgment before an individual's fair one, which seems to be the point you keep missing or misinterpreting.

Both of these elements, in particularly exceptional cases, need not hold.Again, enough with the abstraction. Suggest a hypothetical: the onus here is on you, since you are the one insisting that some such case exists. So, get to it already.

The legal system can be corrupt, and not meaningfully fair at all.When it is systematically corrupt, that calls for revolution or reform. But never for meting out punishment on the basis of your own judgment.

My information could be thorough, my interpretation compelling.Maybe. But being right is not what gives a person the authority to dispense punishment. It never was.

So this is only a matter of a mitigation instead of a justification?No, it's considered a justification, though the development of legal theory in the second half of the twentieth century has tended to muddy the distinction. So long as your act is an appropriate reaction to events outside of your immediate control, you are justified in doing as you have done.

To the extent that I am capable of acting with judgment in response to an imminent threat to my life, am I obligated to not resist?You are obligated to obey the law to the best of your ability. You may not break the law simply to avoid an unpleasant outcome. You may break the law as an immediate reaction to events outside of your immediate control.

It is self-defense if you kill someone in a struggle. It is decidedly NOT self-defense if you shoot someone from behind or decide to kill and eat him in the middle of an avalanche... even if eating him is the only way you will survive.

No, I'm not. You're missing the point.Yes, you are. And you're falling back into the compatiblist version of free will that I thought you'd shaken off months ago.

If I can't distinguish between acting on my own judgment and submitting to the judgment of another because in either case "I decide," then I am conflating judgment and will. And I'm doing so because I assume, on some level, "I always do as I want" or "I always obey my own judgment." But that's compatiblism.

If you deny my capability of "measuring" my judgments, making distinctions between them on the basis of their support--distinctions that can then be carried into the universalization of the rule--then you deny my capability to do so in accepting the collective judgment in the first place.I do not deny your capacity for judgment. Rather I distinguish two different kinds of judgments: the judging of fairness in systems, and the judging of moral desert. While you may be very good at both of them, your basis for acting on them is different.

As a citizen of a given community, you have the right and duty to critique your system of government, as well as the right and duty to do something about it when the system is fundamentally unjust.

Likewise as a citizen of a given community, however, whatever judgments you may make (and however well you make them), you have no authority to enforce your judgments on anyone else except through legitimate public means.

Thus, if the criminal justice system fails to convict or does not punish a person as much as you'd like, if you are a party to the conflict you may sue--and, indeed, you are more likely to win in civil than in criminal court. But even if this does not go your way--even if the civil court is blatantly and terribly wrong, you cannot universalize the rule that people should take justice into their own hands. It is precisely this circumstance that public administration was intended to abolish.

Right, but you make this distinction because you value the process: you judge that deciding on cases judicially, according to the rule of law, is better than a system of vigilante justice, even if the system sometimes gets it wrong.No, and now you're slipping into compatiblism and consequentialism at the same time. I don't judge that deciding cases judicially is necessarily "better" than vigilante justice--pressed to it, I might even imagine examples in which this is decidedly not the case.

Instead, I acknowledge a moral duty to obey the law which is in effect a duty to abide by the public judgment as distinguished from my own.

But it means that I need not accept full-out vigilantism to engage in it at all. That line of reasoning is a slippery slope.Good thing I never made that argument, then.

My argument has not been that to engage in vigilantism you must accept that individuals may always exact "justice" on their own judgment. Rather my argument has been that individuals may never exact "justice" on their own judgment because the act in itself is illegitimate.

The original question was whether or not my friend deserved death, wasn't it?Umm... no? When has a murder case ever revolved around whether the victim "deserved" death (except, presumably, in a society that accepts vigilantism)? The legal question is always what does the defendant deserve, never what did the victim deserve.

Whatever your mental state, if your justification is completely absurd I can make a legitimate judgment as to who is right on that question: I am, you are not.But that's the wrong question. The question is not, "did your friend deserve to die," the question is, "do I, with my murderous unreason, deserve to die?"

Now, of course, as far as regards possible mitigating factors I cannot have this surety--not from the simple fact of the absurdity of your justification, anyway. I must have other compelling evidence. I am obligated not to act without it.But who are you to decide what is mitigating? Or how mitigating it is?

Traditionally, jurors do not even weigh in on the punishment: jurors are expected to establish the facts of the case, and nothing more. Judges decide punishment based on what the law demands.

Even assuming that the judgment of your one-person jury is as far "beyond a reasonable doubt" as that reached by twelve people, are you now also going to claim a competency that is traditionally denied to the jury--a legitimate judgment of what punishment is appropriate, according to legal standards? Honestly?

Of course not, but it does not give them this excuse on the basis of that proximate cause: it gives them an excuse on the basis of their overall situation.But that's the point: you want to judge based on proximate cause ("he glanced at me") without looking at anything else.

In war?In war, I don't decide that this or that enemy soldier should die: I treat them as enemies on a battlefield, not as individuals who "deserve" to die.

In a society where the legal system has collapsed?In such a society, the right to self-defense is perhaps somewhat expanded, but I can claim no legitimate authority to decide what another person "deserves." I may defend myself from them, I may even retaliate (this is the sense in which self-defense is expanded--to included deterrent, counter-offensive), but I may not judge. I may not punish. I have no such moral authority.

For that matter, if you think killing judicially is ever acceptable, what's so special about the courts that we can come up with such a "good reason" with some regularity in their case, but absolutely never as a potential vigilante?The courts represent the public judgment. It is only in relation to the obligations taken up as a citizen that a person may be judged.

The legitimacy conferred on the courts puts them in a special position to confront the criminal as a willing subject rather than an object to be destroyed, which is how the vigilante perceives him. Justice treats a person as a subject by assigning to her the punishment she deserves according to rules and laws that the criminal was duty-bound to uphold. A vigilante merely retaliates, revenges; a vigilante cannot "judge," in the legitimate legal sense of the word.

And that's not going to mean the deaths of innocent people?Probably, but I'm not a consequentialist. How can you possibly accept the legitimacy of violent revolution--I suppose that fits under "whatever means necessary"?--if you reject vigilante justice?Vigilante "justice" is a rejection of a legitimate public order. Violent revolution may be an attempt to overthrow an illegitimate order in favor of genuine democracy and the rule of law.

Wouldn't such an action bring about a whole lot more extra-judicial killing?If the justice system is manifestly corrupt, it puts the public in a state of war with classes within itself. Every one of its decisions is extra-legal, because no true law exists within such a system.

If you can make the judgment that damage caused by the corruption of the system is so great that you can kill the people you know will be killed in a revolution, why can't you make the comparatively minor judgment (on compelling evidence) that a given individual is too much of a danger to society to permit him or her to remain unpunished, even if it means acting extra-judicially?Because I make neither of those judgments. I'm not interested in the consequences, I'm interested in justice.

I suppose you're right about basic matters of formal equality. But that's not the only avenue for judicial corruption. What about the justness of the principles themselves? What if they are formally just, if in application they treat everyone equally, but in and of themselves they are unjust?According to whom? The judgment of the principles themselves is ultimately procedural, based on their legitimation through democracy: if you live in a democracy, you must accept the principles established through democratic rule. If you don't, then you have another reason for revolution... but again, it's procedural.

How can she possibly be consistent about this?

Legally, the vigilante is looking for an exception to homicide: when evidence is "particularly compelling," she may kill act extra-judicially. How is a court to judge her case? Assume that the victim's criminal case had been tried and dismissed, or the victim was acquitted: is a court of law now to accept that the vigilante's evidence was "particularly compelling" when a court has already found that it was not compelling enough for a conviction? That's ludicrous.

Indeed it is. I have not maintained that, as a legal matter, vigilante justice should be accepted. I cannot conceive of a plausible legal standard that would allow for such a thing: the system depends on accepting the legitimacy of its own judgments. Rather, I have maintained that morally, a person can sometimes be justified in engaging in it.

But perhaps the "particularly compelling" evidence was thrown out on the basis of a "technicality." This only compounds the court's problem: to accept the evidence in the current case, it violates the Fourth Amendment by proxy. In effect, police need not worry about evidence-gathering rules, because as long as they make a "compelling" case to the media, some vigilante will come along to take care of things... probably more cheaply and with more finality than the police could do on their own.

Quite so. And for precisely this reason, vigilante justice is not justified in response to an acquittal on the basis of the exclusionary rule. Such a decision is not a failure of the court system needing to be rectified--much to the contrary, it is a vital element in the protection of civil liberties, and to circumvent it through vigilante justice is wholly unjust and illegitimate.

It is a case of the courts acting rightly. And thus it is not in the realm of legitimate vigilante justice.

But that's not the basis for our agreement with the decision. The whole point is to abide by the decision whether you agree with it or not, and no matter how sure you are that you are right.

This, I think, is our real disagreement.

Let us take, for the sake of argument, the "perfect" hypothetical case: for some reason I am absolutely certain that my judgment is right, and I have the objective evidence to back up my subjective certainty. In acquiring the support for my judgment I have violated no one's rights; nothing I have done so far has been illegal or immoral.

My maxim is: "When I am right about my judgment and the court is wrong, I can act extra-judicially." Because I am absolutely certain and have the evidence behind me, I have fully overcome the gap between subjective judgment ("When I think I am right") and objective truth ("When I am right").

Can I universalize that maxim? I don't see why not.

Of course, I'm not saying that we will actually find a case so cut and dry in the real world. But if it's legitimate in this realistically impossible case, then we have at least a line of reasoning by which other, less marginal, cases can be considered.

Enough with the abstractions. Give me a hypothetical. When do you think a revenge-killing is justified?

A person kills another in public view, with plenty of witnesses, and boasts loudly about it afterwards. When queried, he maintains he did it for transparently racist reasons, and indicates a intent to do it again. Brought to court, he is acquitted despite failing to mount a credible defense; the acquittal is, by all appearances, suffused with racial bias.

All the legal means have failed. There is every reason to expect that he will do it again; no one else is about to stop him.

For the record, it was the very definition of a slippery slope. You suggested that if I refuse one distinction, I have to refuse every other: but this is clearly a logical fallacy.

To the contrary, what I did, very explicitly, was ask for a basis for making the distinction between the distinctions... because, as I said, I saw none. I pointed out legitimate distinctions only to show that such a basis was necessary, not to show that it was impossible.

But I'm not. I'm rejecting the distinction because the distinction itself fails generalizability as a maxim for action. I cannot will that everyone should take justice into their own hands when they are "really sure" their intended victim has committed a crime.

It depends on the grounds for surety. Clearly I cannot simply will that anyone who is "really sure" take justice into their own hands--people are "really sure" of many things that are routinely wrong. Rather, my maxim would be something to the effect of "When a well-reasoned, well-supported judgment of an individual conflicts with the decision of a corrupt legal system, vigilante justice is permissible."

Thinking about it, I might put more conditions on there, among other things one about the target being a continued danger, but that's the essence as it pertains to this argument.

I will follow a court's unfair judgment before an individual's fair one, which seems to be the point you keep missing or misinterpreting.

Why would you?

Maybe. But being right is not what gives a person the authority to dispense punishment.

What is?

No, it's considered a justification, though the development of legal theory in the second half of the twentieth century has tended to muddy the distinction. So long as your act is an appropriate reaction to events outside of your immediate control, you are justified in doing as you have done.

My action cannot be justified just because it was instinctual, though. That's a mitigating factor--"He couldn't control himself"--not a justificatory one.

If I can't distinguish between acting on my own judgment and submitting to the judgment of another because in either case "I decide," then I am conflating judgment and will. And I'm doing so because I assume, on some level, "I always do as I want" or "I always obey my own judgment." But that's compatiblism.

I don't think this is the issue at all.

There are two different judgments here. First, the judgment of political obedience: I judge that I should abide by the decisions of the court system. Second, the judgment in a particular case: I judge that one particular decision of the court system is wrong.

When I abide by the decision of the court with regard to that case, I am not, of course, judging that its decision was in fact right--I still believe it is wrong. But I am acting on my first judgment, that the procedures of the court system are valuable enough that I should abide by their conclusions even when I think them wrong.

I don't think you're denying that I'm acting on that first judgment, but perhaps I'm just not seeing how you could.

But even if this does not go your way--even if the civil court is blatantly and terribly wrong, you cannot universalize the rule that people should take justice into their own hands.

No, and as I'm sure you've noticed as a general principle I have denied any such right, from my very first post in this thread on.

The difference between us is that you make it into an absolute rule, and I am willing to admit of exceptions on the margins.

No, and now you're slipping into compatiblism and consequentialism at the same time.

While I accept that the particular understanding of free will I argued for last spring is highly flawed, based on its neglect of the difference between reasons and causes, I do not have a problem with consequentialism as such.

Instead, I acknowledge a moral duty to obey the law

If you deny that this is a matter of getting better results, what, instead, is your justification for it?

My argument has not been that to engage in vigilantism you must accept that individuals may always exact "justice" on their own judgment. Rather my argument has been that individuals may never exact "justice" on their own judgment because the act in itself is illegitimate.

Yes, but its illegitimacy, you have said, is founded in the fact that we cannot will as a universal rule the maxim that people should take justice into their own hands.

I agree. But the standards I have proposed have never been so broad.

But that's the wrong question. The question is not, "did your friend deserve to die," the question is, "do I, with my murderous unreason, deserve to die?"

Right, but you also argued that whether or not my friend's death was justified was itself a point of ambiguity... and I pointed out that I could sometimes have compelling evidence that my judgment is right.

But who are you to decide what is mitigating? Or how mitigating it is?

As I have said, I need not take the vigilante approach in every respect.

As regards this particular question, I can (and probably should) consult the law.

Even assuming that the judgment of your one-person jury is as far "beyond a reasonable doubt" as that reached by twelve people, are you now also going to claim a competency that is traditionally denied to the jury--a legitimate judgment of what punishment is appropriate, according to legal standards? Honestly?

If I make a good faith judgment based on the law, why not? If you're troubled by the concentration of power, I could ask a competent person to do it for me.

I may defend myself from them, I may even retaliate (this is the sense in which self-defense is expanded--to included deterrent, counter-offensive)

If I can retaliate in a lawless society, why can't I retaliate in a society where the legal system is corrupt and will not help me?

Justice treats a person as a subject by assigning to her the punishment she deserves according to rules and laws that the criminal was duty-bound to uphold.

Is not a person duty-bound to uphold obligations to others even independently of the rule of law? Do we not have obligations to one another even in the absence of a legitimate legal authority?

Because I make neither of those judgments. I'm not interested in the consequences, I'm interested in justice.

If you're interested in rules that can be universalized, then you have to be interested in consequences. How can you possibly consider the universalization of the rule "it is permissible to participate in a violent revolution" without considering its consequences for others?

A load of bullshit designed to confuse people. They were criminals.

People weren't lynched for no reason outside of Hollywood.

Mmmmmmmmmm

Here in the UK, not known as lynching country, one of our delightful 'red top' newspapers decided to print photographs of paedophiles.

Several men were dragged out of their homes and beaten by vigilante gangs.

Now you might think that's OK, except that the gangs got it wrong. They attacked men who looked like the ones in the pictures. One poor guy's only resemblance to the photo in the paper was that he was wearing a neck brace.

I've seen people driven out of their homes near me for being 'paedophiles' , what actually happens is that someone has an argument and develops a grudge, so they go tell the local thugs that the guy they have a grudge with is a paedophile.

Vigilante gangs are not reasoned, educated people. They don't think "hold on a minute, that's the tenth paedo around here in as many weeks. why are there so many?" they are idiots.

So idiotic in fact a paediatrician had his house vandalised because the thugs didn't know the difference between paediatrician and paedophile.

Why on earth would you consider getting rid of a justice system, that despite it's faults, does work quite well for a gang of thugs?

Indeed it is. I have not maintained that, as a legal matter, vigilante justice should be accepted.So, to be clear, you think that it is morally permissible (if not obligatory) for a person to exact revenge when the justice system fails to demand retribution, but at the same time you would admit that it such a vigilante should be put to death, if that is the penalty for her crime?

I cannot conceive of a plausible legal standard that would allow for such a thing: the system depends on accepting the legitimacy of its own judgments. Rather, I have maintained that morally, a person can sometimes be justified in engaging in it.And I remain unconvinced that there is any such thing as justified murder.

But I think our real disagreement is the dispute between deontological and consequentialist ethics--an interesting discussion, to be sure, but certainly one for which I do not have sufficient time in the near future. We may temporarily need to agree to disagree... at least, perhaps, until next semester when I am not teaching three classes!

Quite so. And for precisely this reason, vigilante justice is not justified in response to an acquittal on the basis of the exclusionary rule. Such a decision is not a failure of the court system needing to be rectified--much to the contrary, it is a vital element in the protection of civil liberties, and to circumvent it through vigilante justice is wholly unjust and illegitimate.And so we continue to whittle away at the circumstances in which it might be defended...

Let us take, for the sake of argument, the "perfect" hypothetical case: for some reason I am absolutely certain that my judgment is right, and I have the objective evidence to back up my subjective certainty. In acquiring the support for my judgment I have violated no one's rights; nothing I have done so far has been illegal or immoral.

My maxim is: "When I am right about my judgment and the court is wrong, I can act extra-judicially." Because I am absolutely certain and have the evidence behind me, I have fully overcome the gap between subjective judgment ("When I think I am right") and objective truth ("When I am right").

Can I universalize that maxim? I don't see why not.

Of course, I'm not saying that we will actually find a case so cut and dry in the real world. But if it's legitimate in this realistically impossible case, then we have at least a line of reasoning by which other, less marginal, cases can be considered.No.

Suppose in a parallel sense that I am absolutely certain my religion is correct--for the sake of argument, assume that I have all necessary objective evidence to prove my case; I have met God personally, and He has instructed me that all those who do not swear to the tenets of this particular faith will surely go to Hell.

On a consequentialist argument, I would clearly be justified in oppressing people by whatever means to get them to swear to my faith, knowing that whatever harm I cause them in this life will be nothing compared to what they face in Hell.

I would argue, however, that even with certain knowledge I may not impose my will on others. That is not where my duties lie.

That is our real disagreement.

A person kills another in public view, with plenty of witnesses, and boasts loudly about it afterwards. When queried, he maintains he did it for transparently racist reasons, and indicates a intent to do it again. Brought to court, he is acquitted despite failing to mount a credible defense; the acquittal is, by all appearances, suffused with racial bias.

All the legal means have failed. There is every reason to expect that he will do it again; no one else is about to stop him.So?

The consequences of allowing him to survive may be dire, but this does not mean it would be allowable to murder him. You may work to change the system, but you may not commit murder.

To the contrary, what I did, very explicitly, was ask for a basis for making the distinction between the distinctions... because, as I said, I saw none.But you missed the point: legal distinctions must be identified by legal entities. Not by individuals who decide they are judge, jury, and executioner.

It depends on the grounds for surety. Clearly I cannot simply will that anyone who is "really sure" take justice into their own hands--people are "really sure" of many things that are routinely wrong. Rather, my maxim would be something to the effect of "When a well-reasoned, well-supported judgment of an individual conflicts with the decision of a corrupt legal system, vigilante justice is permissible."But you continue to beg the question. What gives an individual the authority to determine guilt and innocence in the first place? What gives an individual the authority to determine desert?

You continue to miss the political question: an execution is an act of state. The state has political authority to judge guilt and desert, and to execute sentence. What gives an individual the authority to do any of this? What gives one individual the power to decide, "I know what you deserve?"

Thinking about it, I might put more conditions on there, among other things one about the target being a continued danger, but that's the essence as it pertains to this argument.No, you continue to muddy the issue because you do not clearly distinguish your causes for executing sentence. You cannot justify your action by suggesting that it "kinda/sorta" satisfies retributive justice, "kinda/sorta" satisfies deterrence or incapacitation. Take them one at a time:

1) Do you justify vigilante "justice" as a method by which to exact retribution? If so, how?
2) Do you justify vigilante "justice" as a method by which to prevent future wrongs?

I think the latter is your better argument, because I think it is ultimately impossible to discuss retribution without a political theory, which is to say a legal theory. Of course, the latter is also a consequentialist argument which I reject as such, but as I said I don't think we (I) have time for that debate just now. It's a rather big debate. People tend not to change sides very easily, or very often.

Why would you?Because that is where my duty lies, and I have no power to determine the guilt or desert of another.

What is [the basis for court authority]?Ultimately, "the people"... according to some interpretation of what that means. But I think we more or less agree about political legitimacy (unless I'm grossly mistaken); we just disagree about the relationship between political legitimacy and the morality of retributive justice. I think the capacity to determine guilt and desert is something born out of the existence of a political state; you either don't care about guilt and desert (but rather consequences), or you think they can be defined extra-politically, or both.

My action cannot be justified just because it was instinctual, though. That's a mitigating factor--"He couldn't control himself"--not a justificatory one.Like I said, modern legal theory has blurred the distinction, and not in favor of justifications. "Justified" killing has all but disappeared from the legal landscape: that's still what we call self-defense, but the actual theory behind that exception tends to belie the nomenclature. Nevertheless, self-defense is considered something somewhat different than an "excuse" in that the reaction is not only "instinctual" or "immediate"--it is also the sort of instinct or reaction that we expect reasonable people to have. Thus, one might be "excused" for killing in one's sleep or due to a traumatic flashback, but one is "justified" in reacting to an immediate threat with lethal force.

There are two different judgments here. First, the judgment of political obedience: I judge that I should abide by the decisions of the court system. Second, the judgment in a particular case: I judge that one particular decision of the court system is wrong.This is a mostly pointless aside. It's something a bit more than semantics, but not much more.

I simply want to make it clear that it is reasonable for a person to abide by judgments other than his own. To be clear, I do not think he is merely deciding in every case "well, my judgment that obeying the courts still outweighs my judgment in this case, so I'll go with my first judgment," so that he "always does as he judges best," which is at best a useless tautology.

Rather, I say that I recognize a duty to abide by the court's decision, and thenceforth I no longer have judgments to compare: I do not compare my judgment about obeying courts to my judgment in a particular case, because I am not looking for which of two options provides the better outcome. Rather, I have a duty to the courts regardless of my personal judgment; regardless even of whether I think the courts are doing a good job, so long as they operate according to the principles that bound my duty to them in the first place.

When I abide by the decision of the court with regard to that case, I am not, of course, judging that its decision was in fact right--I still believe it is wrong. But I am acting on my first judgment, that the procedures of the court system are valuable enough that I should abide by their conclusions even when I think them wrong.See, it's when you use words like "valuable" enough that I know you're a consequentialist at heart. And "value" is a judgment you can keep making over and over again: it's not a duty. And that's the difference I want to emphasize: the difference between obedience to duty and acting according to my judgment of what is best.

I don't think you're denying that I'm acting on that first judgment, but perhaps I'm just not seeing how you could.Perhaps it's a subtle distinction, but I think it is important to identify the difference between judgments that are put on a scale with one another, and duties which bind regardless of what is on the other end of the scale.

The difference between us is that you make it into an absolute rule, and I am willing to admit of exceptions on the margins.Rather than "rule," say "duty."

While I accept that the particular understanding of free will I argued for last spring is highly flawed, based on its neglect of the difference between reasons and causes, I do not have a problem with consequentialism as such.Well, then I don't know why you need to bother with will. Consequentialism doesn't, and I see no particular reason for it to do so. A duty-bound ethic certainly needs a will, but consequentialism does not. That's one of the reasons it's become so popular.

If you deny that this is a matter of getting better results, what, instead, is your justification for it?I think you already know, you're just refusing to think politically.

Yes, but its illegitimacy, you have said, is founded in the fact that we cannot will as a universal rule the maxim that people should take justice into their own hands.

I agree. But the standards I have proposed have never been so broad.It doesn't matter what the standards are. You've never explained why an individual has the authority to dispense justice in the first place.

Right, but you also argued that whether or not my friend's death was justified was itself a point of ambiguity... and I pointed out that I could sometimes have compelling evidence that my judgment is right.In the state of nature, there is "killing" and then there's "killing." "Murder" and "justified killing" and "excusable killing" are juridical terms that only take meaning within a society having rules regarding the authoritative dispensation of justice. Your judgment that your friend's killing was unjustified is, however right, from the perspective of justice just one private opinion to contrast with others--the opinion of the killer no doubt among them. It doesn't matter how "right" you are, what matters is that living under laws means abiding by rules for the authoritative dispensation of justice. Even if you're "right" it doesn't explain how you derive the authority to do anything about it.

If I make a good faith judgment based on the law, why not?Because you're contradicting yourself. In what possible sense can your judgment be in "good faith" based on the law when what you intend to do is in any case illegal? As you admitted at the very beginning of this post, there is no legal justification for vigilantism. So how can you claim to represent the law "in good faith" even as you intend to cross it?

If you're troubled by the concentration of power, I could ask a competent person to do it for me.I'm not troubled by the concentration of power, I'm utterly dismayed at the absolute lack of authority.

If I can retaliate in a lawless society, why can't I retaliate in a society where the legal system is corrupt and will not help me?In the former instance, there is a vacuum of justice; in the latter case there is an injustice that must be rectified--and, in fact, the unjust system is the real enemy.

This is the current state of gang-dominated urban centers: the government does not (adequately) protect citizens from violence, so they take it upon themselves to retaliate against their opponents... a distraction from the real enemy, a racist society that must be changed. The Black Panthers got it, for a while... but not for long enough.

Is not a person duty-bound to uphold obligations to others even independently of the rule of law? Do we not have obligations to one another even in the absence of a legitimate legal authority?Certainly. But is one of my obligations to others to punish them when I deem they have done wrong? Is it a personal obligation to mete out retribution according to what I believe they deserve?

No. The power to dispense justice is something created, politically.

If you're interested in rules that can be universalized, then you have to be interested in consequences. How can you possibly consider the universalization of the rule "it is permissible to participate in a violent revolution" without considering its consequences for others?"It is permissible to participate in a violent revolution" is not a universalizable maxim, because it is not a maxim at all.

A maxim always has the form, "To pursue _____ end, it is permissible to _____." Ends and means. You cannot state a maxim without both.

Why can't I punish someone myself if the courts won't do it? Why can't I beat the hell out of a rapist, or kill someone who killed someone I care for? If the courts don't adequately punish criminals, it is up to individuals to deliver punishment.

If you say because the law forbids, then I ask, so what? There is nothing inherently good about the law. The law is a guide. If it doesn't coincide with your beliefs, it is null.

Why can't I punish someone myself if the courts won't do it? Why can't I beat the hell out of a rapist, or kill someone who killed someone I care for? If the courts don't adequately punish criminals, it is up to individuals to deliver punishment.

If you say because the law forbids, then I ask, so what? There is nothing inherently good about the law. The law is a guide. If it doesn't coincide with your beliefs, it is null.

Why can't I wait outside your house until you come out, sneak up behind you, inject you with a powerful narcotic to render you unconcious then, before you wake up, tie you to a chari in my basement, then, after you're awake, procede to torture you over a period of several days through the use of heated metals, electric shocks, and surgically removing pieces of your flesh, then, when I am finally bored with you, dropping you into a bathtub filled with bleach, because one day you wore a red jacket, and I hate the color red?

Wearing red is an extremely immoral act, but the courts won't punish you appropriatly, so it's up to me!

After all, it is my presonal belief is that anyone who wears red deserves to die a slow, exruciatingly painful death. Sure the law might disagree, but hey, those are my beliefs, so the law is null

If the courts don't adequately punish criminals, it is up to individuals to deliver punishment.

QFMFT.

Sometimes vigilantism is necessary in places were the police are corrupt and/or inefficient. Which is why there are groups like the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria.

That is how the mafia started out originally, and we all know what the result is.

How the fuck would they get money from breaking and entering? They would have broken into my damn house. I would defend my property and either turn them over to police, or tell them they could leave. I don't see how the hell any jury/judge would rule in favor of them.
By stealing your stuff and selling it, or just stealing your money. That is generally why people do the whole b&e thing.

And you don't kick a guy when he's down. I'd tell the guy to the the fuck out of my house. If he didn't I'd push him (assuming he didn't have a weapon). And possibly throw a punch or two to get him out of the house. How would he get money from that?
By suing you for assault.
Shoot the dude in the leg. Geeze.
Strange, I've heard that the whole reason that the police never do this is because it's a lot harder to shoot someone in the leg that the movies make it out ot be.
Sometimes vigilantism is necessary in places were the police are corrupt and/or inefficient. Which is why there are groups like the Bakassi Boys in Nigeria.
In a case like that then then 'vigilante' group should seek to replace the corrupt justice system with a fair and impartial one, not to become the justice system themselves.
Why can't I punish someone myself if the courts won't do it? Why can't I beat the hell out of a rapist, or kill someone who killed someone I care for? If the courts don't adequately punish criminals, it is up to individuals to deliver punishment.
Because criminals have rights.

If you say because the law forbids, then I ask, so what? There is nothing inherently good about the law. The law is a guide. If it doesn't coincide with your beliefs, it is null.

You go right ahead and tell that to the judge, I'm sure he'll let you go.

So, to be clear, you think that it is morally permissible (if not obligatory) for a person to exact revenge when the justice system fails to demand retribution, but at the same time you would admit that it such a vigilante should be put to death, if that is the penalty for her crime?

I think there should be no principle in the legal system that would exempt her. I do not think she has an obligation to submit to that judgment... not the way she might if she had actually acted immorally.

But I think our real disagreement is the dispute between deontological and consequentialist ethics

I think that's at the heart of this, yes.

an interesting discussion, to be sure, but certainly one for which I do not have sufficient time in the near future.

Fair enough. But let's see if we can at least clear up some of the rest of this.

1) Do you justify vigilante "justice" as a method by which to exact retribution? If so, how?

Well, I've mostly been considering it more from the deterrent angle. I brought in the retributive angle because you did--I wanted to understand the basis by which you made the absolute distinction between individual and state.

Thinking it over, I believe our difference here, as well as reflecting our different ethical approaches, is connected to our disagreement about democratic politics: whether it is a matter of the general will deciding right or simply a matter of coalitions combining private interests into the public good.

2) Do you justify vigilante "justice" as a method by which to prevent future wrongs?

Definitely that.

I think the capacity to determine guilt and desert is something born out of the existence of a political state; you either don't care about guilt and desert (but rather consequences), or you think they can be defined extra-politically, or both.

Well, my thinking regarding guilt and desert of punishment is somewhat in flux: I have recognized the insufficiency of purely utilitarian approaches for quite some time, but have mostly been concerned with other things since that point.

If pressed, I would probably defend an extra-political principle of retribution, but it would have to be "retribution" of a very different sort from what you have advanced. I think there's a place for considerations of desert without political authority--I don't really think desert is intrinsically a political concept. What a person deserves is a moral question that is mostly independent of laws, and like all moral questions, I think it can be discussed by reasonable people in a way that can generate reasonable answers--ones upon which, if they have reached a certain level of support, can be acted on. (Why can't they? If we recognize that a given person deserves something, and we have enough support to be reasonably sure of it, why is it only the state that can exact this punishment? You ask repeatedly about my authority to do this, but I ask why I need any authority beyond this recognition of truth.)

"Justified" killing has all but disappeared from the legal landscape: that's still what we call self-defense, but the actual theory behind that exception tends to belie the nomenclature.

What, then, about (say) gun control?

Should the argument that people should be able to defend themselves from criminals be rejected out of hand, on the grounds that even killing in self-defense is not justified?

After all, if it is merely the fact that reasonable people would act without judgment in such circumstances, it makes sense, when judgment is clearer, to minimize the possibility of doing what would be an illegitimate act.

Well, then I don't know why you need to bother with will. Consequentialism doesn't, and I see no particular reason for it to do so. A duty-bound ethic certainly needs a will, but consequentialism does not. That's one of the reasons it's become so popular.

Well, my position is actually something of a combination.

As regards consequentialist conclusions in particular "moral dilemmas"--the side of ethics with which we are concerned in the context of this discussion--I have no problem with consequentialism. But I am not willing to accept that there is no moral difference between someone who incidentally does what is right and someone who deliberately does what is right, even if the consequences are the same. I acknowledge, thus, the importance of acting on duty, and with it the importance of free will (and at least some of the basic elements of Kantian ethics.)

In the state of nature, there is "killing" and then there's "killing." "Murder" and "justified killing" and "excusable killing" are juridical terms that only take meaning within a society having rules regarding the authoritative dispensation of justice.

How can you possibly maintain this if you grant that obligations exist in the state of nature?

Your judgment that your friend's killing was unjustified is, however right, from the perspective of justice just one private opinion to contrast with others--the opinion of the killer no doubt among them.

But not all private opinions are the same. Some are well-supported, some aren't. Why make an equivalence between them?

Because you're contradicting yourself. In what possible sense can your judgment be in "good faith" based on the law when what you intend to do is in any case illegal? As you admitted at the very beginning of this post, there is no legal justification for vigilantism. So how can you claim to represent the law "in good faith" even as you intend to cross it?

Again, it has to do with the specificity of the vigilantism. If, for instance, I maintain that the court's judgment of the facts was suffused with racist bias, and I have sufficient support for my own interpretation, I may be justified in acting extra-judicially. But I am only justified in doing so in that aspect of the case. I cannot decide as to other questions: I cannot make my own judgment of punishment, but rather I must consult the law and submit to its judgment.

In the former instance, there is a vacuum of justice; in the latter case there is an injustice that must be rectified--and, in fact, the unjust system is the real enemy.

On the same grounds, in the state of nature wouldn't I have an obligation to (help) set up a system of laws?

"It is permissible to participate in a violent revolution" is not a universalizable maxim, because it is not a maxim at all.

A maxim always has the form, "To pursue _____ end, it is permissible to _____." Ends and means. You cannot state a maxim without both.

Fine: "To pursue a democratic society with the rule of law, it is permissible to engage in violent revolution."

In universalizing that maxim, must you not be willing to accept it even in the case that you are the accidental victim of such a revolution? Does that not require consideration for the innocent casualties?

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

Instead of hanging people why don't you just go through what it takes to become a judge? Or at least make fair calls during jury-duty. The people who decided the calls are us. To take the law into our own hands is the same as usurping the power of democracy. It's a mini-coup.

I think there should be no principle in the legal system that would exempt her. I do not think she has an obligation to submit to that judgment... not the way she might if she had actually acted immorally.If there is no principle in the legal system that would exempt her, then she DOES have an obligation to submit to the judgment.

We do things all the time that are not immoral, but which are illegal. Do we not have an obligation to obey the law nevertheless? Is it immoral to walk down a line of parking meters and fill them all with quarters so that none of the people parked there get a ticket? On the face of it, I wouldn't say so; nevertheless I certainly think a person has an obligation to obey laws proscribing such behavior.

Your obligation is to the law first, your personal moral inclination second.


Well, I've mostly been considering it more from the deterrent angle. I brought in the retributive angle because you did--I wanted to understand the basis by which you made the absolute distinction between individual and state.Retribution only exists once you have a public. Justice only exists once you have a public. And only the public (or agents of the public will) has the power to exact retribution.

In the private sphere, "giving someone what he deserves" goes by another name: revenge.

Well, my thinking regarding guilt and desert of punishment is somewhat in flux: I have recognized the insufficiency of purely utilitarian approaches for quite some time, but have mostly been concerned with other things since that point.Well, for starters utilitarian theory has no place for retribution/desert: Bentham is quite explicit about this. Punishing someone "because he deserves it" causes him suffering without doing anyone else any good. Deterrence and incapacitation, as well as rehabilitation, produce some good in exchange for the suffering caused to the convict.

If pressed, I would probably defend an extra-political principle of retribution, but it would have to be "retribution" of a very different sort from what you have advanced. I think there's a place for considerations of desert without political authority--I don't really think desert is intrinsically a political concept.No, but the capacity to determine guilt and execute a legitimate sentence is.

It may be perfectly sensible to say of a car thief who drives off a cliff, "Well, he got what he deserves," but that does not entail that it would have been appropriate for me to push him off the cliff on my own initiative.

To qualify as retribution rather than revenge, the executor must at least in principle be able to answer the complaint of the accused, "Why should I accept your judgment about what I deserve?" Obviously not every criminal will accept even legitimate judgment, but the principle of retribution maintains that the criminal must be treated as a moral subject who is, in principle, capable of accepting judgment.

Yet why should any person accept the judgment of another individual? This is precisely the question of political legitimacy.

Without political legitimacy, you are taking revenge, you are not offering retribution.

What a person deserves is a moral question that is mostly independent of laws, and like all moral questions, I think it can be discussed by reasonable people in a way that can generate reasonable answers--ones upon which, if they have reached a certain level of support, can be acted on.What is "a certain level of support"? Do you need a majority? If so, don't you have some democratic principle, at least, behind this argument? If not, why not? Why should a minority feel entitled to impose its will on others? Because they are "right"? Are we turning to Plato now?

Why can't they? If we recognize that a given person deserves something, and we have enough support to be reasonably sure of it, why is it only the state that can exact this punishment?Because it is only the state that can say, "You have lived under our laws. You have known our rules. By our judgment, you may be punished, and you are duty-bound to submit."

You cannot say, "You have lived under the laws of this place. You have known the rules. And even though the judgment of the public to which you owe your duty has seen fit to release you, you will answer to me... for I represent the arm of the law, even as I am about to break it by punishing you."

It's philosophical gibberish. You're just twisting the rules of legitimacy to get what you want. If you actually believe you are justified in behaving as you please so long as you KNOW you are RIGHT, then you are in defiance of every political principle (including anarchist ones), and it is you who should answer for your rebellion... not the criminal who has already stood before the law and faced punishment. His crime is past, and he has been released. Will he err again? Perhaps, but we cannot assume that he will.

You, on the other hand, openly state that you will defy the law every time it does not agree with your own morality.

You ask repeatedly about my authority to do this, but I ask why I need any authority beyond this recognition of truth.Because knowing that someone deserves something does not give you the authority to dispense punishment. If you see someone commit a crime, is it up to you to give her what she deserves? No, your only duty is to report it to a legitimate authority. If that authority fails to rule as you believe it should, that's too bad: it's up to you to make the positive argument that you should have the authority to take matters into your own hands. You have no "presumption" of authority here: why should you assume you have authority until I prove you wrong? Authority is a positive grant of power, not an inherent right.

Should the argument that people should be able to defend themselves from criminals be rejected out of hand, on the grounds that even killing in self-defense is not justified?No. I've already explained that self-defense is considered a justification, though the theory behind that argument has become less cut-and-dry than it once was.

After all, if it is merely the fact that reasonable people would act without judgment in such circumstances, it makes sense, when judgment is clearer, to minimize the possibility of doing what would be an illegitimate act.But it's not illegitimate. You are far too hung up on some definition of reason that I can never quite make out. Just because a person does something without judgment does not mean the action itself is irrational.

As regards consequentialist conclusions in particular "moral dilemmas"--the side of ethics with which we are concerned in the context of this discussion--I have no problem with consequentialism. But I am not willing to accept that there is no moral difference between someone who incidentally does what is right and someone who deliberately does what is right, even if the consequences are the same. I acknowledge, thus, the importance of acting on duty, and with it the importance of free will (and at least some of the basic elements of Kantian ethics.)But what you haven't learned is the respect for a willing subject as an end-in-himself that is the basis for our duties toward one another.

It is this respect that distinguishes between retribution as the end result of due process at the hands of a legitimate authority, and revenge which takes the offender as an object to be punished or disposed of. Due process preserves the dignity of the criminal in a way that revenge does not.

How can you possibly maintain this if you grant that obligations exist in the state of nature?I have an obligation not to kill. I have no obligation to kill those who kill others.

But not all private opinions are the same. Some are well-supported, some aren't. Why make an equivalence between them?Because they are all private, which means they have no political claim on anyone else. They cannot say to someone else, "You are bound to abide by my judgment," because this is not true. Only a legitimate political authority may say, "You are bound to abide by my judgment."

Again, it has to do with the specificity of the vigilantism. If, for instance, I maintain that the court's judgment of the facts was suffused with racist bias, and I have sufficient support for my own interpretation, I may be justified in acting extra-judicially.No. What authority can you claim over the accused? When you say, "Come, that you may be judged," what duty has he to obey? When you say, "Sentence has been passed," why should he do anything but resist? What obligation does he owe to your judgment?

I say none. You have yet to explain where you see any such obligation.

But I am only justified in doing so in that aspect of the case. I cannot decide as to other questions: I cannot make my own judgment of punishment, but rather I must consult the law and submit to its judgment.Are you an officer of the law, that you claim to speak for it?

Judge of the law for your own behavior, but do not presume to judge how the law treats with others. Judge only that the law is law... if it is anything else, defeat it and create law in its place.

On the same grounds, in the state of nature wouldn't I have an obligation to (help) set up a system of laws?Absolutely. And you have, again, no right to "punish" in the state of nature. You have only the limited right to retaliate that is necessary to your own security in the absence of any other power that can offer protection. As soon as you succeed in creating some such power, your right to retaliation ceases as if it never were.

Fine: "To pursue a democratic society with the rule of law, it is permissible to engage in violent revolution."A bit over-broad, but I'll take it.

In universalizing that maxim, must you not be willing to accept it even in the case that you are the accidental victim of such a revolution?Yes.

Does that not require consideration for the innocent casualties?I must only consider that I do not use them as means to my end. Thus, I must swear off terrorism and I must minimize incidental casualties, especially insofar as these are taken as "useful" additions to my attack on my enemies. I am bound to certain rules of war that demand I offer civilian populations a reasonable chance to choose sides or flee--an ethic that used to be captured in "declarations of war."

But is every civilian death a mark in a "minus" column in an equation of going to war? Not at all. I'm not concerned with the consequences, I am concerned with the rights and duties of citizenship.

If there is no principle in the legal system that would exempt her, then she DOES have an obligation to submit to the judgment.

We do things all the time that are not immoral, but which are illegal. Do we not have an obligation to obey the law nevertheless? Is it immoral to walk down a line of parking meters and fill them all with quarters so that none of the people parked there get a ticket? On the face of it, I wouldn't say so; nevertheless I certainly think a person has an obligation to obey laws proscribing such behavior.

Your obligation is to the law first, your personal moral inclination second.


Retribution only exists once you have a public. Justice only exists once you have a public. And only the public (or agents of the public will) has the power to exact retribution.

In the private sphere, "giving someone what he deserves" goes by another name: revenge.

Well, for starters utilitarian theory has no place for retribution/desert: Bentham is quite explicit about this. Punishing someone "because he deserves it" causes him suffering without doing anyone else any good. Deterrence and incapacitation, as well as rehabilitation, produce some good in exchange for the suffering caused to the convict.



Man, your posts are huge.

Anyways. People are obligated the law first and foremost? That is completely wrong! People are obligated to their own moral code, first. Doing what you think is right is more important than any and all laws.

Also, revenge is a must. Retribution and justice are secondary to revenge. If the 'law' doesn't punish a criminal enough for something, then the victims or victims family have EVERY right to punish the criminal on their own terms.
To hell with law and 'justice'. I'd want revenge for heinous crimes such as rape and murder.

To hell with law and 'justice'. I'd want revenge for heinous crimes such as rape and murder.

There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

Live well. It is the greatest revenge.

Never does the human soul appear so strong and noble as when it foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Because I am too lazy to think for myself.
Peace and love man...peace and love.

Peace and love man...peace and love.

No.

I completely disagree with all that you posted. There is a time for peace and love, but there is also a time for fighting and revenge. When loved ones are threatened, or injured, it is not the time to roll over and submit. It is time fight, and perhaps kill.

No.

I completely disagree with all that you posted. There is a time for peace and love, but there is also a time for fighting and revenge. When loved ones are threatened, or injured, it is not the time to roll over and submit. It is time fight, and perhaps kill.

Yea. Not if they were killed or something... Unless you are taking 'revenge' in order to prevent the individual from committing further crimes? But then again, I can still commit a crime....at any moment..should I be killed to make sure I don't?

Yea. Not if they were killed or something... Unless you are taking 'revenge' in order to prevent the individual from committing further crimes? But then again, I can still commit a crime....at any moment..should I be killed to make sure I don't?

Especially when they are killed. That is the time to be even more furious, and to kill the person who killed your loved one.

We do things all the time that are not immoral, but which are illegal. Do we not have an obligation to obey the law nevertheless? Is it immoral to walk down a line of parking meters and fill them all with quarters so that none of the people parked there get a ticket? On the face of it, I wouldn't say so; nevertheless I certainly think a person has an obligation to obey laws proscribing such behavior.

But that's not remotely equivalent to giving up one's life for doing something that was not immoral.

Well, for starters utilitarian theory has no place for retribution/desert: Bentham is quite explicit about this. Punishing someone "because he deserves it" causes him suffering without doing anyone else any good. Deterrence and incapacitation, as well as rehabilitation, produce some good in exchange for the suffering caused to the convict.

I know. It is precisely here that I parted ways: I could not (and cannot) accept that imprisoning an innocent person and imprisoning a guilty one are equivalent acts if they have the same consequences in terms of happiness.

To qualify as retribution rather than revenge, the executor must at least in principle be able to answer the complaint of the accused, "Why should I accept your judgment about what I deserve?" Obviously not every criminal will accept even legitimate judgment, but the principle of retribution maintains that the criminal must be treated as a moral subject who is, in principle, capable of accepting judgment.

Yet why should any person accept the judgment of another individual? This is precisely the question of political legitimacy.

Maybe, but political legitimacy is not the only way to answer it.

Obviously I am not bound to agree with the private judgment of another individual as such. But as an honest, rational person I am obligated to recognize truth if it is presented to me with rationally compelling grounds--and if those exacting judgment have a good argument as to why I deserve punishment, it matters not who or what they are. The truth they present stands on its own.

What is "a certain level of support"?

I meant it as I have generally meant it throughout this discussion: my belief that I am right must have sufficient support to largely overcome the gap between "I believe this person deserves such and such" and "This person actually does deserves such and such."

The ideal here would be an argument good enough that the criminal himself could recognize the legitimacy of his punishment.

Why should a minority feel entitled to impose its will on others? Because they are "right"?

Yes. The key here is not a certain level of popular support, which is meaningless. Even if every other person on the planet agrees with my judgment, if I am wrong I am still wrong. The key here is avoiding arbitrariness--setting forth the punishments that actually are in accordance with what a person deserves.

You cannot say, "You have lived under the laws of this place. You have known the rules. And even though the judgment of the public to which you owe your duty has seen fit to release you, you will answer to me... for I represent the arm of the law, even as I am about to break it by punishing you."

But it is not true that the only entities to which the person has a duty are the public institutions that have released him. It is also true that the person has duties to individuals. An act of murder is not only wrong because it is a violation of political obedience; it is also wrong because it is a violation of people's obligations to each other. I can also judge it as such.

You, on the other hand, openly state that you will defy the law every time it does not agree with your own morality.

What else should I do? March off to war if told to, even if it means destroying a country and causing a bloodbath? Refuse to illegally offer aid to "criminals" who have done nothing wrong--even if the alternative is grievous suffering and injustice?

What if the law itself is oppressive--if, for instance, it dictates that I am forbidden to have sex with the person I love because the "collective judgment" is that such an act is a perverse abomination? Must I obey that as well? Would it have been legitimate to punish the countless many who did not when such laws still existed here?

Is it a matter of "legitimacy"? Am I only bound to obey legitimate laws, ones that are consistent with democratic self-governance and equality under law? But even this condition does not solve the problem, for there is nothing intrinsic about such a system that stops the majority from passing an oppressive law, as long as they accept its (theoretical, of course) application to their case. (Will the court system stop them? Maybe it will, sometimes. But it may not do so always.)

Of course, as I have said from the start, I must exercise caution in making these judgments: I cannot disobey a law simply because I disagree with it. I must also have compelling grounds for that disagreement... and generally speaking it is probably better to err on the side of obedience. But not always. (Not, for instance, to reference the earlier example, when it means a person must give up her very life.)

But it's not illegitimate. You are far too hung up on some definition of reason that I can never quite make out. Just because a person does something without judgment does not mean the action itself is irrational.

That makes no sense.

You've stated that killing in self-defense is allowable because it is instinctive and reactive: it is not something reasonable people undertake with judgment.

Preparing myself for confrontations with criminals by buying a gun is neither instinctive nor reactive. It is something reasonable people do undertake with judgment.

If self-defense is only legitimate because it is instinctive and reactive, when I can move beyond instinct and reaction I cannot act to defend myself (in potential future cases).

Because they are all private, which means they have no political claim on anyone else. They cannot say to someone else, "You are bound to abide by my judgment," because this is not true. Only a legitimate political authority may say, "You are bound to abide by my judgment."

Perhaps. But they can always say, "You are bound to abide by reason."

Are you an officer of the law, that you claim to speak for it?

If the objection here is purely practical--"You may not be qualified to interpret the law"--then you must admit that sometimes it can be overcome.

If it is a matter of authority, then, again, my judgment must be justified as a matter of reason: if my interpretation has compelling rational grounds, it doesn't matter who I am.

Absolutely. And you have, again, no right to "punish" in the state of nature. You have only the limited right to retaliate that is necessary to your own security in the absence of any other power that can offer protection.

Can I act to protect the security of another?

Especially when they are killed. That is the time to be even more furious, and to kill the person who killed your loved one.

Because this makes sense how?

Oh wait.. I hear death is a really horrible place..:rolleyes:

Because this makes sense how?

Oh wait.. I hear death is a really horrible place..:rolleyes:


It makes perfect sense. Eye for an eye. Blood law. Revenge. Knowing the killer won't hurt anyone else. Avenging your loved ones.

It makes perfect sense. Eye for an eye. Blood law. Revenge. Knowing the killer won't hurt anyone else. Avenging your loved ones.

Sadly, killing someone makes you a killer as well.

*family of killed criminal hunts you down and kills you*
*remainder of your family hunts down the family of the criminal*
*Family Feud: With Katanas airs on T.V.*
*one of your relatives falls in love with one of the criminal's relatives*
*your families do not accept their relationship, they both commit suicide*
*the world's next great play is unveiled in Britain*

Sadly, killing someone makes you a killer as well.

*family of killed criminal hunts you down and kills you*
*remainder of your family hunts down the family of the criminal*
*Family Feud: With Katanas airs on T.V.*
*one of your relatives falls in love with one of the criminal's relatives*
*your families do not accept their relationship, they both commit suicide*
*the world's next great play is unveiled in Britain*

Well the criminals family would have to be well armed, or catch me alone.

Otherwise, so?

Myths and half-truths. I've already done my research on lynching and those stories are bullshit.
If so, then you'll only be too happy to share said well-documented, cross-referenced and validated research with us.
Indeed why not go further and have your obviously impressive and ground-breaking research published?
Since, as you claim, it invalidates all previous research and documented publications into the history of lynchings in the Deep South, your analysis would certainly make you a cause celeb and, no doubt, set you up for life.

go on. we're waiting.

Well the criminals family would have to be well armed, or catch me alone.

Otherwise, so?

:(
I don't know if you are trying to sound tough, but men have died from tripping down a flight of stairs.

:(
I don't know if you are trying to sound tough, but men have died from tripping down a flight of stairs.

I'm quite nimble on the stairs.

I'm quite nimble on the stairs.

Therein lies your justification.
You are one of the Ubermen. Those who can transgress moral and legal boundaries for the sake of humanity. One of the great, the few, the not-Raskolnikovs.

Perhaps you are a Svidrigailov.

Therein lies your justification.
You are one of the Ubermen. Those who can transgress moral and legal boundaries for the sake of humanity. One of the great, the few, the not-Raskolnikovs.

Perhaps you are a Svidrigailov.

I haven't read Crime and Punishment, yet. I plan on reading in a few weeks, however.

For the sake of humanity? Perhaps. For the sake of my loved ones? Yes. I'd gladly break any law to save a family member, or avenge one.

I haven't read Crime and Punishment, yet. I plan on reading in a few weeks, however.

For the sake of humanity? Perhaps. For the sake of my loved ones? Yes. I'd gladly break any law to save a family member, or avenge one.

It's a good book.

I'm down with the whole saving, not really with the avenging though. I might catch the person, severely beat them, and drag them to the Law. But, if they were aquitted....meh..eh...feh..

What the hell is wrong with people?

eh?

What the hell is wrong with people?

*inundates you with thousands of years of history and torment*
*overloads emotional, rational, physical, and spiritual circuits*

What the hell is wrong with people?

*Buys gun. Pretends it's penis*

The implications of that are truly horrifying.
Yet it is a worldwide disease.

eh?
*reads OP, points frantically*

*inundates you with thousands of years of history and torment*
*overloads emotional, rational, physical, and spiritual circuits*

*Buys gun. Pretends it's penis*

If I were convinced that the justice system was wholly corrupted beyond repair (like in cyberpunk fiction), then I'd condone vigilante justice for a short, select list of offenses.

But we're not in cyberpunk. Yet.

Man, your posts are huge.That tends to happen when one actually attempts to defend one's assertions. :rolleyes:

People are obligated the law first and foremost? That is completely wrong!Because you say so?

People are obligated to their own moral code, first.Why?

Doing what you think is right is more important than any and all laws.It's nice that you think so... but what makes you think so?

And so on... your post is one long list of unsupported assertions.

Without a clear method of established procedures, and a system of judicial review, there can be no restriction of freedoms.

What the hell is wrong with people?

Mostly, they're afraid of themselves, afraid of others, and afraid of dying.

But that's not remotely equivalent to giving up one's life for doing something that was not immoral.So my obligation to obey the law is somehow inversely proportional to the seriousness of the penalty?

Maybe, but political legitimacy is not the only way to answer it.

Obviously I am not bound to agree with the private judgment of another individual as such. But as an honest, rational person I am obligated to recognize truth if it is presented to me with rationally compelling grounds--and if those exacting judgment have a good argument as to why I deserve punishment, it matters not who or what they are. The truth they present stands on its own.Oh yes. They might convince me of an ethical duty to turn myself in to the authorities. They might convince me of an ethical duty to take punishment upon myself--to atone, to compensate, or otherwise to abuse myself in consideration of my crime.

What they cannot do is convince me that I have an ethical duty to accept judgment from them, to accept punishment from them. They have no authority to enforce such punishment. Such authority is inherently political.

I meant it as I have generally meant it throughout this discussion: my belief that I am right must have sufficient support to largely overcome the gap between "I believe this person deserves such and such" and "This person actually does deserves such and such."But on what authority do you make that determination?

The state--the people--are authorized to judge not only guilt but also desert. When have private individuals ever held that authority?

You say you will accept the judgment of society on this one, despite the fact that society has already made its judgment through its only authorized deputies.

On the other hand, you have not been at all clear on how you are going to exact society's price except in the case that the individual deserves death. If he deserves life imprisonment, will you take it upon yourself to keep him in your basement? Will you feed him, offer him exercise, reading, and activities he would get in a modern prison?

Who will oversee this private prison? Clearly you will have no government oversight, since any such would mean your own imprisonment for kidnapping. Will you presume also to make judgments about parole and furlough? What about appeals? Surely even the clearly guilty have the right to make an appeal to a legitimate authority after they have been convicted? No?

Do you really advocate unregulated, unmonitored prisons? What power are you NOT going to claim for the private citizen who "knows he is right"?

Or does the logic of vigilantism somehow only apply to crimes meriting death? In that case, does that mean that vigilantism is a moot question in countries/states that do not use capital punishment? What about the fact that, again, even guilty convicts are accorded the right to appeal their sentence, right up until the last hour?

What happens to all those appeals under vigilantism? What happens to the possibility of a governor's or a president's commuting the sentence? That is, what happens to the possibility for mercy?

No, under your theory society has no opportunity for mercy through legitimate authorities, because you have claimed all authority to yourself. You decide whether death is appropriate, and you decide if mercy is warranted--oh, but never mind that, because if you decide to commute his sentence to life in prison (holding him in your basement), some other vigilante will come along to decide that you are wrong and break into your house to ensure "justice" is done.

I cannot imagine that "justice" means anything in such a system. Being "right" that a person deserves punishment simply does not give you the authority to impose it--that authority is something political, and we come up with systems of justice precisely because we want to avoid private judgment even when private judgment is "correct".

The ideal here would be an argument good enough that the criminal himself could recognize the legitimacy of his punishment.But there can be no such argument.

You might convince me that it would have been legitimate for government to punish me, but you cannot convince me that it would be legitimate for you to do so. You might even convince me that if you do punish me, I deserve it... but that is not sufficient to convince me that you have the authority to do so.

The question of whether I deserve punishment is separate from the question of whether you have the authority to mete it out.

Yes. The key here is not a certain level of popular support, which is meaningless.And increasingly it sounds like you would support a "philosopher king" or a "benevolent dictator." If there were a dictator who were always right in his judgments, what argument could you mount against him?

And here I thought you were some sort of anarchist or something...

Even if every other person on the planet agrees with my judgment, if I am wrong I am still wrong.Yes. But I actually think that a wrongful punishment with the backing of democratic authority is more legitimate than a deserved punishment without such political support.

The key here is avoiding arbitrariness--setting forth the punishments that actually are in accordance with what a person deserves."Actually are"... I'm getting the feeling that you have no idea how the legitimate justice system actually deals with punishment.

Allow me to ask you this: in cases as certain as the hypothetical you propose, do you believe the court system should enforce instant death sentences, avoiding all those years of appeals? Do you believe that we should adopt a rule such that, "In particularly compelling cases meriting a death sentence, sentence should be executed immediately. In all other cases, the convicted defendant is entitled to every available appeal."

If you do, at least that would be consistent with vigilantism, though I fail to see how it would be consistent with a notion of justice founded on due process. If you do not, then we are in agreement that justice demands the same due process for every case, no matter how certain we are that the trial answer is correct... but in that case, it seems so much harder to legitimize vigilantism.

Indeed, it would seem that in order to support vigilantism one would at the very least need to offer an ethical theory determining that an executive commutation (society's mercy) would be objectively "wrong" in certain cases, and that such determinations are knowable well in advance. In other words, you must be willing to say, "I not only know that this individual deserves death, but I also know that if he were allowed to persist in prison for the next several years he would not, at that time, make a credible case for mercy or any new consideration of his sentence."

But it is not true that the only entities to which the person has a duty are the public institutions that have released him. It is also true that the person has duties to individuals.Yes. But these duties do not include a duty to accept the judgment of individuals as to his criminal case, because he only has such a duty to legitimate authorities.

An act of murder is not only wrong because it is a violation of political obedience; it is also wrong because it is a violation of people's obligations to each other. I can also judge it as such.Yes. But that does not give you the power to enforce your judgment. That power is not something inherent to moral beings, but rather something that we have created in the form of political institutions.

What else should I do? March off to war if told to, even if it means destroying a country and causing a bloodbath? Refuse to illegally offer aid to "criminals" who have done nothing wrong--even if the alternative is grievous suffering and injustice?No. You have no moral obligation to obey unjust laws.

But the problem with vigilantism is not that it disobeys an unjust law. It is that vigilantism assumes a power where no such power exists.

What if the law itself is oppressive--if, for instance, it dictates that I am forbidden to have sex with the person I love because the "collective judgment" is that such an act is a perverse abomination? Must I obey that as well? Would it have been legitimate to punish the countless many who did not when such laws still existed here?No, and yes. I follow the logic of Martin Luther King, Jr., on this one, which echoes the logic of Plato's Socrates: I have no moral obligation to obey unjust laws (indeed, I may have a moral duty to defy them), but that does not obviate my obligation to accept society's punishment for what I have done.

I may stand as a moral example of "civil disobedience," but the only way to stand as a moral example is to say, "I do not believe I should be exempt from society's law; instead, I believe that the law is wrong and it should be changed. But the law being what it is, I accept punishment as it is given to me, that I may be an example to others."

That makes no sense.Like I said, the theory has been muddied. No one wants to give up on self-defense as a justification, but it has become increasingly hard to make a consistent argument that does not sound a lot more like an excuse.

You've stated that killing in self-defense is allowable because it is instinctive and reactive: it is not something reasonable people undertake with judgment.No, but it is a reaction that reasonable people understand--a reaction such that we say, "Yes, I probably would have done the same thing."

This is the fine line (and it is a very fine line) between what legal theory considers a justification and what it considers an excuse.

The battered woman's defense is an excuse because it depends on reactions to a situation that most people do not "understand"--or which, if we believe we "understand," with which we cannot empathize. We cannot put ourselves in her shoes, we cannot imagine what it would be like, and we cannot honestly say, "In her situation, I would have done the same thing." We can think of lots of other things she could have done had she been in a more rational state of mind.

The same is true of other "state of mind" excuses.

Someone seeking an excuse says to the court, "I was NOT in a rational state, so I should be excused for doing something that was irrational."
Someone providing a justification says, instead, "I was perfectly rational at the time, and I reacted as any other rational person would have done. Had I had opportunities for escape or rescue, I would have taken them. I was therefore justified in doing what anyone in my position would have done."

Preparing myself for confrontations with criminals by buying a gun is neither instinctive nor reactive. It is something reasonable people do undertake with judgment.Yes. And it would be appropriate to protect people from what they might do when not in their right mind by prohibiting them from buying a weapon. But the self-defender does not claim to be "not in his right mind." Instead, he claims to have been rational, but to have been in a situation in which any rational person would react the way he did. Society accepts this argument as justification, and so we cannot tell him that we are protecting him from his own irrationality by prohibiting him from having a weapon for self-defense.

Self-defense is not wrong, but excused. It is justified.

If self-defense is only legitimate because it is instinctive and reactive, when I can move beyond instinct and reaction I cannot act to defend myself (in potential future cases).I am always entitled to defend myself with the minimum necessary force proportionate to the threatened harm. It is not "only" legitimate because it is accepted only in cases tending towards instinct or reaction... and perhaps that is a better way to state the modern argument: it must tend towards instinct or reaction without necessarily being such; it must tend towards them in the sense that it must be a reaction (in the broad sense) to immediate circumstances that do not present options besides fighting or coming to harm.

The aim is to distinguish self-defense from situations in which I am faced with the decision "my life or yours" and I choose mine, as when I eat you to survive an avalanche, or in which I know you are "out to get me" and I strike first. The aim is not to make self-defense less of a justification, merely to narrowly define the cases in which it actually applies. The aim is not to make self-defense less rational, but rather to emphasize the immediacy of circumstances in which self-defense is warranted.

Perhaps. But they can always say, "You are bound to abide by reason."Yes. Which means we all have an obligation to treat one another as ends rather than means, we all have an obligation to do right and avoid doing wrong.

None of which is sufficient to explain why anyone has an obligation to abide by your judgment, to accept your punishment. You can say of the criminal who gets off due to a poor court decision that he deserves to die, but what you really need to argue is what morality gives you the power to execute judgment.

If the objection here is purely practical--"You may not be qualified to interpret the law"--then you must admit that sometimes it can be overcome.It's not that you are not qualified. It's that you are not authorized.

If it is a matter of authority, then, again, my judgment must be justified as a matter of reason: if my interpretation has compelling rational grounds, it doesn't matter who I am.Yes, it does. Because while you may have a case for convincing me that I have broken a moral duty (by committing a crime), and you may have a case for convincing me that I deserve punishment (that I should, as a matter of right, submit to punishment), you have no argument whatsoever for asserting your own authority to execute judgment.

A legitimate authority can do more. It can say, "I have a compelling case for convincing you that you have broken a legal (and moral) duty by committing a crime, and I have a compelling case that you should, as a matter of right, submit to judgment." And when the criminal says, "But whatever your argument, I do NOT submit: I hold that I am innocent/excused/justified, even against your compelling evidence," the court (unlike an individual) may respond, "Nevertheless, we have the authority to impose judgment, and we order that the sentence should be executed."

Thus, the best form of "vigilantism" you can muster should be a concerted attempt to convince rational criminals that they should punish themselves. Perhaps you might convince them that they should let you help. But unless you actually convince them, you may not execute judgment, because you have no authority to do so.

Can I act to protect the security of another?Under circumstances similar to those outlined for self-defense, yes.

So my obligation to obey the law is somehow inversely proportional to the seriousness of the penalty?

No. Your obligation to obey the law even when violation would not involve immorality in and of itself is inversely proportional to the cost involved.

In a fairly innocuous case--like stuffing quarters into parking meters--it might make sense to err on the side of obedience even if you are really sure that the law is wrong. But when it comes to giving up your life... that's not equivalent.

The justice of the "seriousness of the penalty", after all, is related to the ethical violation of the act, and if the act is not ethically problematic in and of itself the seriousness of the penalty hardly constitutes an additional reason to obey.

On the other hand, you have not been at all clear on how you are going to exact society's price except in the case that the individual deserves death.

If we are speaking purely of retribution, I wouldn't.

What happens to all those appeals under vigilantism?

These procedural guarantees of truth is precisely why vigilantism, in most cases, is a bad idea... as I've said.

But I still don't see how they justify an absolute case against it.

What happens to the possibility of a governor's or a president's commuting the sentence? That is, what happens to the possibility for mercy?

Why should some be granted mercy, but not others, who have committed the same wrong? It makes sense to excuse people for some wrongs, but only according to a standard that considers the matter generally.

If, of course, there is a standard, then I am obligated to apply it.

And increasingly it sounds like you would support a "philosopher king" or a "benevolent dictator." If there were a dictator who were always right in his judgments, what argument could you mount against him?

If his judgment were perfect and his execution similarly flawless, none, really.

I came to that conclusion reluctantly, but I see no way out of it. If democracy meant, say, mass starvation, I could not support it. Though if its material costs were less severe, I would probably argue that because most people would rather, all else being equal, rule themselves than be ruled by others, a dictator concerned with right would have to abdicate.

And here I thought you were some sort of anarchist or something...

I do not think anarchism is justifiable on a purely moral basis. It requires an analysis of what sort of political system is actually more likely to deliver--and in the process recognizing that such a "dictator" is implausible to the extreme.

If you do not, then we are in agreement that justice demands the same due process for every case, no matter how certain we are that the trial answer is correct... but in that case, it seems so much harder to legitimize vigilantism.

Not at all.

As a legal matter, it makes perfect sense to ensure that everyone is entitled to the full appeals process: it is far better to pay the extra costs for the few who we can really be certain are guilty than to run the risk of executing an innocent person by permitting an exemption to due process.

There are two differences, however, between the two cases.

First, we cannot assume the good faith and non-corruption of the courts: even if we make the standard really high, we cannot be sure that it will actually be applied correctly. The only way to bring about such surety (or at least a higher level of it) is through the appeals process. As a moral matter, however, our standard can itself include this element--we need not be concerned with enforcement, because morally (unlike a legal matter) we can simply say "if she met the standard, her act was justified." We need not actually decide whether or not it was--that is her job, and she, at least, is capable of knowing.

Second, in the case of vigilantism demanding compliance with every rule of procedural justice will mean definitively that the criminal will not be punished (assuming legal means have already been exhausted). The same is not true of demanding such compliance in the judicial system.

Indeed, it would seem that in order to support vigilantism one would at the very least need to offer an ethical theory determining that an executive commutation (society's mercy) would be objectively "wrong" in certain cases, and that such determinations are knowable well in advance. In other words, you must be willing to say, "I not only know that this individual deserves death, but I also know that if he were allowed to persist in prison for the next several years he would not, at that time, make a credible case for mercy or any new consideration of his sentence."

I suppose that's true.

To be honest, I find it increasingly difficult to defend my stance on the grounds of retribution: my first inclination is to argue that every effort be made to ensure actual guilt (and to the degree meriting the punishment), if we are ignoring the cost of reduced deterrence.

We definitely disagree about the "perfect" case I presented earlier, though.

No, and yes. I follow the logic of Martin Luther King, Jr., on this one, which echoes the logic of Plato's Socrates: I have no moral obligation to obey unjust laws (indeed, I may have a moral duty to defy them), but that does not obviate my obligation to accept society's punishment for what I have done.

If I may disobey an unjust law, why am I obligated to obey the parts prescribing penalties for disobeying it? Are those penalties somehow less unjust than the law itself?

I may stand as a moral example of "civil disobedience," but the only way to stand as a moral example is to say, "I do not believe I should be exempt from society's law; instead, I believe that the law is wrong and it should be changed. But the law being what it is, I accept punishment as it is given to me, that I may be an example to others."

What if instead I say that I believe that I, and everyone, should be exempt from the unjust laws of society, and the punishments attached to them?

The aim is not to make self-defense less rational, but rather to emphasize the immediacy of circumstances in which self-defense is warranted.

That makes sense. Thanks.

And when the criminal says, "But whatever your argument, I do NOT submit: I hold that I am innocent/excused/justified, even against your compelling evidence," the court (unlike an individual) may respond, "Nevertheless, we have the authority to impose judgment, and we order that the sentence should be executed."

So the point here is that the court system (as a product of the social contract) can demand my obedience regardless of truth... and thus (unlike the vigilante) can insist that I accept my punishment regardless of my opinion of it?

But what if I reject, along with the court's judgment, its authority to make that judgment? If the court can impose that upon me even against my dissent, because it is right and I am wrong (about its authority), how is that reasoning any different from that of the vigilante?

I believe in laws and government, but not the police. Police are bad. Though I like Firefighters.

I believe in laws and government, but not the police. Police are bad. Though I like Firefighters.

What makes the police inherently bad?

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

Until innocent people get killed. Which will happen.

No. Your obligation to obey the law even when violation would not involve immorality in and of itself is inversely proportional to the cost involved.Because you say so?

This leads to absurd conclusions, and your own case proves this. If it is not immoral to feed parking meters, and a scenario exists in which it would not be immoral to commit murder, you would say that because the punishment for the latter is (let us suppose) much greater than the punishment for the former, I have an obligation to obey laws regarding parking meters but no obligation (or at least considerably less) to obey laws prohibiting murder.

You talk about "erring" on the side of obedience, suggesting that this might be pragmatic in low-cost cases such as meter-stuffing but less so for high-cost crimes such as murder. But this gets things exactly wrong: one "errs" (if in fact one errs in abiding by one's duty) more casually in the former case because the act itself is the less serious.

One is far better entitled to trust one's own judgment with respect to a fairly innocuous offense as opposed to something as serious as murder.

The problem is that you not only want to have your cake, you also want to devour it. You want to say, "I know that a certain person deserves to die, though the state has failed to fulfill that function, so that I am now entitled to do so." Then after you commit murder, you also want to say, "I need not submit to the judgment of my peers, because what I did was right and it is unjust that I should lose my life (or my freedom) for having done what is right."

But you are not the one who gets to decide what counts as an exception for murder: you have admitted so yourself. You have said that you will abide by society's standards of guilt, of evidence, of desert. But what if society does not think "I killed him because he deserved it" counts as a justification in the same way that self-defense does? Again, recall the reason for which I raised the issue of theoretical justifications for self-defense: they arise out of an "anyone else would have done the same thing" argument. Can the same be said for vengeance?

Precisely because murder is such a serious crime, you must submit yourself to the judgment of your peers. You have taken another's life into your own hands, you have presumed that you understand moral worth well enough to determine whom should live and whom should die.

You must, at least, allow that you should be tried and that you must submit to trial: otherwise, you deny that any innocent defendant has an obligation to appear for trial, and you undermine yet another principal support of justice. Surely you are not prepared to support the claim that if I am charged with murder but I am innocent, I have no obligation to appear for trial?

Supposing this, perhaps your claim is that your "justified" rebellion occurs at the moment a sentence is handed down not to your liking: since you did no moral wrong (again, I disagree), they "should have" found in your favor, and you are under no obligation to accept the sentence (if you can avoid it). But then your entire appearance in court was in bad faith, since you never intended to submit to the court's judgment: you are already so sure you know the difference between right and wrong, whom else should tell you?

If you like, look at it this way: you believe that a vengeance killing, provided you know the person deserves it, is at worst morally neutral--but I disagree, and I'll presume to say I have at least plausible arguments in my favor. This is not to say that you do not also have some fair arguments, but rather to suggest that you cannot have sufficient moral certainty to put yourself above the law.

I'll grant (arguendo) that you can be certain that a given person deserves to die. It does not immediately follow that you can be certain it is morally acceptable to kill him.

These procedural guarantees of truth is precisely why vigilantism, in most cases, is a bad idea... as I've said.

But I still don't see how they justify an absolute case against it.That is because you are still confused about the purpose of the procedural guarantee. In the first place, it is something more than a procedural guarantee of truth. The fact is that very, very few death row inmates try to overturn their conviction--in fact, in almost every case this would be impossible. Rather, they attempt to appeal the sentence. Ultimately, this has very little to do with what the law refers to as "fact" about which certainty is possible.

Perhaps more importantly, you forget that a procedural guarantee is exactly that: even the most obviously guilty convicted scum has the right to know that every possible avenue has been pursued before he is deprived of his life. This includes, among other things, the possibility of mercy: a commutation that need not be based on specific principles of the law.

Why should some be granted mercy, but not others, who have committed the same wrong?First of all, because it is not the wrong that we judge so much as the criminal. "The punishment fits the crime" is old school--very old school. The doctrine today is "the punishment fits the criminal," opening up a space in which any number of variables may account for a difference.

It makes sense to excuse people for some wrongs, but only according to a standard that considers the matter generally.First, let's be clear: a commutation does not excuse or forgive, it mitigates. Commutation and pardon are related functions, but let's stick to the one for now.

More importantly, the whole point of mercy is that it expresses the limitations of the law--it represents our understanding that our principles do not cover every case, cannot cover every case, because this is not in the nature of such systems. To suppose that we can know either law or morality completely is to fall into identity thinking and to exclude that which we hope to comprehend. There are holes in theory, realities for which there is no term because language has excluded them. If we hope to consider ourselves truly moral, then our morality begs for a note of humility... a recognition that we are not gods.

It would take too long an aside for me to explain all of the theory underpinning this point. In Kant's critical approach you should already recognize necessary limits on human knowledge. Adorno's attack on identity thinking is of particular importance: the "non-identical" represents those aspects of the object which cannot be known through language and which can only be appreciated glancingly, dialectically. Lacan raises a similar point regarding the Real. But finally, most explicitly, you can find it in Derrida's ethical turn: he says precisely this, that the point of deconstruction is to point toward the moral truth beyond what we can know through systems of standards, rules, and principles.

To summarize: mercy is an act of humility. To presume to understand its principles is to misunderstand its significance.

If his judgment were perfect and his execution similarly flawless, none, really.Then you really are a utilitarian, and we return to the fundamental disagreement: I cannot support a benevolent dictator because he uses people as means rather than treating them as ends-in-themselves.

I came to that conclusion reluctantly, but I see no way out of it.Read Rousseau. Read Kant.

To treat people as means rather than ends is inherently wrong. But if you prefer something more substantive, consider the notion that the highest human value is freedom and that people are not truly free until they obey a law they legislate to themselves--that is, democratically.

If democracy meant, say, mass starvation, I could not support it.Democracy and mass starvation could not coexist. There would be no question of supporting it.

First, we cannot assume the good faith and non-corruption of the courts: even if we make the standard really high, we cannot be sure that it will actually be applied correctly. The only way to bring about such surety (or at least a higher level of it) is through the appeals process.You seem to think that a court system acting in good faith and with no corruption would not need appeals. I strenuously disagree.

As a moral matter, however, our standard can itself include this element--we need not be concerned with enforcement, because morally (unlike a legal matter) we can simply say "if she met the standard, her act was justified." We need not actually decide whether or not it was--that is her job, and she, at least, is capable of knowing.Ah, but this is precisely the problem with vigilantism.

As a moral matter, a person's moral obligations are her own consideration. Indeed, as you say, we cannot actually DECIDE whether she was right or not. We have no moral authority to judge her, and we certainly have no moral obligation to punish her for matters that lie between herself and her own conscience.

Legally, however, we do decide--but only through legitimate authorities. That's what makes it legal.

Second, in the case of vigilantism demanding compliance with every rule of procedural justice will mean definitively that the criminal will not be punished (assuming legal means have already been exhausted).And that, again, proves my point. Vigilantism defies the very principles that imbue criminal judgments with a spirit of justice.

To be honest, I find it increasingly difficult to defend my stance on the grounds of retribution: my first inclination is to argue that every effort be made to ensure actual guilt (and to the degree meriting the punishment), if we are ignoring the cost of reduced deterrence.Well, if you find retribution increasingly difficult, that comes as no surprise: my point from the beginning is that retribution is a strictly legal function. Deterrence and incapacitation, even rehabilitation as an end of punishment, are not.

If I may disobey an unjust law, why am I obligated to obey the parts prescribing penalties for disobeying it?Read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He makes the point far more eloquently than I ever could.

The short version is that obedience to society's judgment makes all the difference between a person who disobeys because the law is wrong, and a person who disobeys because he believes himself above the law. Two very different things.

So the point here is that the court system (as a product of the social contract) can demand my obedience regardless of truth... and thus (unlike the vigilante) can insist that I accept my punishment regardless of my opinion of it?YES!

But what if I reject, along with the court's judgment, its authority to make that judgment? If the court can impose that upon me even against my dissent, because it is right and I am wrong (about its authority), how is that reasoning any different from that of the vigilante?They are making two different kinds of claims: one is political, the other is ethical.

Politics, as much as it must be grounded in ethics, cannot be reduced to it.

Well in the case, unless it was a rape, I would say they picked the wrong target.

A 17 year old with a 14 year old isn't exactly the same as a 30-40 year old with a preteen.

And that is the problem with Vigilantism. It misses. Catastrophically.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

I don't. We have a system of justice for a reason.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

The only way to know if someone is a child molester is if they're on the sex offender list. If they're on that list, then they've already been convicted of the crime, and served their punishment. If it's someone that's been accused of being a child molester, then they're considered by law to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Also, if you see someone commit a crime, it's your duty to report it to the police. That's what the police are there for. If the person isn't convicted and punished for the crime, then maybe there was a reason for it (maybe he/she testified in another case in exchange for immunity, there wasn't enough evidence to convict, etc). Finally, if someone pulls out a concealed weapon to shoot a robber, then that's self defense, assuming the robber also had a weapon and/or and was threatening the life of the victim.

See more bullshit. They were accused rapists. The story about them being lynched for being successful comes from one militant black woman with a political agenda. I told you, I've done my research. Those stories are complete fiction.

You can trivialize anything. Maybe the charges were false, maybe not, but the point is that they were lynched for being accused rapists, not because they were black.

I can say that Tim McVeigh was executed solely for being a white man who opposed the government. It doesn't make it true.

Accused is a far cry of guilty. See, here in the US, people are considered innocent until PROVEN guilty in a court of law.

One is far better entitled to trust one's own judgment with respect to a fairly innocuous offense as opposed to something as serious as murder.

In deciding whether or not to obey the law, I am obligated to abide by a higher standard of demonstration when it comes to murder than when it comes to some innocuous offense.

But in deciding whether or not to submit to the punishment, assuming I have already met this standard, the same consideration does not apply: I already know that the act, however serious, was justified, and the question with which I am faced is simply whether or not to submit to the punishment.

But you are not the one who gets to decide what counts as an exception for murder: you have admitted so yourself. You have said that you will abide by society's standards of guilt, of evidence, of desert. But what if society does not think "I killed him because he deserved it" counts as a justification in the same way that self-defense does? Again, recall the reason for which I raised the issue of theoretical justifications for self-defense: they arise out of an "anyone else would have done the same thing" argument. Can the same be said for vengeance?

In a society without the death penalty, you'd be right: by killing for a crime that society has not decided deserves death, I'd be usurping society's rightful authority.

In a society with the death penalty (and for the specific crime at issue), the situation changes somewhat: I must satisfy every relevant consideration the legal process would grant (not necessarily the specific procedures, but the ends they serve), but if I do, I have acquired the same justification as the court that sentences someone to die.

Supposing this, perhaps your claim is that your "justified" rebellion occurs at the moment a sentence is handed down not to your liking: since you did no moral wrong (again, I disagree), they "should have" found in your favor, and you are under no obligation to accept the sentence (if you can avoid it). But then your entire appearance in court was in bad faith, since you never intended to submit to the court's judgment: you are already so sure you know the difference between right and wrong, whom else should tell you?

The standard is this: I am required to abide by the law to the extent that its dictates are just (perhaps even "not unjust"), and furthermore to the extent that its procedural guarantees are likely to ensure that it approximates justice more than my personal opinion does.

Thus, I am obligated to submit to the court's judgment in a somewhat ambiguous case where my biases play a role, even if I don't agree with it.

Thus, because I must always attempt legal means first, I am obligated to appear in court even if I am innocent.

But if I am innocent and know it, if I have something close to as much certainty as we can get in this world, and all the legal means I attempt fail, I have no obligation to submit to an unjust ruling.

Does that mean that I am using the legal means "in bad faith"? I don't think so. To the contrary, I am recognizing the importance of the rule of law: I will make every effort to let the law's decree be consistent with justice, but ultimately I have no obligation to sacrifice my freedom for a decree that is not just.

If you like, look at it this way: you believe that a vengeance killing, provided you know the person deserves it, is at worst morally neutral--but I disagree, and I'll presume to say I have at least plausible arguments in my favor. This is not to say that you do not also have some fair arguments, but rather to suggest that you cannot have sufficient moral certainty to put yourself above the law.

I suppose. And if I were actually considering carrying out vigilante justice, an argument like that might stop me, at least if I were still thinking rationally.

But I am not. I'm not particularly concerned with this question as an immediate practical matter at all--after all, even my justification only allows for it in the most marginal of cases. I'm much more interested in the theoretical underpinning behind the absoluteness of the opposition to it.

The fact is that very, very few death row inmates try to overturn their conviction--in fact, in almost every case this would be impossible. Rather, they attempt to appeal the sentence. Ultimately, this has very little to do with what the law refers to as "fact" about which certainty is possible.

The "truth" here is not the facts of the case, but the question of desert: did the specific crime actually merit the death penalty?

I must be able to answer that question affirmatively with just as much surety and support as I did the first.

Perhaps more importantly, you forget that a procedural guarantee is exactly that: even the most obviously guilty convicted scum has the right to know that every possible avenue has been pursued before he is deprived of his life.

He has a right to know that he has not been killed arbitrarily, or without sufficient basis.

I don't see why he has a right to the specific procedures.

More importantly, the whole point of mercy is that it expresses the limitations of the law--it represents our understanding that our principles do not cover every case, cannot cover every case, because this is not in the nature of such systems. To suppose that we can know either law or morality completely is to fall into identity thinking and to exclude that which we hope to comprehend. There are holes in theory, realities for which there is no term because language has excluded them. If we hope to consider ourselves truly moral, then our morality begs for a note of humility... a recognition that we are not gods.

There's a great difference between "Our standards don't (and can't) fully encompass moral truth" and "We can actually know, in specific cases and not on the basis of standards, that some people's crimes should be mitigated, and furthermore we can trust an individual to make such a decision."

Read Rousseau. Read Kant.

I have and I will.

But if you prefer something more substantive, consider the notion that the highest human value is freedom and that people are not truly free until they obey a law they legislate to themselves--that is, democratically.

Who am I to tell people what their "highest value" is?

If people prefer to live under benevolent, effective autocratic rule than incompetent, inefficient democratic rule, if those are the only two options then I can see no moral basis for having the latter over the former.

Of course, if their preferences are the opposite, then even according to a pure utilitarian standard incompetent, inefficient democratic rule is better.

You seem to think that a court system acting in good faith and with no corruption would not need appeals. I strenuously disagree.

No, it still would, because of the imperfections characterizing human judgment.

It has always been under the assumption of the presence of support sufficient to overcome those imperfections that I am willing to justify vigilantism.

Read Martin Luther King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail." He makes the point far more eloquently than I ever could.

King makes two arguments: first, that refusing to accept society's punishment would lead to anarchy, and second, that accepting society's penalty serves "to arouse the conscience of the community."

With regard to the first, he invokes the same slippery slope that I objected to earlier in this discussion: just because I do not accept that, say, Daniel Berrigan did anything wrong when evading capture does not mean that I think anyone can evade the law for any reason.

With regard to the second, that is true, but is fundamentally a practical question: in the process of using civil disobedience to change the laws, will the purpose be better served by going to prison or by evading it? It is not a question of obligation.

The crucial difference here, I think, is that you and King see disobedience of the law as solely a method to bring about a change in the law. I agree that it can (and should) be used as such, but I also maintain that it can be used to minimize the harm of the law while it exists.

What if there is not yet any social movement to change the law? My individual civil disobedience becomes useless--all I have accomplished is securing my own imprisonment, and for nothing worth the penalty.

They are making two different kinds of claims: one is political, the other is ethical.

Politics, as much as it must be grounded in ethics, cannot be reduced to it.

While their claim of authority may be political, their claim that their authority should matter with respect to the criminal--that their authority is rightful enough to not qualify as an immoral imposition of will--is necessarily ethical.

In deciding whether or not to obey the law, I am obligated to abide by a higher standard of demonstration when it comes to murder than when it comes to some innocuous offense.Yes, but that means nothing if you are unwilling to submit to the public's judgment and the penalty for your crime.

In fact, I'll go so far as to say that the only thing which might offer vengeance some legitimacy is the perpetrator's willingness to abide by the public judgment. If you are going to take another person's life in your hands, you should wager your own on your judgment: if you really believe you are right, if you believe the case is so compelling, then make that case in a public tribunal.

Classic republicanism used to include this rule for leaders who took it upon themselves to defy the law in the name of what they perceived to be the public good, or for making certain kinds of revolutionary proposals: having so acted, they must submit to the public judgment. They should either be granted the highest honors the state has to offer, or they should be executed.

I don't care how certain you are, no one gets to be a judge in his own case. I believe in the rule of law, and that means no one is above the law.

But in deciding whether or not to submit to the punishment, assuming I have already met this standard, the same consideration does not apply: I already know that the act, however serious, was justified, and the question with which I am faced is simply whether or not to submit to the punishment.No, you cannot know that it was justified until the public decides whether it was justified.

You remain completely inconsistent on this point: you insist that you would accept public (legal) standards of guilt and desert for the criminal you kill, but not for yourself. If the law (applied correctly) says that a criminal was justified or that he does not deserve death, you have admitted that you would comply with the law in judging him. But the same law does not offer an exception for vigilante justice.

Why apply the law in the first place, if you are so sure you know better anyway?

In a society without the death penalty, you'd be right: by killing for a crime that society has not decided deserves death, I'd be usurping society's rightful authority.And what about the method of death? In the few liberal democracies that still persist in the death penalty, the tendency has been towards carefully controlled methods that minimize (at least in theory) the suffering of the individual. Will you administer lethal injection? How? Will you first attack and subdue your victim so that you can bring him to the death chamber? What about laws requiring witnesses? What about the time offered to death row inmates to consider their fate, to make peace with their god(s), to speak with their families?

I just don't see how vigilante justice, no matter how "right" the judgment, even begins to approximate the norms of legitimate execution as they have developed over the last two centuries.

In a society with the death penalty (and for the specific crime at issue), the situation changes somewhat: I must satisfy every relevant consideration the legal process would grant (not necessarily the specific procedures, but the ends they serve), but if I do, I have acquired the same justification as the court that sentences someone to die.No, you haven't.

A court's authority does not proceed from its being right. It proceeds from a political grant.

I tire of circling around this point. Tell me where your vigilante gets the authority to kill. You keep avoiding the question, and it is really the only question I have.

Thus, I am obligated to submit to the court's judgment in a somewhat ambiguous case where my biases play a role, even if I don't agree with it.Are you always perfectly aware of your biases? Are they not biases precisely because they cloud judgment?

You might be able to make some case for objectivity in judging someone else, but what about yourself? Are you really so arrogant as to believe that there is no possibility that your reasoning (however solid it may appear to you) has been affected by your own (rather large) stake in the case.

There is a reason that we don't allow people to be judges in their own cases.

Thus, because I must always attempt legal means first, I am obligated to appear in court even if I am innocent.

But if I am innocent and know it, if I have something close to as much certainty as we can get in this world, and all the legal means I attempt fail, I have no obligation to submit to an unjust ruling.

Does that mean that I am using the legal means "in bad faith"? I don't think so.That's the definition of bad faith.

To the contrary, I am recognizing the importance of the rule of lawNo, you're not. The rule of law means the law rules. Not you.

I suppose. And if I were actually considering carrying out vigilante justice, an argument like that might stop me, at least if I were still thinking rationally.But the argument ruins you.

You have supposed that it is possible to have perfect knowledge of the facts of the case. Fine.

You have supposed that it is possible to have perfect knowledge of the law, so as to determine desert. Dubious, but fine.

But what lies beneath it all is the supposition that it is possible to have perfect moral knowledge--so perfect, in fact, that you know anyone who disagrees with you is simply wrong.

You presume that you, alone, know the final answers to the questions that plague ethical philosophers--intelligent and mostly reasonable people, to be sure. You presume that you alone know that the Kantian objection to vigilantism is not, after all, credible; that, in fact, a utilitarian calculus is the way to go.

Even if you know within your own ethical frame that it is right to kill for vengeance, are you really prepared to say that you know that your ethical frame is the right one?

Do you know it so well that you can commit murder and scoff at a society that disagrees with your ethics?

You claim the knowledge of a god. It is the height of arrogance, and it defies every notion of the rule of law. Perhaps I'm a bit of a Hobbesian on this point, but I maintain that we establish political legitimacy precisely because it is all too easy for each of us to adopt whichever moral frame is convenient to the argument we are trying to make: that is why I find it intellectually dishonest that you refuse to commit to a consistent moral frame for your own evaluations. You freely admit that you use utilitarianism when it suits you and a duty-ethics when utilitarianism is distasteful to you.

I'm much more interested in the theoretical underpinning behind the absoluteness of the opposition to it.Whereas I think it should be clear that yours is the positive case to make. You want to prove an exception to murder--so prove it.

Explain to me what gives you the power to exercise judgment, to exact punishment, from another human being.

Clarify this, among other things: is vengeance a moral imperative? must I exact punishment? or is vengeance merely allowable--I may, but I do not have to?

The "truth" here is not the facts of the case, but the question of desert: did the specific crime actually merit the death penalty?A separate question from, "Do I have the power to punish someone who deserves it?" Answer that.

There's a great difference between "Our standards don't (and can't) fully encompass moral truth" and "We can actually know, in specific cases and not on the basis of standards, that some people's crimes should be mitigated, and furthermore we can trust an individual to make such a decision."But that's the point. It's a confrontation with what we cannot know. You are trying to re-introduce principles to the judgment, but the whole point is that mercy occurs at the limits of principle.

But the real problem is that you weight the question in the wrong direction. When considering whether to take someone's life, the question is not, "Can I know that he deserves clemency?" The question is, rather, "How certain am I that all my logic really proves he deserves death? How certain am I that I am not leaving out something crucial?" I must know that there is much I am leaving out: there has to be, it is the nature of language and ordered systems. The question is, "What if something I'm leaving out, something I cannot see, would change my mind if only I could see it?"

Who am I to tell people what their "highest value" is?Hey, you're the utilitarian. Don't you think it should be "happiness"? Or "pleasure"? Or do you prefer "utility," which, in order to avoid tautology, must be interpreted as "interest"?

If people prefer to live under benevolent, effective autocratic rule than incompetent, inefficient democratic rule, if those are the only two options then I can see no moral basis for having the latter over the former.Hiding a democratic note in there?

Rousseau thought we could have democratic laws without democratic government (administration). I am of the same mind.

Of course, if their preferences are the opposite, then even according to a pure utilitarian standard incompetent, inefficient democratic rule is better.Yes, but again: you hide the fundamental democratic point. It depends on what the people want, not what is "right."

King makes two arguments: first, that refusing to accept society's punishment would lead to anarchy, and second, that accepting society's penalty serves "to arouse the conscience of the community."One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.I just want to provide the whole quotation. We clearly have a different sense of where the emphasis lies.

With regard to the first, he invokes the same slippery slope that I objected to earlier in this discussion: just because I do not accept that, say, Daniel Berrigan did anything wrong when evading capture does not mean that I think anyone can evade the law for any reason.Within your own moral code, yes... but that's the problem. It remains your own moral code. The political consequence of your maxim is most assuredly anarchy, in the worst possible sense. You maintain that individuals may defy the law without accepting punishment whenever they are certain, according to their own moral code, that they are justified. But this is to open the door for people being judges in their own cases--precisely what the rule of law is imposed to prevent.

With regard to the second, that is true, but is fundamentally a practical question: in the process of using civil disobedience to change the laws, will the purpose be better served by going to prison or by evading it? It is not a question of obligation.King doesn't make it a practical question, you do. For King, it is about motivation, about heart, about being a moral example even when no one is paying attention.

The crucial difference here, I think, is that you and King see disobedience of the law as solely a method to bring about a change in the law.No. You're misreading both of us.

I agree that it can (and should) be used as such, but I also maintain that it can be used to minimize the harm of the law while it exists.How does committing murder minimize the harm of the law? Rather it undermines good laws, laws against killing each other.

What if there is not yet any social movement to change the law?Moral examples need not wait on a ready audience.

My individual civil disobedience becomes useless--all I have accomplished is securing my own imprisonment, and for nothing worth the penalty.This is becoming tedious. You're a utilitarian, I'm not. We're just going to go around and around in circles on this one.

While their claim of authority may be political, their claim that their authority should matter with respect to the criminal--that their authority is rightful enough to not qualify as an immoral imposition of will--is necessarily ethical.No, it's not.

Who commits the ethical wrong in handing down an incorrect sentence? Is it the judge, who applied the law according to the rules set out for her? Is it the jury, who evaluated the facts and concluded (however, in fact wrongly) that they left no room for reasonable doubt? Is it the jailer or executioner who sees that the sentence, duly laid out, is carried through?

Is it an ethical wrong to be mistaken?

What makes the police inherently bad?

They keep busting into my underground pastry facilities.

I lost my right hand Muffin Man last week...he's serving 500-600 a day to a bunch of burly convicts..practically slave-labour.
Yea...all because of those police. I mean..pigs.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

Vigilantes don't take the "law" into their own hands. They take "revenge" into their own hands and by doing so they destroy the rule of law.

Justice is served through law, not through revenge.

The only way to know if someone is a child molester is if they're on the sex offender list.

Which is not fool proof, since there are other things one can do to get on the sex offender's register.

vigilantism is inheirently blind to the threat within its own midst, which is invariably the greatest threat of all.

even a cop, politician or king, cannot be safely permitted to remain above their own law. niether can the rest of us.

nor is a more brutal world one i would prefer to live in. rather and by far, one that is less so.

=^^=
.../\...

If you are going to take another person's life in your hands, you should wager your own on your judgment: if you really believe you are right, if you believe the case is so compelling, then make that case in a public tribunal.

But they have no reason to accept my argument. Indeed, as a legal matter, they must not, for the reason already reviewed: to do so would fundamentally undermine the authority of the judicial system, and in the very important realm of protecting the rights of the acquitted.

Why apply the law in the first place, if you are so sure you know better anyway?

Because I'm not, not always and in all respects.

I just don't see how vigilante justice, no matter how "right" the judgment, even begins to approximate the norms of legitimate execution as they have developed over the last two centuries.

It can't, and on those grounds you're right that a vigilante is not practically able to apply this society's standards of desert.

But the real question at issue here is not that, but another: should the vigilante apply those standards, if he or she is able?

A court's authority does not proceed from its being right. It proceeds from a political grant.

I tire of circling around this point. Tell me where your vigilante gets the authority to kill. You keep avoiding the question, and it is really the only question I have.

I avoid explicitly answering this question because I have no idea what you want.

I accept that there is a logical difference between "This person deserves x" and "I should actually impose x upon him or her", but I fail to see the ethical consideration that distinguishes between the two, the basis by which I (sometimes) cannot do to someone what that person deserves.

You say that the burden of proof is on me, because I seek to make an exception to murder, but I have already satisfied that burden in that it is already clear why this particular case is exceptional: murder, in ordinary circumstances, is not what the victim deserves, and does not come as a consequence of a horrific crime.

No, there is something else here, something my argument must overcome, and until you explain what you're getting at any attempt I make to meet this challenge is firing in the dark.

To put it another way: you must explain why murder is wrong beyond the obvious consideration of the victim deserving to live, which does not apply here.

Are you always perfectly aware of your biases? Are they not biases precisely because they cloud judgment?

You might be able to make some case for objectivity in judging someone else, but what about yourself? Are you really so arrogant as to believe that there is no possibility that your reasoning (however solid it may appear to you) has been affected by your own (rather large) stake in the case.

There is a reason that we don't allow people to be judges in their own cases.

All of those considerations are important. I've never denied as much--in fact, if past discussions are indicative, it may be that I carry this line of reasoning even further than you do. It is, also, precisely my argument for accepting social contract logic in ordinary circumstances.

The problem is that turning this into an absolute rule stretches credulity. I am likely to be biased against anyone I believe to have murdered a family member. But if I, and a dozen others, saw the murderer commit the act, must I nevertheless reserve judgment on even that aspect of the case?

That's the definition of bad faith.

Most defenders of violent revolution are willing to admit that it should only happen if peaceful, legal means of changing the system fail.

If such defenders vote--if, indeed, they are elected to office, and participate in policymaking--are they acting in bad faith?

I don't think so. They have never accepted, as a rule, that peaceful, legal means are to be used, and then abandoned it when it became inconvenient. Rather, they have recognized the importance of peace and law, and as such make every effort to achieve their aims within the limits of that framework--but are not willing to sacrifice justice to that consideration, and do not maintain otherwise.

Even if you know within your own ethical frame that it is right to kill for vengeance, are you really prepared to say that you know that your ethical frame is the right one?

Are you prepared to say the same for yours?

You make the assumption that because we cannot be sure we have it right, we must trust that the law does. But why make such an assumption? Surely the law has been wrong before, and sometimes is wrong now?

Is it a matter, as I have suggested in other contexts, of the procedures of a democratic society with the rule of law being more likely to approximate right than that of an individual? But this entire notion is founded on "right" being equivalent to "the public good", which is itself a moral notion that could be questioned on a variety of grounds.

Do you know it so well that you can commit murder and scoff at a society that disagrees with your ethics?

Passivity is itself an action. Do you know your own moral framework so well that you can not commit murder and watch the person you would have killed go off and kill a dozen others?

There is no way to avoid making a choice. Even "I accept society's judgment" is a choice, and its support is not self-evidently less tenuous. If I am on the run for committing a crime, the penalty for which is the death penalty, and society requires that you turn me in, do not your arguments suggest that you should do so? But, then, while you have not committed murder, you have certainly given me up to people who will kill me--a rather serious matter, and one about which, by your own argument, you can never truly be sure that you are right.

that is why I find it intellectually dishonest that you refuse to commit to a consistent moral frame for your own evaluations. You freely admit that you use utilitarianism when it suits you and a duty-ethics when utilitarianism is distasteful to you.

If that were actually what I am doing, you'd be right: it would absolutely be intellectually dishonest. But it is not. I've tried to keep the discussion away from my particular moral standpoint because you said you wanted to avoid the utilitarianism/deontology debate for now, but since you're making a direct challenge I'll clarify.

For starters, I am not any sort of utilitarian--at least not one who is anything close to "pure." I am willing to admit of a variety of moral considerations that are not reducible to utility: desert, for one, but there are others.

I am, however, a consequentialist--again, at least in terms of resolving the "objective" ethical question of "What should I do?" I make no distinction, in terms of obligation, between "let happen" and "directly caused": I would definitely admit a mitigatory difference between the former and the latter, but I am not willing to admit the kind of consideration of direct moral responsibility that lets non-consequentialists argue that it is better to not kill one innocent person to save a hundred, because it means that, even if a hundred people die, one does not oneself cause the deaths of an innocent person.

As for "duty-ethics", it comes into play most importantly when it comes to why morality is binding. I have accepted the argument that it is connected to reason, to the rational necessity of acting on reasons rather than causes, and with it at least part of the Kantian notion of free will and the notion that maxims of action, to be legitimate, must be universalizable.

But this, while it makes me perhaps something of a "rule-consequentialist", does not make my position inconsistent, or whimsical.

Clarify this, among other things: is vengeance a moral imperative? must I exact punishment? or is vengeance merely allowable--I may, but I do not have to?

When it comes to vigilantism, it's merely allowable, not obligatory, because acting outside the law in that way carries personal consequences too high for the obligation.

A separate question from, "Do I have the power to punish someone who deserves it?"

To go at this from another angle: does anyone? Any institution? If so, why?

The question is, "What if something I'm leaving out, something I cannot see, would change my mind if only I could see it?"

Isn't that always possible?

Hiding a democratic note in there?

Why "hiding"? Actually, my line of argument quite intentionally has that note of self-determination in there. That is precisely why it convinced me... despite a long and adamant period of insisting the opposite.

Now, of course, I have stated that I am willing (in theory) to tolerate undemocratic rule, but only when doing so better satisfies the people's preferences than otherwise. This is not a simple matter of materially letting the people decide, because the people may be uninformed, or not intelligent or rational enough to make the right choice: they may not recognize that the democracy will be inefficient and incompetent, for instance. (The key to recognizing the importance of democracy, of course, is recognizing that even if the people's judgment here is imperfect, that of an individual--even of several individuals, several very intelligent and knowledgeable individuals--is likely to be worse, simply because of the constraints of a private perspective and the temptations of power.)

The real question is: if the people were perfectly intelligent and completely knowledgeable, what policies would they prefer?

Within your own moral code, yes... but that's the problem. It remains your own moral code. The political consequence of your maxim is most assuredly anarchy, in the worst possible sense. You maintain that individuals may defy the law without accepting punishment whenever they are certain, according to their own moral code, that they are justified. But this is to open the door for people being judges in their own cases--precisely what the rule of law is imposed to prevent.

Your argument here calls into question not only my reasoning, but also your own. For if you are willing to grant that we are entitled, we may even be obligated, to disobey an unjust law (according to one's own moral code), then your principle has the same consequences as mine.

The difference is only the matter of submission, but this hardly solves the problem: society does not make laws so that people can be punished, it makes laws so that people obey them.

How does committing murder minimize the harm of the law?

I was referring there to disobeying unjust laws, not vigilantism, where the reasoning is somewhat different: it is not the harm of the law that I minimize, but the harm of its corrupt application.

Is it an ethical wrong to be mistaken?

No, but it is an ethical wrong to kill (or imprison, or fine, or otherwise punish) someone without justification. Is this not your entire point?

You maintain that the court has authority, and the individual does not, but you ignore the fact the court, too, must ethically justify its political authority over the individual--it cannot simply move from "The state has given us the power" to "We actually have the right." More importantly, for your argument to be consistent this ethical justification must be so strong that it escapes the problems with ethical justification that you have elaborated on so extensively above.

Which is not fool proof, since there are other things one can do to get on the sex offender's register.

I know. In some areas, taking a piss in an alley is enough to get you on the list. :rolleyes:

I say that all us right-minded citizens should string up these vigilantes for breaking the law.

vigilantism is inheirently blind to the threat within its own midst, which is invariably the greatest threat of all.

even a cop, politician or king, cannot be safely permitted to remain above their own law. niether can the rest of us.

nor is a more brutal world one i would prefer to live in. rather and by far, one that is less so.

=^^=
.../\...

You don't think that if a vigilante killed the wrong person that he would not hunt himself down and mete out his own brand of justice on himself if the courts were powerless to do so?

You don't think that if a vigilante killed the wrong person that he would not hunt himself down and mete out his own brand of justice on himself if the courts were powerless to do so?

"And soon it turned out i was investigating myself.....havent found much...suspicious..."

Best song making fun of the cold war EVER. It disses McCarthyism and everythign

It can't, and on those grounds you're right that a vigilante is not practically able to apply this society's standards of desert.

But the real question at issue here is not that, but another: should the vigilante apply those standards, if he or she is able?No.

I avoid explicitly answering this question because I have no idea what you want.I find that hard to believe, especially since you have now (again) managed to avoid a very specific question in reference to this point.

Let's cut through the bullshit and start somewhere concrete: do you hold that vengeance is morally permissible or morally required?

You say that the burden of proof is on me, because I seek to make an exception to murder, but I have already satisfied that burden in that it is already clear why this particular case is exceptional: murder, in ordinary circumstances, is not what the victim deserves, and does not come as a consequence of a horrific crime.But you have not explained why that should be relevant to justifying my crime.

Murder is generally defined as killing a person with malice aforethought--that is, intentional killing.

The exceptions for murder rely on the principle that under the circumstance involved the killer did not intend or prefer the death of her victim--as in self-defense, she acted as any person would to protect her own life, and the killing was, in important respects, incidental.

But a vengeance killing is planned and carefully executed with no other intention than the death of the victim.

If I know that you intend to kill my best friend tomorrow (let us say I overheard you discussing it), but no one will believe me, may I kill you to save my friend? No: the case does not admit of either a legal or a moral exception.

What you have provided is a sympathetic (perhaps) motive for murder, and I will admit that it mitigates the seriousness of your offense: you would make a good case for leniency, for a light punishment. But your act is surely murder in every sense that word has ever had.

No, there is something else here, something my argument must overcome, and until you explain what you're getting at any attempt I make to meet this challenge is firing in the dark.I keep telling you, but you keep resisting/avoiding/ignoring it because it does not accord with your utilitarian principles. I say this is the reason we will keep going in circles, because our real disagreement is about the duties owed to other human beings regardless of consequence.

I maintain that you may not treat another human being as a means to an end, that you must treat each as an end-in-himself. You have already admitted that your case for retribution is weak, because retributive justice depends on precisely the kinds of arguments that necessarily tend toward the conclusion that justice must be cloaked in authority--and/or because utilitarianism has traditionally attacked retribution as "useless" suffering. But the utilitarian argument for deterrence or incapacitation fails utterly if one believes that a criminal must be treated as an end-in-himself. He may not be used for the good of others.

Thus, our disagreement comes down to this: I cannot be convinced by any utilitarian argument you offer, unless you actually want to make the philosophical case for utilitarianism (and even then, I am unlikely to be swayed this late in my philosophical development on the issue). Meanwhile, to make an argument for retribution you need to convince me not only that a criminal deserves to die, but that the vigilante possesses a positive grant of authority that makes the difference between "retribution" and "vengeance."

I see a vigilante's killing as vengeance. Explain to me why I should see it as retribution.

To put it another way: you must explain why murder is wrong beyond the obvious consideration of the victim deserving to live, which does not apply here.Murder, like any offense against a person, is wrong insofar as it takes them as a means to some other end.

The problem is that turning this into an absolute rule stretches credulity. I am likely to be biased against anyone I believe to have murdered a family member. But if I, and a dozen others, saw the murderer commit the act, must I nevertheless reserve judgment on even that aspect of the case?You need not reserve judgment on the facts of the case (though eye-witness testimony is increasingly questionable), but you must reserve judgment as to what we should do about it.

Most defenders of violent revolution are willing to admit that it should only happen if peaceful, legal means of changing the system fail.

If such defenders vote--if, indeed, they are elected to office, and participate in policymaking--are they acting in bad faith?If they vote and they are elected to office, against what are they revolting? Bad policies? I do not believe anyone has the right to revolt against bad policies, only bad systems.

I don't think so. They have never accepted, as a rule, that peaceful, legal means are to be used, and then abandoned it when it became inconvenient. Rather, they have recognized the importance of peace and law, and as such make every effort to achieve their aims within the limits of that framework--but are not willing to sacrifice justice to that consideration, and do not maintain otherwise.It depends on what, exactly, are the legal means employed. Are they trying to make change through a referendum? Assuming there is no (or little enough) corruption at the polling places, they would be acting in bad faith to revolt after the people vote against them. You cannot say to the powers-that-be, "Look! We will hold a referendum, and you will see what the people want! You must concede to their vote," only to break our own promise when they don't vote the way we want.

If you don't see it from this side, consider it from the side of the existing authority: to agree to a referendum knowing that if it doesn't go my way I'll just ignore it is to take it in bad faith. It is no different for the revolutionary: it cannot be, unless we give him special moral consideration simply for being a revolutionary. And that would be unjust and absurd.

Are you prepared to say the same for yours?No, I'm not.

You make the assumption that because we cannot be sure we have it right, we must trust that the law does.*sigh* How many times do I have to repeat the sentence, "It's not about being right"?

But why make such an assumption? Surely the law has been wrong before, and sometimes is wrong now?Yes. We are wrong, the law is wrong. But the central problem of politics is that, right and wrong aside, often we need binding decisions--we need a mechanism through which to agree about what to do even when we disagree profoundly about what should be done. This grant of authority is not based on being "right," but rather on it offer of procedures that reach a binding decision through and because of a fair hearing to all relevant perspectives.

Is it a matter, as I have suggested in other contexts, of the procedures of a democratic society with the rule of law being more likely to approximate right than that of an individual?Not at all. It's about the procedures of a democratic society with the rule of law being the fairest way to reach a binding decision when opinions disagree. It is not, and never has been, about democracies "getting it right." If that's what you want, your theory needs the philosopher-king. Mine does not.

Passivity is itself an action. Do you know your own moral framework so well that you can not commit murder and watch the person you would have killed go off and kill a dozen others?My own moral framework is a guide for me. I have my own conscience to deal with. And know that the ethic I have chosen, one of duty to individuals as ends-in-themselves rather than to some notion of the "greater good," is not always easy. But precisely for this reason, that it prohibits things I would otherwise like to do, I have reason to believe it really is an ethic in the proper sense: a guide to life rather than a justification for what I want to do anyway.

Your ethic must be your own guide: if you believe you are morally required to kill, then you must do so. But where humility steps in, where my refusal to claim certainty appears, is in the public's judgment of my action (or lack thereof): I submit myself and my ethic to the scrutiny of the law, come what may.

It is not unreasonable to imagine a society in which it would be required by law to intervene with lethal force if one had strong reason to believe that a murderer would kill others, especially if he would kill several others. In refusing to kill him, in accordance with my own ethic, I might be brought before a court and tried. Indeed, there is no reason to presume a priori that the penalty for standing by might not actually be death.

I would make my case, and I would appeal to every ethical argument I have in an attempt to sway the jury or the judge. But if the determination were that I was in the wrong, I would NOT presume to say, "But I know my ethical principles are better than yours." I would submit to the legitimate authority of the court.

Isn't that always possible?Yes. But I'm not always looking for reasons to kill someone.

I find that hard to believe, especially since you have now (again) managed to avoid a very specific question in reference to this point.

Let's cut through the bullshit and start somewhere concrete: do you hold that vengeance is morally permissible or morally required?

If that's the "very specific question" I avoided, then you should really be more careful reading my posts (certainly before questioning my honesty): I did answer it.

"When it comes to vigilantism, it's merely allowable, not obligatory, because acting outside the law in that way carries personal consequences too high for the obligation."

It makes sense to say that a society's legal institutions should not let people get away with crimes (regardless of any deterrent effect), but I'm not willing to say that a particular individual is obliged to risk criminal penalties (years of imprisonment? death?) to pursue that objective.

But a vengeance killing is planned and carefully executed with no other intention than the death of the victim.

Right, and that's why I haven't attempted to justify it on the grounds of self-defense.

Rather, my comparison (beyond the question of deterrence and prevention) has been to retributive killing by the state.

Meanwhile, to make an argument for retribution you need to convince me not only that a criminal deserves to die, but that the vigilante possesses a positive grant of authority that makes the difference between "retribution" and "vengeance."

I see a vigilante's killing as vengeance. Explain to me why I should see it as retribution.

My understanding of your argument is that the court system's retribution (as opposed to the vigilante's vengeance) does not treat the person solely as a means to an end, because the person, as a subject, is obliged to recognize the authority of the court.

But what if I reject this argument? What if I maintain that the court's authority is in fact illegitimate, and I have no obligation to recognize it?

You responded to this challenge earlier by arguing that the court's claim was political, and thus is not equivalent to imposing my ethical judgment on the murderer. But this is circular: you assume the ethical justification of the court's political authority, and this is precisely what I (as the hypothetical criminal) have questioned.

To return to your question: I'm not sure if vigilantism can be justified as retribution and not vengeance (by your standard of treating the person as an end-in-himself), but on the same grounds I am not sure the death penalty (or any judicial punishment) can be justified as retribution and not vengeance.

If they vote and they are elected to office, against what are they revolting? Bad policies? I do not believe anyone has the right to revolt against bad policies, only bad systems.

Severely limited suffrage--to the economically well-off, to those of a certain race--was the case I had in mind.

By extension, I might also make a case for revolution by the citizens of an imperialist power, on the grounds that in effect the imperialist structure as a whole only offers the vote to the privileged (those located within the ruling power, and possibly only some of those.)

You cannot say to the powers-that-be, "Look! We will hold a referendum, and you will see what the people want! You must concede to their vote," only to break our own promise when they don't vote the way we want.

What if instead I said:

"Look! We will hold a referendum, because we believe in lawful and peaceful means, when they are available. If the voters vote with us, all the better: we will have achieved our objective, without bloodshed, without the forcible overthrow of the established order. If the voters vote against us, we will regretfully seek other means, because they have no right to continue the existing oppressive system."

Think of the case for direct action and civil disobedience: when other means have failed, when the other side has refused to rectify the injustice despite attempts at peaceful, orderly, legal persuasion, then and only then does one resort to such tactics. Does that mean that the other attempts were in "bad faith"?

If you don't see it from this side, consider it from the side of the existing authority: to agree to a referendum knowing that if it doesn't go my way I'll just ignore it is to take it in bad faith.

The case for the existing authority is entirely different. They are obliged to accept the referendum because unlike the revolutionary they have no other leg to stand on: they are not making the case against the established system. If the established system itself turns against them, they must accept it.

This grant of authority is not based on being "right," but rather on it offer of procedures that reach a binding decision through and because of a fair hearing to all relevant perspectives.

So the point is not that it is "right" ("it reaches the right answer") but that it was "fair" ("the procedures by which the answer was arrived at were just")?

Do you make that argument on the basis of treating people as ends-in-themselves--even if I have the right answer, I cannot justifiably impose it?

My point of confusion was when you introduced the argument that we need political legitimacy because (only because?) of the uncertainty of moral legitimacy. At least on first consideration it seems that this is an argument related to right answers and not to procedural fairness: because I may be wrong, I must submit to the judgment of others. If I were right and could be sure of it, by implication, it would be a different matter.

Your ethic must be your own guide: if you believe you are morally required to kill, then you must do so. But where humility steps in, where my refusal to claim certainty appears, is in the public's judgment of my action (or lack thereof): I submit myself and my ethic to the scrutiny of the law, come what may.

Like I said in my last post, I don't think this argument fits in with the rest of the theory you've presented.

You have maintained that if people in general go by their moral inclination even against the law, and do not submit to punishment, the result will be "anarchy in the worst possible sense." But I fail to see what difference submission to punishment makes. Societal order does not depend on people accepting the punishment for crimes--it depends on people not committing them. We have not avoided a breakdown in law and order if people see themselves as entitled to murder when they see fit, even if they also see themselves as obligated to submit to punishment.

Is it a matter of the severity of the offense? But even then I do not see the difference, because submission is still irrelevant when it comes to the minor crimes that would be permissible as civil disobedience.

It seems to me that the only way you can maintain this argument is if your concern is for "the right answer": I can act extra-legally, but if I do I must submit to judgment, so that it can be determined whether or not I was wrong.

If that's the "very specific question" I avoided, then you should really be more careful reading my posts (certainly before questioning my honesty): I did answer it.No, I caught that later on, I just didn't feel like going back to edit. We really do write long-ass posts. :)

"When it comes to vigilantism, it's merely allowable, not obligatory, because acting outside the law in that way carries personal consequences too high for the obligation."See, this is the problem.

If you believe you are morally required to exact vengeance, then I could maintain that while there is no legal exception to murder, you might at least maintain a moral one: if the law, in demanding that you refrain from killing, demands that you do something unethical, then morally you need not obey.

But you say that the law, in demanding that you refrain from vengeance, does not put you into a position in which you violate your ethics; rather it prohibits you from doing something which, from your perspective, would not be wrong.

If one has any moral obligation to obey the law, then one must defer to this obligation where no competing moral obligation demands defiance. If vengeance is merely permissible--not required--then you are obliged to obey the law.

My understanding of your argument is that the court system's retribution (as opposed to the vigilante's vengeance) does not treat the person solely as a means to an end, because the person, as a subject, is obliged to recognize the authority of the court.That's right.

But what if I reject this argument? What if I maintain that the court's authority is in fact illegitimate, and I have no obligation to recognize it?Then you reject the rule of law. You reject the basis for political peace. And we are no longer in the realm of ethics proper, but in the realm of political theory.

I have agreed that where a court's authority is politically illegitimate (as in a tyrannical dictatorship), one has no obligation to comply. But where the court's authority is politically legitimate (as in a liberal democracy), one certainly does have this obligation.

You responded to this challenge earlier by arguing that the court's claim was political, and thus is not equivalent to imposing my ethical judgment on the murderer. But this is circular: you assume the ethical justification of the court's political authority, and this is precisely what I (as the hypothetical criminal) have questioned.No. The court's ethical legitimacy is contained in its political legitimacy. If the political system itself is just, one is duty-bound to obey.

To return to your question: I'm not sure if vigilantism can be justified as retribution and not vengeance (by your standard of treating the person as an end-in-himself), but on the same grounds I am not sure the death penalty (or any judicial punishment) can be justified as retribution and not vengeance.I'm certainly no fan of the death penalty, and in a different argument I might suggest that it is, in fact, illegitimate. But it seems to me that within the current argument I need only maintain that whatever legitimacy it has, vengeance surely lacks.

"Look! We will hold a referendum, because we believe in lawful and peaceful means, when they are available. If the voters vote with us, all the better: we will have achieved our objective, without bloodshed, without the forcible overthrow of the established order. If the voters vote against us, we will regretfully seek other means, because they have no right to continue the existing oppressive system."Then I would call this bad faith. You offer the people a choice, but you do not believe they have the right to choose. It's a false choice.

Think of the case for direct action and civil disobedience: when other means have failed, when the other side has refused to rectify the injustice despite attempts at peaceful, orderly, legal persuasion, then and only then does one resort to such tactics. Does that mean that the other attempts were in "bad faith"?No, because in such cases it is invariably the oppressors who offer bad-faith negotiations. They agree to the process, but then do not follow through. Read King's letter again: this is precisely what he says. He is committed to the legal process, and the problem is not that the legal process does not give him what he wants... the problem is that his opponents will not allow the legal process to function, or renege on their promises when it concludes.

So the point is not that it is "right" ("it reaches the right answer") but that it was "fair" ("the procedures by which the answer was arrived at were just")?Fair and legitimate, yes.

Do you make that argument on the basis of treating people as ends-in-themselves--even if I have the right answer, I cannot justifiably impose it?Yes. Even if I know what is good for someone, to impose it upon him is to treat him as a means to an end... even if that end happens to be his own good. To treat others as ends-in-themselves--as subjects rather than objects--is to allow them to live by their own choices.

The paradox (and I admit something of a paradox) of justice is that the state may impose sentence upon an individual as retribution, treating the person as an end-in-himself, because the crimes and procedures have been public and their legitimacy founded in a system that allows the individual a say, a vote, an influence on the public voice. Each person is a participant in the system that (may) condemn him for violating its conditions, and we may take each as a subject in the criminal justice system in that we only confront him with the public, procedural consequences of his own actions.

We can say to him, "You have been a citizen of this state, you have participated in its life, and you have known its laws. These laws you have willfully violated, and in our judgment you must abide by the consequences. We do this not because it is useful to us, not because your death will serve our ends, but precisely because you are a person who makes his own decisions. These consequences are what you have chosen for yourself, knowing our laws and our ways. Whether you chose rightly is between you and your conscience, or between you and your god(s). We have no say in such matters, but remember that we have only treated you fairly according to the laws of the land."

My point of confusion was when you introduced the argument that we need political legitimacy because (only because?) of the uncertainty of moral legitimacy.Not only because. I'm not a heartfelt Hobbesian, but I do think he has a point.

At least on first consideration it seems that this is an argument related to right answers and not to procedural fairness: because I may be wrong, I must submit to the judgment of others.Ah, no. I failed to explain, then. Hobbes' argument is essentially this: we all have different ideas of justice, and none of us can make a compelling case that this one is right and all the others wrong--at least not so compelling that we can actually convince everyone of it. But if we are going to keep everyone from being at each other's throat, we need some final answer on questions of right: it doesn't particularly matter which one it is, so long as we can agree to accept it as final. The procedural implications (some of which Hobbes draws himself, though he tries to keep his theory rather thin) are based on principles of fairness: he rejects, for example, ex post facto laws on the grounds that these amount to an act of war of the Sovereign against the people. People must know what is expected of them if they are to abide by the law. Otherwise, Hobbes at his most extreme is willing to admit of virtually arbitrary rules of justice, so long as they are applied fairly and consistently.

Again, I'm not a strong Hobbesian, but politically he has a point.

It seems to me that the only way you can maintain this argument is if your concern is for "the right answer": I can act extra-legally, but if I do I must submit to judgment, so that it can be determined whether or not I was wrong.Not really.

Morally, I must act extra-legally when a moral demand outweighs my obligation to the law (and I would argue that such cases are few enough). I may not disobey the law if what I do is simply "morally permissible" but not morally required, because in that case I violate no ethical principle by obeying the law--while my duty to the law remains constant.

When I submit to judgment, it is not about "determining whether or not I was wrong." When the court rules against me, I do not think, "Ah, I was wrong. I did not realize this." Rather, standing trial and abiding the judgment reflects the political relation between myself and the state: I have no right to impose my own moral interpretations on the public, even if I cannot morally fail to adhere to them in my own life. I may argue my case, and I may hope to sway the public, but I may not say, "If you disagree, I have no duty to abide by your judgment. I was right and you are wrong."

My actions are my own, and I must follow my own conscience. But I have no right to be a judge in my own case: this is exactly the power embodied in legitimate government. The presumption that I must not only act according to my conscience but that the state also has no power to punish me when I do is what leads to chaos. This is, again, the point that King was making: the civilly disobedient must disobey only with the intention that they shall pay the price the public has set for their disobedience. This makes all the difference between saying, "I defy the law because I am morally required to do so, but I respect the rule of law and do not consider myself above it," and saying, "I defy the law whenever the proscribed action is not itself immoral, and I do not respect the rule of law--I consider myself above it."

Accepting punishment sounds a note of humility, a note of dignity. It is precisely what makes moral defiance of the law a moral example, and it is in this sense that King respects it: there is a profound difference between someone who defies an unjust law only to run from a just one (the argument all along is that the justice of the decision does not depend on its rightness), and someone who defies an unjust law openly and (as King says) "lovingly," standing honestly for judgment before a public tribunal.

It is about respect for the law. The civilly disobedient who stands judgment (and accepts judgment) affirms that he did not defy the law for lack of respect, but in the name of a higher moral imperative. It is when this respect breaks down that we truly risk chaos.

No. The court's ethical legitimacy is contained in its political legitimacy. If the political system itself is just, one is duty-bound to obey.

Because the court is not imposing its will at all? Or because it is imposing its will with the support of the ethically legitimate political system?

If it's the first, then your argument makes sense. If it's the second, I fail to see how the imposition of this judgment is any different from that the vigilante--at least if it's not about "right."

I'm certainly no fan of the death penalty

Nor I.

To be honest, I have been assuming a stronger notion of retribution than I would necessarily defend in ordinary circumstances, because (as you state) the real issue here lies elsewhere.

Then I would call this bad faith. You offer the people a choice, but you do not believe they have the right to choose. It's a false choice.

I suppose that's true if the revolutionaries, after taking power, are trying to legitimize their actions by referendum.

What if they are not in power, but instead use a process of gathering signatures (or some similar method) to call a referendum on the subject--not to legitimize the changes they want to bring about, but simply as one means to bring them about? (And surely one preferable to violence?)

No, because in such cases it is invariably the oppressors who offer bad-faith negotiations. They agree to the process, but then do not follow through. Read King's letter again: this is precisely what he says. He is committed to the legal process, and the problem is not that the legal process does not give him what he wants... the problem is that his opponents will not allow the legal process to function, or renege on their promises when it concludes.

Yes, but the situation of Blacks in the South was somewhat different--officially, they were recognized as equal citizens, and they had to be afforded a certain kind of acknowledgment, even if it was in name only.

What if instead of one's opponents not abiding by the legal process, the legal process itself does not recognize the injustice?

We can say to him, "You have been a citizen of this state, you have participated in its life, and you have known its laws. These laws you have willfully violated, and in our judgment you must abide by the consequences. We do this not because it is useful to us, not because your death will serve our ends, but precisely because you are a person who makes his own decisions. These consequences are what you have chosen for yourself, knowing our laws and our ways. Whether you chose rightly is between you and your conscience, or between you and your god(s). We have no say in such matters, but remember that we have only treated you fairly according to the laws of the land."

It's clearly not just a matter of the consequences being known publicly... is the crucial other element the democratic character of the political system, that enables us to say, "You yourself have (in a sense) chosen these laws," or at least that "You have been offered a fair opportunity to participate in choosing them"?

If so... what about non-citizen residents?

When I submit to judgment, it is not about "determining whether or not I was wrong." When the court rules against me, I do not think, "Ah, I was wrong. I did not realize this." Rather, standing trial and abiding the judgment reflects the political relation between myself and the state: I have no right to impose my own moral interpretations on the public, even if I cannot morally fail to adhere to them in my own life.

So I do not accept judgment in deference to the end of avoiding chaos so much as in recognition of the democratic right of society to make its own laws?

If the public cannot legitimately try to coerce me into doing other than what I have done--if it cannot interfere in the business of my own conscience--then you have rejected the typical first justification for the rule of law: that it promotes peace and order. Furthermore, I do not see how you could consistently maintain that mere "submission" (as opposed to obedience before having to be punished for disobedience) has anything to do with that aim. (Though perhaps you could claim that our initial obligation to obey the law, though superseded in the case of strong moral demands, holds initially in recognition of the need for social peace.)

It seems, instead, that you have suggested that respect for the rule of law is instead predicated on respect for the other members of society as ends-in-themselves: they have the right to make society's laws, and I may not impose my own will upon them.

If that's an accurate reading, I see my point of confusion, and concede the point--at least within the ethical framework you have advanced.

Because the court is not imposing its will at all?Yes, this is an important point. The difference between the rule of law and the rule of "men" (or "persons") is that the law does not represent the will of one being applied to the will of another. It is, at most, a judgment as to how to apply the public will, a will in which the defendant himself plays a part within any form of democratic politics. (This may include democratically based governments with non-democratic or partially non-democratic "administrations," to use Rousseau's word.)

I suppose that's true if the revolutionaries, after taking power, are trying to legitimize their actions by referendum.

What if they are not in power, but instead use a process of gathering signatures (or some similar method) to call a referendum on the subject--not to legitimize the changes they want to bring about, but simply as one means to bring them about? (And surely one preferable to violence?)If they intend to take control or force their changes whatever the result, then the referendum is in bad faith.

The only revolutions I recognize as legitimate in the first place are those that respect democratic principles. Revolutionaries who defy a legitimate referendum would, at the very least, have a hard case to make if they claim nevertheless to respect democratic principles.

What if instead of one's opponents not abiding by the legal process, the legal process itself does not recognize the injustice?You try again. And again. And again.

There may come a point at which you say, "This is hopeless. Our concerns are not even being addressed by this system. We are being ignored and marginalized. They have forced our hand: we must try something else."

The resort to other means, in other words, is legitimate not merely when a legal/peaceful approach fails, but when a legal/peaceful approach clearly demonstrates that it cannot succeed.

To adhere to peace/law in good faith means to demonstrate a commitment to succeeding through such means. The bad faith approach says, "Well, let's give it a try." It has to be more than "a try," it has to involve every sincere effort to be heard: and even then one cannot defy the law simply because one loses, but only when one can demonstrate that circumstances are systematically, unjustly biased against the complaint one wants to raise.

Remember the Declaration of Independence? A "long train of abuses and usurpations"? Good faith adherence to the law requires the long train, and it requires the long train to persist against one's attempts at legal/peaceful protest. One must not take up revolution lightly. One must not suppose that the legal/peaceful process is merely "preferable." Good faith legitimacy demands considerably more than a shrug of the shoulders and a "hey, we tried."

How many decisions must go against you? That's an open question, I'll say, but it's considerably more than one or two. It must be clear that revolution or civil disobedience is not something you have chosen but something you have been forced into.

It's clearly not just a matter of the consequences being known publicly... is the crucial other element the democratic character of the political system, that enables us to say, "You yourself have (in a sense) chosen these laws," or at least that "You have been offered a fair opportunity to participate in choosing them"?I think that is important, yes.

If so... what about non-citizen residents?When it comes to non-citizen residents, I think it is appropriate to buy into the Lockean argument that they consent to the laws by residing in the country. The harder argument is actually why we should assume that native citizens consent, since they are in the country by birth rather than choice. I think democratic theory does a fair job of answering this dilemma.

Of course, I'm assuming that "non-citizen residents" refers to immigrants. A society in which some native residents are excluded from citizenship would have, I think, little claim on those non-citizens' loyalties.

So I do not accept judgment in deference to the end of avoiding chaos so much as in recognition of the democratic right of society to make its own laws?Actually, I think that these two reasons are intimately entwined with one another, but if compelled to choose I'd ask for a little more from Column B.

If the public cannot legitimately try to coerce me into doing other than what I have done--if it cannot interfere in the business of my own conscience--then you have rejected the typical first justification for the rule of law: that it promotes peace and order.Oh, but they can legitimately try to coerce you into doing other than what you have done. That they cannot interfere with the business of your conscience means only that they need not convince you that you were morally wrong to do so. Indeed, the law may say:

"In doing what you believe is right rather than what is allowed by the law, perhaps you have saved your soul. Perhaps you need not regret your decision, if you weigh your own ethics more heavily than your life. We do not judge of these things: let the divine law, if there is any such, decide the merit of your soul. We know only that you have broken the law, and you have not satisfied any legal criterion for an exception. Thus, we punish your body. We do not presume to punish your soul."

In other words, your personal morality may be binding on you, but it is not binding on the public. We may respect you for having the integrity to do what you believe is right even in the face of severe punishment, but we need not agree that you should be excused from disobedience for doing so.

Furthermore, I do not see how you could consistently maintain that mere "submission" (as opposed to obedience before having to be punished for disobedience) has anything to do with that aim.When I am confronted with a law that violates what I perceive to be a strong moral duty, I must weigh these conflicting obligations as best I may, and decide whether my perceived duty is so great that it merits disobedience.

When the law confronts me for what I have done, however, I see no moral imperative that demands I should resist. My duty to the law here is pure, and my submission sounds a note of humility: though I have decided that I could not obey a law conflicting with a strong moral demand, I should nevertheless answer for the fact that in doing so I violated my duty to the law. Even if it was not the greater duty, it is a duty nevertheless.

Again, this makes all the difference between saying, "I am above the law" as opposed to, "Though duty-bound to obey, I found that I could not do so without risking my conscience or my soul; but I am duty-bound to answer in this world, to this public, for my crimes against it, however secure my soul may be."

It seems, instead, that you have suggested that respect for the rule of law is instead predicated on respect for the other members of society as ends-in-themselves: they have the right to make society's laws, and I may not impose my own will upon them.Something like that. ;)

If that's an accurate reading, I see my point of confusion, and concede the point--at least within the ethical framework you have advanced.Thanks.

The next step would be to show that even a consequentialist ethic does not permit of vigilantism except in the most extraordinary of circumstances--extraordinary not on the point of certainty so much as on the point of its drastic consequences.

In other words, I would argue that consequentialism does not permit of vigilantism to save one life, or two (presuming arguendo a murderer likely to kill again), but rather only when a much more substantial harm is to be prevented.

The reason for this is that a consequentialist does not judge a universalized maxim based on the consequences of its being consistently applied. Rather, a consequentialist must judge of a maxim based on its actual or probable consequences.

You have attempted to argue, from a consequentialist position, that one could consistently adopt something like the following principle: "When one has compelling evidence that a person has killed and will probably kill again, one is justified in acting extra-legally to prevent his future crimes, by killing him if need be."

Universalized with perfect consistency, this would satisfy the consequentialist argument: the world is made a better place by preventing murderers from murdering again.

Yet because human beings are poor judges in their own cases, because we have differing subjective conceptions of what constitutes "compelling" evidence, the actual effect of adopting this principle, of legitimizing vigilantism to prevent other murders, is to weaken the moral/legal prohibition on murder such that individuals become more likely to commit murder--believing themselves to be acting justly under the vigilante standard.

This hardly makes the world a better place.

On the other hand, within the moral framework of consequentialism it follows naturally that there exists some threshold of prevented harm beyond which any incidental increase in wrongful vigilantism cannot outweigh the good done by it. But such situations would involve massacres, bombings perhaps, not simple murder... even, I'll venture to say, serial murder.

Anyone else support citizens who take the law into their own hands and make sure that people who have committed crimes are punished?

In an age when clearly guilty people can get off because someone mishandled evidence or sneezed on a blood sample, I think that all of us should be able to understand the need and reasons for vigilantes to step forward. Straight on down to the kids who beat up bullies to protect weaker kids in school despite being suspended for doing the right thing.

Lynching for instance got a bad name because of racist propaganda and make believe incidents in the South, but criminals of any race were the people who were lynched and I think that it was a good thing.

How can anyone support this? I mean, what about rule of law? That just goes out the window? Unless the government is completely incompetent or collapsing, vigilantism is destructive.

I'm talking for instance someone who murders a child molester that moves into their neighborhood or sees someone commit a crime themselves and the person isn't punished. Not random mobs of people hunting down accused criminals. I'm talking the kind of person that pulls out their concealed weapon and kills a robber.

Gonna go ahead and pile on here because I believe I have something to add.

So you support killing a convicted child molester for moving into your neighborhood? Let me explain something to you. If somebody's been convicted, then they've ALREADY been punished for their crime. If you don't feel the punishment was enough you don't get to decide to go kill them to make yourself feel better.

What did you think? That using a phrase like "child molester" would get people to agree with you? That sort of emotionalism DOES lead to lynchings.

And if somebody is witnessing a crime in progress, what's the point of turning to vigilanteism? Taking action to prevent it is called being a good citizen. Killing the perpetrator after the fact is murder. Better idea (if they can't prevent the crime) They can be an EYEWITNESS at the trial.

Everybody has a right to a fair trial. Period. You don't get to take that from them just to satisfy your own moral outrage.