Citizens of Justice, ponder this: what is Law metaphorically?
If you are a fan of true soul voice and passionate dialogue about injustice of the social system here in America, you must be familiar with Maya Angelou’s “Caged Bird”. It is a poem that speaks near and dear to my heart, but also tells you to get on up off of the sloth of complacency and make a difference in either your life or someone else’s life. It is, at its purest form, humanity.
Humans existed prior to the emergence of Law at a base level in a State of Nature: where no action has imposed consequences. This means that Dog #1 could murder Cat #1, then be killed by Cat #2, where Cat #2 could commit suicide, and nobody would be the wiser or punished. We have given up the “rights” to murder, steal, rape, and violate other human beings in the hopes that they don’t do this to us. A negative outlook on the criminal is not the only repercussion: an appropriate reprimand by the community laws which will be enacted and enforced upon the offender in hopes to rehabilitate them back to a more civil manner. Yes, I am hinting to Social Contract Theory.
Case in point, there have been a lot of disputes over the years that give us America today: we all know Marbury v. Madison and McCulloch v. Maryland, but have you ever wondered why porn stars walking naked around an adult film set aren’t tried for public indecency? Well, pornography is a form of free speech (don’t even get me started there), but where I’m going with this is Miller v. California which dictates that obscenity is determined by the collective interests of the community – ergo it must have a socially redeeming factor. The social factor is what sets American society different from British society, Italian society, and Middle-Eastern society.
Lawrence v. Texas is the reason why today people can burn the American Flag as a form of free speech – 1st Amendment debates are a hot topic today because of the general notion that just because someone says something you do not find particularly favorable, they don’t have to shut up. Certain fundamental rights like the right to marry cannot be denied to same-sex couples per Obergefell v. Hodges. Subsequently, Miller v. Davis showed what could happen if you refuse to enforce a law in a public position on the basis of the 1st Amendment.
Law is full of loopholes – a prominent example of this would be Liebeck v. McDonald’s Restaurants where the defendant was compensated very generously due to McDonald’s scalding hot coffee, a bizarre set of circumstances, and lack of Torts reform. There is also another conundrum highlighted in Jay Feinman’s “Law 101” that if one car is headed north at a 4-way stop and is hit in the middle by cars coming from the east and west, no car is at fault based on the assumption that if either car did not cause the accident, the other one would have. It seems unfair right? That is what the system of Tort Reform attempts to remedy in today’s society.
I could go on and on about how law affects us on a minute-by-minute basis, but you have to get out into the world and become good, tax-paying citizens operating under this operant conditioning system known as the American Criminal Justice System. Do not deviate, because you might find yourself talking to an attorney, and not in a good sense.
Always a pleasure. Venture Forth, Citizens of Justice!
