Comment on Yale Posting It's Ls
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 day agoThe law is extremely clear in this regard - the ICE dude murdered a person for no reason. The rules on the use of deadly force literally use a moving car as an example of when not to use deadly force - as long as there are “other defence options, such as moving out of the way”.
When the people tasked with upholding the law consistently disregard it in particular circumstances - as they do when it comes to abuse of power by law enforcement - that law only exists in the circumstances in which it is consistently applied. Things like qualified immunity have effectively nullified any law that ostensibly holds law enforcement accountable. The law does not exist for any other purpose except to protect the dominant socioeconomic group in a given country without binding them, while binding the subjugated socioeconomic group without protecting them. Who is in which group is dynamic and always subject to change, but this rule almost always holds except in cases where very skilled lawyers are able to argue in court that someone in the latter group actually belongs to the former in some specific circumstance. That is the law being used for something that it was not designed to do, a bit like an exploit in a video game soon to be patched.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 1 day ago
“In any given fundamentally broken country”, you mean?
The law absolutely does exist for other purposes. Otherwise we wouldn’t have as robust anti money laundering laws, child protection laws, rape laws, human rights laws, etc., etc.
eestileib@lemmy.blahaj.zone 15 hours ago
All those laws are only enforced against disfavored groups.
Rich people got to engage in all the Epstein stuff and are all still free.
Elon can create an industrial child porn machine and all the governments are totally unbothered.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 15 hours ago
Enforcement of laws is a separate issue to the existence of laws.
Remember how Trump was talking about starting for a third term? Which is illegal in the US? Well, they intended to introduce legislation that would allow him to start legally. Problem is that if they did that, Obama could also start. Their solution? Add a clause that it had to be a third term within one term of the previous term, or something like that. Making it illegal for Obama to start but legal for Trump to start.
That’s a law that “exists for no other purpose except to protect/benefit the dominant socioeconomic group”.
A law saying “if you kill a dude for no reason, you’re going to jail” is not, even if oh so often certain class of mostly white guys are exempt from it.
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 16 hours ago
All of those laws are unequally enforced. Anti money laundering laws are applied only to the subjugated socioeconomic group (drug dealers belonging to the working class, etc.). The dominant socioeconomic group gets their children protected, their rape victims to receive justice, their human rights defended. The subjugated socioeconomic group rarely benefits from these laws, which is why thousands of rape kits sit in warehouses never being investigated, why children born into poverty are more often separated from their parents and institutionalized rather than receiving the help they need, and why human rights are routinely violated without consequence.
The people making such laws can sometimes intend for them to be universal, but such people fundamentally misunderstand the nature of laws, and it never quite pans out that way in practice.
Alaknar@sopuli.xyz 15 hours ago
There’s a massive gulf between “the purpose of a law existing” and “a law being enforced”.
I know you don’t work in the field because you have no idea how absolutely, ridiculously hilarious this statement is. :D
Also, calling drug dealers “working class” is certainly a vibe…
Are you from the US?
The laws ARE universal. But because humans are humans (therefore: shitty), they’re not being universally or equally enforced.
And none of this changes the fact that laws do not, in fact, “exist for [no] other purpose except to protect the dominant socioeconomic group”.
stephan262@lemmy.world 12 hours ago
“The purpose of a system is what it does.”
You are right. Laws are universal and apply equally to everyone. The problem is the systems that exist to create and apply those laws. There are far too many cases of the law being selective in who it protects and who it punishes for me to believe that it upholds fairness. I also don’t believe it’s a fundamental human failing, I think it’s functioning exactly as its corrupt creators intended.