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If you know there are police ahead you will slow down. That’s much better for safety than everyone speeding and a few people getting expensive tickets.
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I think we could both come up with any number of examples when the fair thing to do would be to distinguish two seemingly identical acts with their contexts and charge people differently.
Let’s say that two people both punched a guy in the mouth, no permanent or serious damage done but a punch in the mouth nonetheless. Person A punched a guy in the mouth because that guy was loudly spouting racial slurs in front of Person A’s kids, and when asked to stop became belligerent and expressed even more ugly thoughts about the children. Person B punched a guy at a bar because he didn’t like that the guy had been holding hands with another man earlier.
Perhaps some might feel differently, but I think it’s pretty fair if the police show up to both events and decide not to arrest Person A and send everyone on their way, and do decide to arrest Person B, or for the prosecutor and/or judge to treat them differently. I think context matters.
Or, let’s say Jean Valjean gets caught stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister’s family, and Monsieur Thénardier gets caught stealing a loaf of bread to sell at his own shop. I think it’s only unfair if those crimes are not distinguished by their contexts and handled accordingly.
Yes, context is important in determining whether a crime was committed and how to prosecute that crime. In our current system, of course, Valjean is a lot more likely to serve than Thénardier. We see justice as adversarial, something that is done to us. Because of that most important context for any charge is the resources that the accused has to fight the justice system.
And I’d like to say that stealing bread to feed your poor family might be the best decision you can make as a starving individual but it isn’t just. It is still inflicting harm on another person. Society shouldn’t be organized in a way that leaves so many people hungry when there is more than enough for everyone to eat. But it is, and from that bad thing flow other bad things. Theft is one of those bad things.
It is not okay that being arrested for theft as an undue punishment for committing theft. We all know that it is, though. In a democracy, how did that happen?
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All this is well and good, but it’s not exactly the issue you were raising about it being unfair, per se, for laws to be selectively enforced. It can really only be thus, and it’s up to us to determine how that finger on the scale gets applied.
You’re right that too often the selective enforcement goes the unjust direction, but that isn’t the same thing as saying that only universal application is just.
“It can only really be thus” doesn’t mean it’s just. We don’t live in a just world.
I guess I think it’s self-evident that equal application of the law is the feature of justice. I find the arguing back and forth about it to be a little maddening.
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Except that’s kind of my point: it is just to take into account context and apply reasonable judgment. To do otherwise is patently unjust.
An honest question here, that may explain why we differ on this: do you think it is unjust for a police officer to pull someone over for speeding and decline to issue them a ticket when they find out that they’re a poor kid trying to make it to work on time when that same officer gave a ticket to someone else exceeding the speed limit by the same amount earlier that day?
In my opinion, that is not unjust, that is the application of mercy and good human judgment we tend to want our police officers to be able to exercise. Do you disagree?
I think I’ve clarified that I think “context” should be taken into account (by which I mean the totality of the situation should be taken into account). I can tell you find that inconsistent with my other statements, I don’t see how it is.
I would probably prefer the police officer did just what you describe. But I don’t see that as meaning that unequal application of the law is a good thing. I could concoct a scenario where we’d all agree that shooting someone is the right thing to do but shooting people is bad.
Replace speeding in that example with a law we’d all agree should be enforced (say armed robbery) and the example becomes absurd. The only reason we want police to exercise their judgement in the speeding case is because we don’t buy into the validity of the law to begin with (traffic laws are mostly municipal revenue tools - randomly applied taxes - rather than things we actually want to stamp out).
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Of course you would, because that it is a just outcome. In some situations, unequal application of the law can be just. I don’t think we really disagree at the bottom of this.
NYPD: we’re the ones that’ll do the surveillance 'round here! Shut off that phone! No! Wait! Gimme your passcode! Citizen!
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