When the state, and the state being used here meaning the collection of people that have a monopoly on violence, fails to provide justice, that state has failed in upholding its end of the bargain in granting them that monopoly. Therefore the individuals have the right to seek justice on their own and through their own means.
Of course the states will seek to punish those individuals because it is a challenge to their authority but it's only happening because the state failed in the first place.
I feel this way based on the societal contract and early man philosophies. These two concepts basically says that early man would have all freedoms to do whatever they want as long as they were able to do so. Take what they want, when they want. But for society to form, an agreement between parties had to be made where you gave up these freedoms because otherwise other humans had the same freedom to do something to you that would be harmful to you.
In today's society justice has become ethereal. In some cases, the law actually requires companies which are nothing more than collections of people to take actions that benefit the company but harm other persons. This leaves those harmed persons with no effective recourse.
I typed all this on my phone and or dictated it to Siri so please forgive grammar issues. And my rambling way of thinking…
I see no reason to just assume that social contract theory is correct and you haven't really given much of an argument to do so. I do agree that it's a plausible argument if we assume that social contract theory is correct, on some version of it (Hobbes, for example, wouldn't put this in terms of "rights", he would just say that you're only beholden to the sovereign to the extent that the sovereign does the thing you entered into the covenant for the sake of, i.e. protecting you from violence).
Weren't there multiple writer's who believe in a implicit contract like Locke and Rousseau? Granted, I think Hobbes was the one who explicitly said that people united under a sovereign to restrain their animalistic passions and for self-preservation, but I thought Locke and Rousseau had similar ideas, even though they also criticized each other for various details.
Yeah they did, still the social contract theories are theories and models, not something accepted as fact. You'd still need to convince any given individual on why the propositions make sense to them.
I couldn't remember his name but it was Hobbes that was in my mind when I typed this up.
Yeah, I don't think Hobbes would agree with your framing here.
What's the point of a legal system if any random person can go judge jury and excutioner on anyone they think has wronged them? What happens when someone gets rightly declared not guilty, but someone thinks they're guilty and murders them?
What obligation does a any random person have to a legal system, which they never agreed to follow, and which laws they never had a part in writing?
Someone getting away with murder based on a technicality is not exactly rightly getting declared not guilty. They may still be guilty but the system, built by humans, has failed.
A movie that some of us enjoyed is law abiding citizen. In the end, obviously the state had an interest in preventing vigilante justice but the state failed in the first place.
How do you know these people are guilty and only got away because of a technicality?
Do you know another word for vigilante justice is? Lynch mobs. Remember, Emmett Till supposedly committed a crime, and that's why he was beaten to death.
I don't disagree with the negative implications of my statement. I still think that you as a human being have a right to use violence to prevent harm to you or yours and if the state fails to provide justice you have the inmate right to seek it. I've seen several great arguments and they clearly illustrate the problems with my view. I don't think that makes the view necessarily wrong just that it is definitely problematic and that society/the state needs to be repaired in the situations.
The problem here is that the state failing to provide justice is subjective.
Maybe I saw my loved one get murdered. I know for a fact that it happened. But if it can't be proven, the state can't deprive that person of their rights. I know what I know, it's been proven to me, but the state can't sentence someone else without a jury having that same level of certainty.
At some level I agree with you that ethically, given what I know, I could go avenge my loved one. If the state had the level of certainty I have, they'd be okay with it, so where's the ethical problem?
But the state doesn't know what I know. From their perspective, what I did to my loved one's murderer is no different from what the murderer did to my loved one. And if they can't allow what happened to my loved one, they can't allow me to do it to an unproven murderer.
This is probably one of the better arguments both in support of and against my view.
It’s also worth delving deeper into what you mean by “technicality”. The technicalities that people decry are actually safeguards intentionally designed to discourage the state from abusing its own citizens. We have a word for them: rights. The Fourth Amendment? Commonly behind decisions blamed on technicalities. The Fifth Amendment? Same. That’s important because, as they say, a state is an entity that “has a monopoly on violence within its own borders”. Those technicalities are all that keeps the state from directing that “monopoly on violence” against its political enemies. The moment society accepts vigilante violence against accused exercising their rights is the moment the state uses vigilante violence as a way to get around the law and target its political enemies.
Also: The historical record is chock full of vigilante justice spiraling out of control — from the Regulators of 18th Century South Carolina, to the Clay County War in Kentucky to the Sutton-Taylor Feud in Texas (and god knows how many other range wars) to, of course, the Hatfields and McCoys. Historically speaking, these kinds of things tend not to end well. No one thinks they’re the bad guy. Everyone thinks they’re the aggrieved party. Over and over again you see feuds continue until the parties drop from exhaustion or the state has to come in and stop it through further violence — up to and including military force.
This isn't about preventing harm to you and yours, it's about taking revenge for harm that has already occurred or supposedly has already occurred.
Society/the state cannot be repaired to the point where no one ever feels like they have been denied justice. There are plenty of situations in which providing 'justice' to one side denies it to another. As an easy example, if someone kills my father because they think he killed their father, am I now allowed to kill them?
What's the point of punishing people who commit crimes?
Well sure, that's self defense.
Whoa whoa. You're basically saying that if you feel wronged enough, you get to ignore the existing criminal and legal system and go do whatever you want? Because by what metric are we measuring "justice" here, and who decides?
Like, if I feel that it's unjust that my local noise ordinances don't forbid my neighbor from vacuuming his floor during the day when I'm taking a nap, I should get to mete out whatever "justice" I see fit?
having faith in justice is just as dumb how many times we have seen rich people get away with lot of thing. Why should people trust it when it is biased.
Because the alternative is far worse? Because you would get shot whenever someone feels you have wronged them enough? We need the justice system in its current form to maintain order and safeguard rights. You feeling someone was guilty is not proof he was, if you have definitive proof someone is guilty then you can present it in court yourself.
I think in the context of permanent crimes it could be considered different. If someone murdered my daughter in front of me and was found not guilty because the detective collected the evidence carelessly I would argue I have the ethical right to kill that person.
This isn’t something I can just alter my lifestyle to avoid like your noise ordinance example.
The problem is when you stop applying this only to yourself, and begin applying it to everyone else in society. When you do so, you'll realize that you've given your own right to a trial away to a lynch mob.
Let’s say you’re sitting next to a friend, family member, etc. They pull out a weapon and demand your wallet. They don’t even deny what they did, they insist their actions were legal.
Sure, but what happens when someone is declared not guilty because they didn't do it, and then a vigilante kills them?
Because the overwhelming majority of victims of vigilantes are innocent. Vigilantes are not detectives and have no access to witnesses, evidence or crime scenes, so they've got no way of knowing if someone's guilty or not.
This is the thing people often forget about vigilantes. If you legalised them, they would kill hundreds of innocent people and maybe a few dozen actual criminals.
>but the system, built by humans, has failed.
No, the system succeeded. Just not in what you wanted. technicalities exist to hold the state accountable.
It's pretty much the point of the US 2nd amendment. When the state starts to fail it's purpose, people are allowed to rise up to bring it down.
Did you even read the comment you're replying to? It's about murdering some one who was declared innocent. Your comment is about armed uprising. What are you even talking about.
we have law, courts, judges, a legal system because we voluntarily give away part of our rights to the state. in exchange we expect the state to deliver justice
if the state fails to do that then i’ll have to bring justice for myself
That is pretty much my argument. That being said I do accept the fact that it opens up so many other questions/problems and in practice is difficult to shoehorn into modern society.
Well I believe every human has the right to not be the victim of violence. In other words, no human has the right to initiate violence against someone else.
If vigilante justice is a human right, it is one that directly infringes on everyone else's right to not be a victim of violence. It links to the classic adage, your right to swing your first wherever you want ends at my face.
What might help with this view is if you give an example. What is one of these certain circumstances where you believe it is a right?
But life is violent at the end of the day, there's no right to not be a victim of violence. 'Nature red in tooth and claw' and all that
I think you actually kind of just supported what I say in a roundabout way. If you have no right to be free from violence than the individual that arms you has no right to be free from retribution.
Society is supposed to provide that middleground where society provides retribution so that it's not all lawlessness and anarchy. If society or in my paragraph above, the state, fails to do that then would you not just revert to nature?
:you not just revert to nature?" I would certainly HOPE not ! What is the point of all of society if we give ourselves this permission?
There is no "point to society" anymore than there is a "point" to salmon spawning or stars going supernova. It's just humans acting out their nature, at scale.
It is true IMO that most modern humans (ESPECIALLY those of us on this website) would categorically NOT survive the collapse of society- so I'm not personally convinced of abandoning the whole thing.
You do have the right to not be a victim of violence, that’s why assault is a crime.
Because we made it so.
Does a bird have the right to not be attacked over territory?
Birds dont have rights. Only humans have rights. Because we made them up. And a right to not be a victim of violence is absolutely one of them. Its why self defense is a valid legal defense. By your logic, i cant defend myself when attacked without committing a crime.
Yes, rights are a social construct. That doesn't mean they are not useful and worth upholding.
And ? We live in a society, so these rights are yours.
Do we not think a primary goal of modern society should be to move away from "Nature red in tooth and claw"? I agree we are not there yet, but accepting that it is a right frequently infringed, rather than claiming we have no such right, feels like a better pathway to a future society.
Secondly, if what you say is true, and we don't have a right not to be a victim of violence, then that naturally follows that some people must have a right to be violent. Who are those people, and why does it benefit society to allow those people to be violent?
You have the right to defend yourself because it involves your personal property IE your body. Nobody has the right to attack you that wasn't my argument. But to say that you have the right to not be a victim of violence is like saying you have a right to stay dry in the rain, you can say whatever you want but reality is going to act like reality
As a society, we could absolutely say that everyone has a right to be dry in the rain, and ensure that raincoats and umbrellas are freely available to all.
In the same vein, we do say that everyone has the right not to be the victim of violence, and have created laws to ensure those who do inflict violence on others are punished.
Rights aren't absolute. They are things we agree as a society should be the case for all people, and then we build our legal and social system around them.
Do we? There are any number of circumstances in which violence is legally allowed, or even condoned.
What is regulated is disruptive violence. The crime is not violence, but the use of violence to disrupt order.
If someone snatches your property and you kick their ass in the process of getting it back, no sane civilization would censure you for that. It's only when the violence exceeds the bounds needed to restore order and becomes disruptive that it becomes censured.
I suppose I was imagining the base case, not provoking violence through lawbreaking behaviour. People can lose rights through their actions, that isn't new.
Are there any times when someone's lawful actions should result in them losing a hypothetical right not to be the victim of violence?
Frequently. When lawful behavior is disruptive and provocative.
It becomes a question of which was more disruptive, the violence or the behavior that caused the violence.
Such as?
Lawful behaviour is frequently provocative, think of the just climate protests, but the people who attacked those protestors were often (and rightly) prosecuted with battery charges.
Protesters are not however, typically disruptive despite claims to the contrary. Protest is a way to release emotions without causing truly disruptive behavior. Erego, interfering with it is more disruptive than allowing it to go through.
Do you refuse to accept or just not understand the difference between positive rights, which are unenforceable without infringement on someone else, and negative rights which are actually enforceable.
I don't see why it is relevant.
The right to quiet enjoyment of one's home is a key right when renting, and that is a 'positive right' that can only be enforced by stopping the landlord from doing something.
I'm not surprised you can't see the difference between a positive right and a negative right or why that would be relevant in forcing people to do things.
See that's just part of it, this 'right of quiet enjoyment' isn't a right, it's a contractual term between you and your landlord and your landlord and the state. Your landlord then uses that contract to enforce those terms on other tenants that's why somebody who's not the landlord can't force somebody to be quiet in a rental unit.
It's a contractual term that grants you a right. Some rights are granted by the government, others by contract; they are both strict rights.
The right to quiet enjoyment of the property is a right granted in a tenancy agreement, which means the landlord cannot disturb the tenants without both permission and notice.
That right, granted to the tenants, directly prevents (legally at least) the landlord from taking specific actions.
Similarly, a right not to be a victim of violence would legally prevent someone from attacking you, unless you do something to forfeit that right.
There is no difference between the two scenarios.
One is a contract I enter into and have a choice to negotiate the other is a right I gain simply by virtue of being human. That's the difference between a contracted right/obligation and a human right. Contractual rights and obligations can be positive rights because they can be negotiated upon. Human rights must be negative rights because otherwise it requires the subjugation of other humans in order to enforce that right.
Anyone that wants to play Nature Red in Tooth and Claw should be sent to do that in a very large nature preserve, far from the main trail. We should even let them bring a knife.
I generally do that three times a year for a couple weeks to a month each time and bring the family for some camping/reminders that humans are just bald monkeys. My schedule really doesn't allow me to spend more time than that disconnected as much as it would personally fulfill me.
If you want to make the nature argument then that means there are no rights and no laws. It's pretty bad.
At the end of the day we only drive in traffic as fast as we do because we all agree to the meaning of the lines on the roads. It's the same with laws, societies, people in total really only exist together when we can all agree on basic things. These things don't exist in a vacuum their ideas agreed upon by people. That's the point: that basic level when there are no more agreements between people, the option becomes violence.
One of those things for a long time was the government had a monopoly on violence.
Op's position is governments aren't always doing their job and keeping their citizens safe.
In contract terms they failed their side of the contract so the monopoly on violence is no longer directly in their hands or even a monopoly any longer.
I will give one that is specific to current events. A CEO through policy and regulation kills thousands of people. An individual feels that has harmed someone that is near and dear to him and or caused that person to die. So he kills the CEO.
Another generic situation could be your child is kidnapped and raped. The person that did this is rich and is able to afford great lawyers and gets off completely or with very minor punishment. You have every right to seek out and execute that individual. The state failed you. At this point you revert to early man where your rights to hurt that individual are greater than their rights to not be harmed as they have already broken that contract.
You're confusing justice with catharsis.
You should never be at the whim of mob justice, the mob has no accountability, no guiding hand, only hungers to feel like something has happened.
You actually have no "right" to execute people, you just want to do it because you want the catharsis of "something happened to fill this hole in my heart," but you were never promised that you would have that filled. You just want it to happen.
By all means, you possess the ability to say "I will get mine," but why should society tolerate you? Be a moral monster, but at least remain consistent enough to take your punishment.
And you are confusing justice with laws and outcomes. Or in other words you are talking about justice in the formal and/or societal sense where as I would imagine OP is talking about justice in the spiritual or cosmic sense.
If someone hunts down and murders a person who raped and killed their child society will generally give them a pass, even in a due process hyperlegalized system because there is always discretion for outliers.
Like let's say someone hunts down a criminal and kills them on camera, two trials with hung juries end up with the prosecutor letting it go because he doesnt think he can win. Is this justice?
Is it even possible to pervert justice in your view?
That's not justice.
That's wanting a resolution to grief.
It's wanting God or Karma or the Universe to act where we feel courts have failed, but it's the same mechanism - we want some system to right what we feel is a break from the social contract, and when we don't like the resolution we suddenly feel empowered and obligated to break the social contract ourselves, as if we know better or deserve more simply because we feel a certain way, but we feel certain ways all the time for a variety of reasons.
I'm firmly Rawlsian. Justice is fairness, and behind the veil of ignorance, no one would choose to create a society where they might be the target of mob violence. We would always want the defense of a legal system.
Yes, you can pervert justice, by setting aside the social contract and saying "the potency of my neurochemicals is more important than the social order, my feelings are more important than the rule of law, my desire for vengeance and control and satisfaction are more important than justice."
Again, by all means, go do your thing, just then accept that you've done something wrong and be prepared to accept judgement.
No thats you ascribing motives to others perspectives. A relative might want a resolution to grief(which in and of itself is a form of justice in the mind of most people) but people unrelated who support her are not seeking restitution for their grief.
A male child is raped and then burdened with child support payments because of the letter of the law, is this fair? Is fair just "the outcome of a system operating like it is set up"? Slavery was fair because the laws and their application allowed for it?
I would choose a society where the spirit and purpose of the law is upheld over the cold letter of the law, where higher ideals than procedural purity were considered.
Again, society already allows for exemptions and discretion. It's literally built into the system at multiple levels.
"We feel outraged we didn't get the outcome we want, so we will make the outcome ourselves." Justice isn't outcomes, it's the system in which we resolve reality. It's tools are our legal systems, our political systems, our social culture.
What you're describing is tragedy, which has little to do with fairness. You're speaking from within the frame of a lived experience expecting a system to normalize how we feel, as if that's what the system is for. I'm speaking from a frame about systems, since they are what it means for us to interact with one another.
Then be a judge? Run for office to try and change a law? Manmade laws aren't cosmic facts, if you don't like them, petition to change them. They are only as "cold" as we make them. We could just as easily have a system where everyone is presumed guilty for the sake of not letting a single "bad one slip through."
Then the process was followed and society delivered justice. Justice is the form. Our method of justice could just as easily be a coinflip or a duel of honor but we (thankfully) use a legalistic medium.
Look, it's understandable that one might want "bad guys to get their punishment," we live in a very blame oriented society and it's baked into our cultural myths. But Justice is Fairness doesn't mean "bad things don't happen to good people," it means "we construct a society that operates in a way everyone would consent to not knowing who they would be born as." Slavery isn't fair, racism and sexism aren't fair - no one wants to be born a slave, or be born into a marginalized identity, so no one would consent to those norms. But likewise no rational person who isn't speaking from a place of trauma would consent to be at the mercy of some guy with a gun who thinks he knows better. We want the protection of law, and that means extending it to other people. Putting the greater good ahead of our own desires is basis of having a community.
Justice is absolutely outcomes, I couldn't disagree more.
No, the system is what the government uses to reduce interpersonal and private interpretations of justice when it thinks it affects society at large. The system itself is no more justice than a marriage certificate is love.
No? Fairness is not tragic. Justice is not tragic. What is right is not tragic.
It can be harsh, or brutal, but that is different from tragic. It borders on being an antonym of tragic.
The outcome of a flawed system can be tragic, sure, but that's not what OP is refering to.
And you would consider that equally just as the system we have now since the system itself is justice...
Now you are talking about a "method" of justice but earlier you said the method itself was justice...
Justice as a concrete concept is thousands of years old, Rawls was born decades after the airplane.
But a rape victim paying their rapist for decades is fair?
So systems aren't justice, an abstract ideal of subjective fairness is justice? I think it perfectly fair for an rapist of infants to have their genitals removed and then to suffocate them with those genitals. Maybe a little unfair, its not enough, so is that justice?
I wouldn't want to be a jew at the mercy of the "system in which the nazis resolve reality" yet that is the law and I need to accept it?
I think you are operating under some sort of misunderstanding of OP's and mines position. Do you see the word "in certain circumstances" in the OP?
Nobody is saying laws are useless or should be ignored. They are saying laws can be flawed, or laws can be misused to do something other than what they are intended to do, or the intent behind them is evil, or a portion is flawed, or an outlier extreme case is bad.
Like would you blindly choose a society where a serial killer got off on a procedural or beurocratic techincality and murdered 100 children after that or one where a small procedural flaw is ignored and he is stopped regardless?
It doesn't sound like you are engaging with the texts of on justice, from Euthyphro to Rawls. It seems like you are engaging with a sort of vibes based social justice feeling that victims need to be protected and wrong dooers need to be punished, which feels nice. Like, it's comforting to imagine Batman or Superman "knowing" what is right and swinging in to do the deed because we get exasperated with courts and politics and "all the things that stand in the way of Right."
I'm talking about systems. A society that permits vigilante vengeance is one that says "the laws don't matter, as long as you feel someone is guilty, go get them." If we cannot guarantee one another basic protections, the game doesn't iterate.
Vengeance doesn't scale. Everyone cannot adopt that strategy and society remain intact.
Yearning for a cosmic parent doesn't make it so, the only justice we have is the justice we build together, and that requires saying "I don't always get satisfaction."
Any rational person would choose to live in a society where they have protections against mob justice. There's a reason that during jury selection they ask you "is it better for a guilty man to go free or an innocent man be sentenced."
Yes, guilty people going free is the price we pay to minimize the chance that innocent people are punished. If you feel that despite all evidence you know who really committed the crime, you possess the physical ability to go and resolve that, and then for the greater good you should turn yourself in.
Have you decided if justice is the system, the goal of the system, or fairness yet so I can engage with you properly?
So if the system fails to administer "cosmic justice"(which would be the "vibes" of the society in reagards to rights and wrongs or whatever materialist term you prefer) the "game" doesn't iterate and lawless violence takes over. There is no protection in a society that fails to adheer to the "vibes" of what people want justice wise.
Again, nobody is saying laws are pointless and society should be ruled by roaming mobs. We are saying in extreme circumstances the laws can be circumvented, rules can be bent, and infractions forgiven.
We can get individual justice, collective illegal justice, social justice, communal justice, accidental justice. Loads of ways to arrive at justice outside of a court of law in a spesific legal framework.
I dissagree, most people would prefer a society that doesn't blindly lick the boots of the status quo and go along with every whim of the system.
Do you still owe those obligations to a community though when the community fails you? Contract law says no but I don't know how you feel about the social contract. I don't think you realize that at the end of the day you are at the mercy of someone with a gun who thinks they know better, that's what all government enforcement is.
So what if the choice of that CEO is the health of the company and a million people and a 150 billion dollar industry ride on the success of that company not going tits up, or the potential for death for others because they don't get experimental treatments for example.
It is the trolley dilemma and ceo's and governments have to make those types of choices...
I think the issue comes down to prioritizing the life of one, over the lives of the whole.
You are making the argument that someone having a job trumps someone being alive. It's not a trolly problem at all. If the system encourages harm for financial gain it's a failed system.
First it isn't about someone's job, although we aren't just talking having a job, we are talking about well over a million jobs on the low end, and three million at the high end because of how intertwined UHC is to all facets of care, but let's assume you're right that it isn't about a job.
What if that person who's life is in jeopardy is a pedophile. What if they need some experimental treatment that costs five million dollars to treat?
It is absolutely a trolly problem because like I said, it isn't just a job. In the specific example, the CEO of the company who was assassinated was the head of a company that oversees 75% of healthcare transactions. I'm not just talking insurance claims, I'm talking about referrals to other providers, I'm talking prescriptions, I'm talking records requests, I'm talking medicare and Medicaid claims.
If you can't provide a service to everyone that pays you for it, and if you can't do your job without killing thousands of people (at least), then maybe you're bad at your job and you being in that position is a danger to the public.
That is a pretty altruistic view that is disconnected from reality; however, if you want to play that game, I'd point every UHC customer to their summary of benefits and coverage, along with the health plan's formulary. You'll, in fact, see that you are not guaranteed coverage for everything you want.
You're not for everything, I agree.
It sounds like you're arguing that UHC is denying claims in good faith. They have a pretty large reputation for denying coverage in bad faith.
Not to mention all the insider trading.
This is what we call shifting the goal posts.
That UHC isn't acting in good faith? That's the whole thing. They unjustly deny claims all the time. It's like the biggest complaint against them.
See I don't believe you have the right to do either of those. You might argue that such behavior is understandable. You might even argue it is justified. But to say you have the right to do this? I don't think you understand what a right is, or perhaps we simply have different definitions.
What is your definition of a right?
I don't believe anybody has the right to murder anyone. I don't want to live in a society where people have that right.
Assuming your "Current Events: example is health insurance, why is the CEO ultimately responsible for the loved one's death? The government also didn't step in to save their life, so is killing the president justified? A local church or charity also didn't help, so can you kill them? If I know someone voted for Trump, as thus against socialised healthcare, can I also kill them? They are complicit too.
Lots of people are complicit in letting people die within the US Healthcare system. Can a grieving family go out and kill all of them?
Do you think police should be able to arrest you?
Sure, if I commit a crime.
Maybe I don’t understand what you mean by this, then.
What isn't clear?
You cannot initiate violence against me nor I against you. The police in this sense are not initiators of violence, but enforcers of justice. At least in theory. Once a crime has been committed, the social contract we all live by allows for the use of violence if necessary to enforce rule and order. So I get your confusion a bit, but I don't see an officer enforcing laws as an initiation of violence, because I agreed to those rules by living in this society.
We’re talking about human rights, not rights that afforded to someone by the state. The only difference between a non-police citizen and a policeman arresting someone is what the state says is “okay”. Rules of society don’t dictate human rights, either.
Neither of the situations are initiations of violence, given a crime is committed.
And who decides what human rights are? Who enforces them?
We people decide what they are. I don't believe we have any rights inherent to humanity. Only those rights we choose to define and protect. And it is the state that enforces them.
I don't agree with this logic. A person pickpockets me. They've committed a crime. I beat them to death. I've initiated the violence.
Human rights are natural, like 2+2=4. Enforcement isn’t necessary to their existence. Do you think human rights somehow change based on where you are or in which time period you’re in?
No. Assuming they pickpotted you before you beat them to death, they initiated the violence. I’m not saying it’s okay to beat them to death, fwiw.
I disagree. They're an entirely human construct. Who gave them to us? Who created them? At what point along our evolution did they burst into existence? Which level of hominid had human rights, and which didn't because they weren't human enough?
We created human rights. They don't exist independent of us. That's my contention anyway.
Yes. We have human rights today that didn't exist centuries ago, and I imagine centuries from now we'll have more that didn't exist today.
I think there should be some unalienable human rights. But those are my beliefs. And I don't actually think they exist independent of human thought, only that common-sense human thinking in all locations and time periods should lead to the conclusion that this is a human right.
Pick-pocketing is not a violent act. Beating them to death is an act of violence. Let's choose another crime. Phising is a crime. If someone sends me an email trying to trick me into giving up my bank information, have they initiated violence against me? I don't think so.
OP is. They're saying it is a human right to execute a criminal who is not punished by the state. They probably wouldn't extend it to pickpockets, but once the door is open that you have the right to execute someone in retribution, it becomes a matter of debate when that is allowed.
So its your viewpoint that it is impossible for the sovereign to violate rights?
Not at all.
So how can a system violate rights if rights are defined as the outcome of the system?
who gets to decide whether or not the injustice has been committed? it seems rather dangerous to be saying that, if a group of people feel they have been wronged, they are entitled to take matters into their own hands?
But that is absolutely true. If a group of people feel they are wronged they have every right to take matters into their own hands. On a small scale you call that vigilante justice and on a large scale you call that revolution.
If the revolution is successful the people don't necessarily end up being hanged.
"If a group of people feel they are wronged they have every right to take matters into their own hands."
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
How can you even make this argument with a straight face? What if the small group is a group of neo-nazis who are one hundred percent firmly and honestly convinced that their lives have been ruined by a conspiracy run by local Jewish businessmen and thus they have a right to carry out vigilante justice on them?
You can literally tolerate any crime through your " reasoning". I don't know if you are aware of this but most villains in history thought they were the good guys. In fact, most of them were convinced they themselves were VICTIMS.
That a group of people " legitimately" thought themselves the victim of a crime that went unpunished is completely irrelevant, because again, that would give cover to most of the villains of history. This is WHY we have juries, trials and other "factfinders".
The U.S. Declaration of Independence outlines (provides examples of) the right to revolt.
In the end you as a human can do almost anything. The question is will you be constrained.
My original argument is that if the state fails you, you can remedy that on your own but that the state would obviously take offense to it.
Here is a summary of my argument provided by AI. Freaking AI says it better. What a time to be alive.
The state is given extraordinary power—the exclusive right to use force—on the promise that it will deliver justice. That is the bargain. When the state breaks that promise and justice is denied, it is the state that has failed first.
In those moments, people are left with no protection and no remedy. They are not rejecting the law out of defiance; they are responding to the absence of it. When individuals act on their own, it is not because they seek chaos, but because the system meant to protect them did not.
Yes, the state will punish those actions, because they challenge its authority. But remember why that challenge arose at all: not from lawlessness, but from a failure of justice by the very institution that claimed the sole right to provide it.
ok... taking your view, that, in certain circumstances, vigilante justice is a right.
can you say anything about which circumstances?
many who commit acts of terror and mob violence may well claim to be acting because the state has failed them and they seek justice. is there a difference between them and the noble revolutionaries you're mentioning here? if so... what?
if you can't differentiate, then your view seems to condone, no... entitle... behaviour most of us (you included?) would find abhorrent, no?
Where you draw a line is problematic in my view. I agree with that as an issue.
For me it would be cut and dry. An example of what I view as cut and dry is the kid who raped and strangled two girls when he was 16 and got off with a slap on the wrist.
Or historically, O.J. Simpson. There wasn't really a question that he did it. It was just the police and trial was so jacked up that he went free.
Another example I would use is the family of the young man in a McDonald's parking lot that was killed by the cop who heard acorns falling and shot the kid. The cop will never face consequences for that and in my opinion the family should be able to seek justice their own way.
ok...
how about... a group based overseas, in a country that has suffered at the hands of foreign policy objectives. or... the family of those who were mistakenly killed by a bomb gone awry during military operations.
do they have a right to take matters into their own hands? get the justice they feel is their due?
or... people who believe with every fibre of their being that the rights of animals... or unborn fetuses... are being violated and, in the absence of state justice, do they have a right to vigilante justice?
or... people who believe passionately that gay people are a sin against god and nature, who similarly feel ignored by the state... do they have a right to write their own laws and act as they see fit?
seems to me to be a very dangerous path...
So you want to follow the law only when you agree with it
When the law allows harm to you or yours, it is an unjust law.
But you’d then cause harm to others who the can repay the perceived injustice
do you think that everyone who feels wronged has actually been wronged? and, if not... how do you tell the difference?
also... revolution? things seem to be escalating fast!
Do you sympathize with lynch mobs in the historical US South? Witch trials in Salem?
You've never read about the Tulsa Race Massacre have you?
The white supremacists were a group of people who felt they were wronged by black people and they killed 300 plus people over two days.
Every single time, every single fucking time someone like you brings up this stupid vigilante justice horseshit, they never stop to think who's gonna be the victim of whomever decides to be a vigilante.
This is just a matter of picking and choosing whose political violence is justified. Morality is subjective.
Tulsa massacre - not justified
Slave uprising - justified
So a white supremacist group should have the right to attack and kill a black man for the sin of existing?
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I do love lynch mobs
Are you really talking about vigilante justice? Or revolution?
Sounds like what's being described is more along the lines of an uprising against the state.
At the small scale it's vigilantism. At a large scale it is revolution.
So is this a semantic view? What kind of change do you want to see?
A right is a thing enforced by some enforcement mechanism. What does it mean to say you have a 'right' to something illegal, if not "this shouldn't be illegal'?
Absolutely not. Rights exist inherently within each individual alive. Each has the right to: their Life, their Reason, and the product of implementing their Reason. There is only one condition your own rights impose upon your neighbors: they must refrain from violating your life, your ideas, and the product of applying Reason to the problem of survival. Life, Liberty, and Property.
And my CMV argument is if they fail to abide that and the state fails to enforce it then you have r the right to enforce it.
Yes it's problematic but that just means a lot of effort should always be placed in to preventing the problem in the first place by ensuring the state protects the people.
But if there is no government to prevent someone from taking these away from you (or your own ability to protect yourself) do you really have those rights? Does a person living under legal slavery have these rights?
One may certainly claim their Life and their Liberty as their own, which it is, in spite of the criminal who is using force to overpower and steal it.
What good is it to claim it if yoy can't actually have it?
I'm gonna ask you the same question I asked OP: What does it mean for a right to be innate to a human being? What is the content of that claim?
As far as I can tell, you're making a normative ethical statement about how you think people should behave, but that has nothing to do with how rights actually exist.
A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. There is only one fundamental right (all the others are its consequences or corollaries): a man's right to his own life. Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action; the right to life means the right to engage in self-sustaining and self-generated action—which means: the freedom to take all the actions required by the nature of a rational being for the support, the furtherance, the fulfillment and the enjoyment of his own life. (Such is the meaning of the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.)
The concept of a "right" pertains only to action—specifically, to freedom of action. It means freedom from physical compulsion, coercion or interference by other men.
Thus, for every individual, a right is the moral sanction of a positive—of his freedom to act on his own judgment, for his own goals, by his own voluntary, uncoerced choice. As to his neighbors, his rights impose no obligations on them except of a negative kind: to abstain from violating his rights.
The right to life is the source of all rights—and the right to property is their only implementation. Without property rights, no other rights are possible. Since man has to sustain his life by his own effort, the man who has no right to the product of his effort has no means to sustain his life. The man who produces while others dispose of his product, is a slave.
Bear in mind that the right to property is a right to action, like all the others: it is not the right to an object, but to the action and the consequences of producing or earning that object. It is not a guarantee that a man will earn any property, but only a guarantee that he will own it if he earns it. It is the right to gain, to keep, to use and to dispose of material values.
You can easily look up the definition of "innate".
Ok, but can you answer my question specifically: what does it mean to say a person has these rights innately? I'm not asking for a definition of the word "innate." I'm asking you to tell me how it applies here and what the implications of that are.
What you're describing sounds no different from "I think people should be allowed to do these things."
To do "these things": preserve their life, by using their mind, and then acting on their Reason, and keeping the product of their application of Reason to the problem of Survival. It's how a Human survives. You might as well ask a fish: "is your right to swim innate, or simply permitted by the sharks that don't eat you?"
Do you think fish have an innate right to swim?
What a stupid definition
Yeah rights just exist like that
Show me how someone else has the right to your Life. You can show me numerous examples of how they can force you to do something you don't want to do, but you can't show me one example of how they have the right to do it.
You and I can say these things but they don't mean anything
How does any of this have to do with your ethical rights conception?
Like the condition you said on those rights is just untenable and meaningless
More accurately a right is something that is not permitted to be prevented by some type of enforcement mechanism. Eg. I have a right to eat cream for dinner under the law right now. This means no law prevents it and no one is permitted to stop me from doing so. Another category of right is the same, but also prevents the law from stopping you from engaging in the same activity.
Hmm, interesting. But to say a person has a 'right to life' doesn't just imply "the government can't kill you." It also implies 'there are consequences if someone kills you," right?
And what if the system fails to enforce consequences? Or even worse, encourages the harm?
If the system does not enforce your rights or encourages harm against you, then your rights would no longer exist.
As such, you cannot simultaneously hold the right to vigilante justice and not have any rights.
To have the right to vigilante justice, the system would need to enforce consequences for anyone preventing you from taking justice into your own hands.
Then the people living under that system do not have those rights
Some rights are active requirements for the government to give something. For example article 22 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
This is more than nor permitting the government to prevent you from doing something. It is saying you are entitled to government help.
Once the UDoHR means anything, that’ll be real interesting!
This is kind of a shitty example of an affirmative right because the UDHR is meaningless chicken scratch, but there are some affirmative active rights in the United States. These are overwhelmingly the result of statutes that compel the government to act actively, but they still exist. For example, governments in Maryland owe an active duty to prevent damage in response to riots.
But a law can he passed making it illegal to eat cream. Would that be a violation of your rights? I think not, as government makes it illegal to consume certain substances all the time.
This differs from something like the right to practice your religion as any law blocking your right to religion would be a violation of law and overturned in courts.
Actually a law forbidding the consumption of ice cream would actually be struck down in America under our constitution for being arbitrary, but ignoring that what you are referring to is the second type of right mentioned in my comment. But also onto your next point gets into where peoples rights are derived from. For example if a constitutional amendment was passed outlawing a specific religion, that would be legal under our system, but people would still say it violates people’s religious rights.
You're thinking of a right specifically within the concept of a sovereign state. There are rights that are innate to human beings.
There are also rights that you get as part of a society.
What does it mean for a right to be innate to a human being? What is the content of that claim?
See US Declaration of Independence for examples.
That doesn't answer my question. The declaration of independence is just an example of a document using language a certain way. Please answer my question: What does it mean for a right to be innate to a human being? What is the content of that claim?
So what happens when the vigilantes are morally bankrupt, but "feel" like they system has failed them?
After the American civil war, a bunch of people (mostly, but not exclusively, southern men) believed that the government was betraying them and failing to provide justice, that is, freed slaves and other Black Americans were allowed to go places and do things that these folks believed were wrong. They believed (some honestly) that Black men were a threat to their families, that their religion prohibited race-mixing, and that their economic livelihoods and "way of life" would be destroyed in a new social order that was being enforced by carpetbagging Northerners and a new government forced on them.
They engaged in vigilante justice because the State was unwilling or unable to enforce their idea of a just society. They became the KKK and similar groups.
Was it their "human right" to respond that way?
Second example: our constitutional criminal law system has been put in place to (attempt to) ensure that the State's monopoly on violence on its own citizens is used in a responsible way. Police (generally) cannot search people or seize items without probable cause and/or a warrant; they can't interrogate someone to near death to force a confession; they can't try someone without a (reasonably effective) advocate. If those rules are violated, our society says that certain evidence cannot be used against the defendant, and that often means the difference between a conviction and an acquittal.
There have been countless cases where a criminal defendant, who would otherwise be "dead to rights" guilty, goes free. In some cases, the crime may just be against the "state" generally or against "public morality," but many of those cases include crimes with very definite victims who have suffered definite harm. While there may be some civil recourse (see, e.g., OJ Simpson), there is not the moral recourse of a criminal conviction sponsored by the state.
In such a case, does the victim (or their family, or a pissed off citizen who just think "justice must be served") get to be a vigilante and (a) restrain the "obviously guilty" defendant, the way the state would, or (b) beat the hell out of them, or (c) kill them, for "vigilante justice"? If so, then what's the point of a structured criminal justice system where people have rights and protections?
While, at least in one case, you might be able to say "I understand why that guy did what he did," society simply cannot condone vigilante justice and expect to continue to be a society. "Justice" in this case is just too subjective, and rather than controlling violence and protecting people, society would turn into the opposite of that.
The fatal flaw of vigilante justice vs the justice system is that there is no due process to establish guilt.
Vigilantism works on nothing but vibes.
And vibes are susceptible to biases like bigotry and mob mentality.
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of innocent young black men were murdered by lynch mobs in the American south seeking “justice” on extremely dubious “evidence.”
There’s thousands more examples of mob mentality murdering innocent people for nebulous reasons.
Just because American due process - I’m guessing but it’s a pretty good guess - is imperfect doesn’t make the concept bad.
How would you even determine a state has failed in its duty? A murderer's family thinks his conviction is the failure of the state. Do they have the right to exact vigilante justice? A group of racists think equal rights for POC is a failure of the state. Do they have the right to exact vigilante justice?
And if all of them do have this right, then why have a judicial system at all?
A) you cant make it a human right when it directly infringes of another human right.
Seeing as the right to life is the first human right on the list.
Vigilante justice is not about granting rights, but taking them away. Back in the wild west, you'd make a person an outlaw, someone who no longer recieves protection from the law, and thus, can be the target of vigilante justice without issues.
B) its the right to trial , protected by the constitution, that seems to be your bigger enemy.
Vigilante justice is unconstitutional
You'd need like 2-3 amendment fixed just to allow it... Good luck with that.
C) we're not in a batman comic, the government has crazy amount of power.
All the regulations are there for a reason.
If you'd like to see what happens without it, look at Russia, where people who piss off the government discover how long it takes to hit the ground from their apartment window...
In purely abstract terms, I can't imagine you'll find many people who disagree with the title principle. The issue is agreeing on the actual circumstances in which vigilante justice is acceptable. You're quite vague about that. But I get the sense that you think vigilante activity is often justified in contemporary Western society, not just in imagined hypothetical scenarios. Is that the case? What does justify vigilante justice in your mind?
As an aside, I think the whole 'early man' notion is deeply misguided. Anthropoligically, it's just factually incorrect. Society, in the broadest sense, preceded the individual. Social bonds aren't an optional thing that people rationally accept. They're essential parts of our nature. Isolation is hazardous to one's health.
You kind of have to hold two conflicting, seemingly-contradictory truths in your head:
It's the State's responsibility to protect the people from violence and crime. If the State defaults on its obligation to the people, the people take back their power through vigilante justice
Vigilante justice is anarchism
The reason you have to believe in both is that there's always a way to justify to yourself that the State has defaulted on its obligation and so you're entitled to utilize violence to protect yourself/society. So if you believe in just 1, its anarchy. If you believe in just 2, the decay of the State leaves you vulnerable.
I don't disagree, but I think in practice it's for selfish reasons versus selfless.
One common source that I see everyone defending that I absolutely despise are the DIY pedophile stings. Those people, and the ones who enable it, are the worst.
The bastardization of justice to try and build ones self image
the number of times they've caught people red handed yet have acted illegally so charges fail to stick
the times they've entrapped the mentally ill and been dumb enough to not know any better
Vigilante justice often does not arise from a point of selflessness of knowingness.
There are loud concerns about what have written that came to mind instantly... Maybe you can answer that.
What are those circumstances? Is there any arbiter of who gets to decide what makes it a right?
Like in what instance? I have seen your examples of the cop that shoots someone down without cause and never faces consequences for that, and while I would argue that this is often a severe misunderstanding of the involved legal semantics, I can also provide scenarios that are on the flipside, where innocent people had their life crushed, or even ended via a death penalty, by the justice system, for doing nothing wrong. There is even a recent case of such.
And that's before we take into account undercover agents and informants whose job is vital in tackling and dismantling bigger networks for the greater good.
Vigilante justice is what happens when the feelings take over the proven facts. You FEEL that justice was miscarried. You FEEL like the person wasn't sufficiently punished. You FEEL that the paperwork protected someone who shouldn't have been protected. Whether the facts align with the feelings at this point becomes irrelevant, because once the vigilante justice has been applied, it cannot be taken back, and is very often fatal, or permanently crippling and disabling. If the facts end up aligning with your feelings afterwards, you'll feel good about it. If they don't, you'll only have punished an innocent who seemed too guilty.
Aside from walking in on an active crime, and stepping in with measurable and proportional force, you, nor anybody else, has 0 right to decide that the inability to prove something was indeed a crime, was a miscarriage of justice. If you know it is, and have evidence of it, then you expose it, and the people involved get disgraced. Otherwise, you are committing a crime to punish another crime.
And finally, back to what I meant by "misunderstanding of the involved legal semantics":
A cop that is let off from misbehavior, often couldn't be proven to have mishandled a situation or overreacted. And that's the important point: We live in a world where you SHOULD need to prove guilt before punishment is applied. You SHOULDN'T be punishing someone whose bad behavior you couldn't prove in a court of law. And deciding that it's a wrong system, means that you think that feelings should win over demonstrable facts.
So, I'm willing to listen. How can you possibly ensure that vigilante justice causes more good than harm, 100% of the time?
Let's say we agreed upon the initial premise. Vigilante justice is a human right.
If the state fails to prosecute someone who did wrong, then it's our right as people to make justice. Cool.
Firstly, will the vigilante be provided an unbiased trial to judge whether the person is guilty or not? Will they have some form of counsel? Witnesses to their defense? Or are you just assuming they're guilty?
Secondly, after you ascertain if they're guilty of the crime, how do you gauge the punishment? Do you have some guideline? Or are you just planning on doing whatever you feel like?
I already know the answers to these questions, you obviously are not doing anything fair. So, at that point you admit to infringing the rights of another, criminals are allowed to have a fair trial, counsel, protection from cruel and unusual punishment. If you go and break that... Even if they are guilty, you are also a criminal. Not even for being a vigilante, I don't care about that right now, it's that anyone who ever advocates for vigilantism never advocates for doing it in any way that approximates something close to acceptable.
Add to this the fact that for any functioning society you don't want rings of lunatics running around dispatching justice as they see fit on anybody they feel deserves it. These are literally just a permutation of the men who take what they want when they want.
Vigilantes are people who take away your rights when they want, and they only get sympathy for it on the assumption that they go after violent criminals, EXCEPT THEY NEVER MAKE SURE.
They go off of rumors, not evidence, hearsay, all sorts of shit that is not enough to carry proper unbiased justice, and go and hammer a person to death or some crazy shit. If you believed in civilized society you would not be in favor of this, you only bring up civilized society to make your point. I ACTUALLY believe in it, we are not the same.
Won't agree or disagree here, but there's a reason why terrorism always occurs at the presence of unresolved corruption. When corruption dominates even the court of law, sometimes extreme methods, as brutal as they are, may be necessary. The French Revolution is a good example.
Apparently everything is a human right now.
Big screen TVs are a human right!
The jungle is still there, even if we pretend it isn't. Agree, OP. Not ideal or for everyone, but there are cases where absolutely justified in this being the real world, same as it has always been (civilization/laws aside).
So what, you should be able to take a bat to someone's knees to achieve justice? how are you going to know you're going to get the right guy in the first place? How would you achieve vigilante justice?
I would say that in places where people really seek vigilante justice, nobody hides anything, so it's pretty easy to find an initial perpetrator or their associates. Think about narco cartels, everybody knows where the local headquarters is.
I'll push back on you, its always a right or it wouldn't be justice. In fact, it is more justice than letting criminals get away with their crimes in the name of giving deference to law enforcement.
It doesn't matter what you think the circumstances are for vigilante justice, the question is what will vigilantes do when they're wrong.
I don't know why no one talks about vigilantes in this manner at length. Who cares what type of justice is appropriate to you? The real question is what justice should you get for being wrong?
You cannot say you will never be wrong. There will come a time when you are wrong. Maybe wrong target, maybe wrong type of punishment, hell maybe even just plain wrong.
What will you do then?
What vigilante has a system to correc themselves and hold themselves accountable when they get it wrong?
If a full wide national justice system has problems with this issue, what on earth makes you think vigilantes with much less resources can even tackle it?
Its simple : If you killed the wrong person in pursuit of justice, what would you do?
It is of my opinion that no vigilante will ever be accepted until he/she answers this question. If their answer is some variation of "I am never wrong", then they should be the first to be locked up.
In certain circumstances a burger is a dessert: there are indeed some instances where they have made a burger-bun out of cake and a burger-patty out of ice cream which makes said burger a good dessert.
To say that something is good in “certain circumstances” is a very broad statement, and combined with “certain actions“ turns it into something that can be used by literally anyone to justify anything. So your statement is technically correct: some acts of vigilante-justice are justified in some circumstances. But try to reread what you wrote and imagine it having been written by someone who believes that chemtrails are real and just bought an anti aircraft gun, or by someone who believes in “pizza-gate”. If a statement can be easily used by the opposite side to justify their actions then it’s too vague to mean anything of value.
Let’s go with the most extreme case Child Exploiters, murderers, sex offenders. Sure, seems right to “serve justice”. Now, lets what prevents vigilantes from serving “justice” to other “undesirables” under false pretenses? A person of different faith, a person with a different sexuality, a person with different skin color, and a person that has made mistakes?
In certain circumstances sure it seems right, but it’s something that can be easily abused and the actions cannot be reversed.
Ok, let's assume your point is true. That still leaves the complicated question of what "justice" they have the right to seek, and how they may seek it.
There's a reason we have a mostly impartial justice system that uses adversial arguments and a randomly selected impartial judge and jury to decide on guilt, and requires proof "beyond a reasonable doubt".
And that's because failing that standard isn't "justice", it's just revenge, based on beliefs of someone that thinks they are aggreived.
There's also the question of what "just punishment" is. Modern western standards generally use fines and prison rather than summary violence. Are vigilantes going to take on that responsibility?
Probably not.
I.e. vigilante justice generally doesn't meet the definition of "justice".
Justice is often, and I sense here, simply another word for revenge, and the state shouldn’t participate in it, nor should individuals, if they can help it.
As far as I’m concerned, punishment should act as a deterrent and as a means of protecting society from dangerous individuals. The primary interest of the state ought to be curbing the cycle of violence.
There are several problems with your view, but the principal issue is that individuals retaliating are inviting the wrongdoer to retaliate in turn and so on ad infinitum. If my daughter was raped, of course I would like to punish the perpetrator personally. But then his father might want to punish me. And so on and so forth until we descend into total chaos.
But without law and order, society would collapse. And the law is in place to ensure fair or equitable justice.
Let’s say someone THINKS they were wronged, or a crime was committed, and they got the wrong suspect or there’s no evidence. You’re saying the victim just takes matters into their own hands and potentially harms the wrong person in search for vengeance?
Or if we’re talking a clash of ideals rather than law agreed upon by society. Like something to do with racism, homophobia, etc.
Many crimes aren’t clear-cut. There’s grey areas and that’s where the justice system is supposed to come in as an objective third party.
You gonna be judge and jury? Just as thorough as if it was going normally through the justice system?
You're gonna guarantee due process and all my constitutional rights?
You're going to follow sentencing guidelines?
And please tell me you're not a person of color. We all know how well vigilante justice has historically worked out for them.
If you find a dirtbag raping your little girl I'm all for you killing that motherfucker. But for pretty much anything else I'll take my chances in the justice system. For all its flaws it's still better than the mob.
under which circumstances is vigilante justifce justified?
is it anytime the state fails to administer justice?
what is the nature of the vigilante justice? who gets to decide what the process and/or punishment is?
should this be allowed for every person? what kind of society can we then expect to live in?
what if someone else decides that you wronged them, and attempts to exact their own "vigilante justice" on you? is it possible to come up with a rule-set that distinguishes "valid" and "not valid" applications of vigilante justice?
personally it does seem plausible to me that there is at least some extreme circumstance, where taking matters into one's own hands is the morally right thing to do. but as for what those circumstances are.. I'm not sure
I get what you are saying. But I think it has major flaws.
For one I think by definition an individual can not determine "justice" justice is inherently a matter of public consus and even then it's not just a question of was x or y just but a question of can we agree on a framework that can be broadly applied.
I think an individuals actions can be deemed to have aligned with a just cause after the fact but I don't think you can say that that person was carrying out justice without theproper adjudication before the act.
The closest thing to vigilante justice that can actually be just is community action. If the cops aren't doing anything or don't exist, the community can come together in an orderly way, elect or appoint members to a council, decide upon some measures to take like neighborhood watch, group patrols, kicking offenders out of the community, in extreme cases of anarchy or lawlessness the community might decide on execution for dangerous offenders, hopefully with a community vote or trial or something.
“a right” no, definitely not. “Justified”, yes, in some cases
This is the same logic that lead to hangings and the KKK in the US South. Most vigilante situations don’t take any effort to establish facts, prove guilt, ensure fair punishment for the crime, all the things a just society is based on.
Vigilantes are fun for comic books and movies, in the real world they are typically just murdering whomever they don’t agree with or like. It why we need judges and juries and rules to prevent (as much as possible) innocent people from being convicted.
It wouldn't be a right, as rights are agreed upon by consensus and enforced via force doctrine by the very govt you claimed has failed.
Now if you take the government out of it, there is nothing in a state of nature that grants anyone or anything rights, as you stated you are free to do as you want as others are free to act upon you hence rights are therefore part of the social contract that you would be walking away from in seeking vigilante justice.
The court gets t decide what right and wrong, and what to do about it.
And that is it. If you disagree with the outcome of the court case, you don’t get to just do what you want to people because of how you feel about someone.
There would be no point in having courts or laws if that was going to be peoples stance. Just go straight to taking things into your own hands.
And I don’t think you will like who you become if you do that.
Your definition of justice is not clear. Plato defined justice as the idea of good. Punishment is a way to deter acts that are unjust. Punishment does not mean justice and justice is not defined as punishment. Violence (meaning an unjust act) or violence can mean punishment or retribution, etc. Violence does not define justice but it can upset or restore the balance of power so there can be justice for the greater good of a state.
How do you define which justice has failed to be upheld? Is a murderer who got out on a technicality (such as fruit of the poisonous tree during the trial) a case of failed justice? Or is that the justice working as intended, for if we tolerated breaches in procedure, we wouldn't have a functioning court system?
Dude, what you proposing is dismantling the social fabric. If you open that door, where if you feel that the justice system failed, you should make your own justice EVERYONE will find a reason and an occasion to do so, and not just in case of murder or anything like that.
And imagine people getting the wrong info or impression about who dunnit. You won't like to be at the receiving end of that.
The problem with your argument is that you’ve divorced the state from the people. In a democracy, that isn’t true unless you want to make a stolen elections argument.
By the social contract idea, the ONLY reasonable way to exercise violence outside of self-defense or immediate threat control is through the state, whether that be local, state, or federal. To do otherwise is to supplant the will and values of society with your own, which is in essence anarchy. If you can excercise violence when you feel you’re view has been ignored, then can’t everyone? And if that happens, then haven’t we reverted to an anarchal state where might makes right?
Although this problem could still exist in a democratic society where a class of people were routinely denied justice through a legal system. For example, a society in which the democracy largely swings between two dominant parties and a disfavored minority underclass of people is routinely denied adequate representation in a justice system by both parties. Scenarios like this and similar to this have existed multiple times in history.
Indeed it can, but the answer is in winning over the electorate. We saw this with the Civil Rights movement.
Modern democracies are not in any meaningful way connected to their societies. They are bureaucratic monstrosities that conceal the mechanisms through which decisions are made to ensure that only minimal feedback gets into the system.
To take a real world example how many nations have made it clear that they want less immigration? How many have gotten less immigration. There's even constant efforts to destroy parties that run on reducing immigration when all they have to do is...reduce immigration. The Leviathan wants what it wants and it will ignore or manufacture consent to get it.
When someone gets in power that actually intends to do what the people want they are usually vilified attacked, and destroyed.
There’s always inertia, but to answer your question, I’d say the U.S. has shown a reversal on immigration through the democratic process.
We see with Trump that the electorate won despite massive institutional opposition to him.
Except as shown in the last 4 years the institutions immediately snapped back the moment he lost. And Biden didn't run on opening the borders, so people didn't vote for that. The institutions are still fighting him every step of the way despite the fact that he won, democratically, while they all fought tooth and nail to prevent him from winning.
So no. This isn't evidence against my point. If democracy was actually real then when he won the first time the institutions would have supported his moves to cut migration and send illegals out. The fact that it took a second election and they're still fighting makes it clear that democracy isnt real, he's just bludgeoning them hard enough to hold them back (for now.)
The next election no one is going to run on mass migration, but if someone who isn't MAGA wins we will get mass migration back, probably worse than before.
The rank and file of a company often push back against a new CEO. Culture takes time to change. Trump was also very ineffective at change his first term - he seems to have fixed that this time.
Of course Biden didn’t run on that - it wasn’t popular. Trump did, and Biden/Harris lost. Essentially you’re saying Biden should have campaigned on his weaknesses, which makes no sense.
Your last point is speculative. If immigration continues to be an issue, someone will run on it. If it isn’t, then they may not. If it comes back, the the American people can correct it at the ballot box, not with violence. That’s the thing about democracy: The voters must be engaged and demand accountability. It’ll never be perfect but it does self-correct.
Unsustainable position. Taking matters into your own hands makes the individual the soul arbiter of justice. As no one can be omnipresent and are subject to being wrong any position where you say you “I can’t be wrong about this” is in fact wrong. The blackstone calculation was implemented to save the innocent, and an individual isn’t immune to its reasoning.
Disagree entirely, Even if we take this social contract and that vigilante justice is a right.
Vigilante justice in and of itself is a violation of the social contract. What point is there to society if justice is not regulated and controlled?
Surely the very first right you must surrender in order to live in society is the right to kill people because you feel slighted?
Why would anyone want to live somewhere where murder is acceptable because an indidivual or subgroup of society doesn't like the laws?
Can you provide some real world examples
the murder of Ken McElroy
The dude was a criminal who terrirosed his city doing stuff like child bride, extortion and more. Yet the law could not do shit the trials ended in Ken not getting procesucted. So the town people had enough and murdered him , to this day no one has been found guilty of Ken death. Despite Ken murder the town did not see rise in lyncm mobs and the like. slipery slop is a dumb argument.
No argument there fuck that guy
It may feel that way. As most cases of vigilante justice arise from a belief that the system has failed.
Without trial and law it’s just murder whether done by individuals or the state.
The problem with this is now we have to dictate what real vigilante justice is, and we'll have way more crime where people feel comfortable committing it because its "justice"
We dont need any more mentally ill American leftists committing more "justice"
The issue is always who determines which circumstances?
Emmett Till was killed by a crowd who thought he committed a "crime" that he was innocent of. Thats the sort of thing your post argues to protect too; not just the cases you agree with the vigilantes. Are you willing to admit you are in favor of that as well?
You cant have it both ways. You cant condemn one vigilante act while also making this post.
EDIT: reworded to be more clear
Vigilantes are 99.99% of the time sadists who want an excuse to hurt people, bigots who wish to enact their own brand of "justice", or just criminals with a self-righteous streak. A healthy society cannot tolerate them.
A human right does not impose a duty or harm on others. You can say vigilante justice is moral based on your argument, but there is no inherent right to inflict harm on others, no matter how justified.
The thing with rights is that any right exists for those who takes it. What people generally want is social approval of those actions and limit any repercussions. But a right can be taken at any time.
Failed to provide justice according to whom? The lynch mobs of the South would have said the justice system failed them for not jailing black boys who looked at white women the wrong way. Would you like to defend those actions? Or is there some super secret morale code that you expect all mobs to follow that just so happens to line up with your own idea of justice?
according to the victimes look at the current legal system with rich folk getting away with lot of things and try to tell me it is not broken.
Who defines these victims? The white folk of Jim Crow South would call themselves the victim. It is easy to say the system is broken when you define by personality morality but making a system that relies on your personal view doesn't work. Other people will disagree and take your ideas where you didn't want them to go.
That's called a lynch mob.
People feel that their interpretation of rights or justice or what have you have been violated, so they take to the streets to "correct" that.
i hate vigilante groups, vast majority of them only do it to get away with assaulting others (knowing society will give them a pass)
Usually I read the entire CMV, but considering your title is a defense of lynching, I'll pass.
Lots of psycho murderers have used this very same logic to justify their murders
Ok. Now prove that the vigilante is actually carrying out justice.
Rights don’t change based on circumstances though
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Frank Castle, is that you?