Part of the reason we discuss the process which creates law is because we believe that it would lead to a more libertarian world. Having a monopoly on violence does not ensure libertarian principles. In fact, by definition, it does not because it means that they are using violence in order to keep others from competing in the legal system. Monopolies on violence have led to such creations as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Communist China, Communist Cuba, slavery in the US, Jim Crow laws in the US, etc.
Okay, fair enough. That was actually the point I was driving toward with my first point. So if 95% of private road owners wanted to exclude "drunk drivers’ from their roads, I’d say they’d be within their rights to do so. The roads in question are their property, after all.
I don’t think that’s an exception, actually. Your neighbor building an atomic bomb on his ranch would constitute a lethal threat against you IMO, so I’d say you’re within your rights to defend yourself from him with up to and including lethal force.
So, how will “competing justice systems” be introduced? Why don’t you just start competing here and now? Are you waiting for the monopoly justice system to enact a law that allows you to compete against it?
Monopoly justice systems have also created the most libertarian societies in modern history, like Hong Kong and the early USA. The source of libertarian laws is not competition, but individuals who understand and promote libertarian values. And they have no reason to tolerate any anti-libertarian competition.
Also, I dont know of any society with monopoly on violence. It’s everywhere legal to use force in self defence, even in shitholes like Saudi Arabia. But you maybe meant monopoly on retalitariatory violence, punishments for crimes. I don’t mind competition in the execution of such violence, but I insist that strict and fair court procedures are followed. And I imagine that it would be very unsatisfactory if one could be judged by more than one court system. Freed by some court systemts and convicted by some, for the same action. A court system is only pratical when it is the single one with authority in its jurisdiction.
On topic, I think that it is right for a third party C to trial person A for his crimes against person B. Regardless of what insurances B has bought.
Why don’t you just go and enact the monopoly justice system that you believe works best? Obviously America is a far cry away from being libertarian, and probably whereever you are from it is the same situation.
So what? Monopoly justice systems have created some of the worst tyrannies in the history of the world. Why take your chances when private law is much more likely to be more libertarian?
When libertarians talk about the monopoly on violence, they are talking about the monopoly on legitimate violence (i.e. the state). The mafia, even if it uses a lot of violence, does not use legitimate (i.e. lawful) violence. The situation that you describe already exists in America anyway. Ever hear of OJ Simpson? Found innocent in criminal court but guilty in civil court.
And just because you disagree, the law will be magically striken down from the law books?
But how did this happen? This happened because the majority of the populace agreed about these issues.
Look at the example I provided: spousal rape. Until early 90s it was legal in the UK. Until mid-70s, it was legal in the US. Why did it change? There was finally enough outcry to convince the judges and the lawmakers to change the law.
If the question “Is spousal right to sex a legal fiction?” were put up before an anarchist society of judges and their customers, do you think it would take that long? I don’t mean “would their values be different?” The evidence is that the values of the population recognized a woman’s right to her body and refusal to have sex with her husband long before the legal change happened. But the political system was very slow to change, as it is in every other aspect.
The point is that both legal system (whatever its implementation) and the markets respond to vox populi. But markets always respond to it more quickly than the government. Look at any example. Why should the law be any different?
Well, I sure hope that the law would be on the side of the wife, but there’s no guarantee of that.
Helloween, do you think a monopoly court system would be committing aggression in forcefully shutting down competitors within its claimed jurisdiction? Why or why not?
Both the minarchists and the anarcho capitalists need to get rid of todays oppressive government. Minarchists want to salvage the parts of the existing justice system which does promote individual freedom (it nowadays often costs only about 1% of total government spendings). I’m not sure what anarcho capitalists want, but they seem to want to abolish even that part of todays governmet. And then let everyone “compete” with different laws. I don’t understand why we should abolish the oppressive government, only to let people recreate new “competing” oppressive governments. We who value every humans right to freedom, should not tolerate any “competing” actions which infringe on those rights.
As I said, I don’t care about weird fuzzy concepts like “legitimacy”. I only care for valuing laws according to how well they protect every individual’s negative rights.
Right. There is no guarantee either way.
Look, I think the images that come up in my head (and possibly those of some other people) when one says “anarchist law” or “mob rule” are that of the South and Black Codes/Jim Crow laws. But one has to keep in mind that those laws were legislated as a result of the local people’s views. So, there is no difference here between public or private law-making/discovery in this case.
One could make an anti-federalist argument that this is why it’s good for the Federal Government to step in when the local law is immoral, but that assumes that the most cases of the Federal Government “stepping in” (or, to abstract, the rule of the benign majority over the immoral local minority) will be beneficial in terms of the natural law. But I don’t know if the reality supports this and not the opposite.
Autolykos:
Helloween, do you think a monopoly court system would be committing aggression in forcefully shutting down competitors within its claimed jurisdiction?
It would be good to forcefully shut down a competing justice system which violates negative rights, and replace it with one which instead protects such rights. I would not call it “aggression”, but an act of protecting peoples freedom. Just like it’s good and right to forcefully shut down anyone who initiates force upon others.
Pick an issue which is not black-and-white from the point of view of natural law. Possible candidates: abortion, or “rescuing” a child who is a victim of alleged parental abuse.
Take the view that you have about one of these issues. Do you think it’s good to shut down forcefully a competing justice system that ruled according to an opposite legal philosophy? (I.e., if you believe that abortion is naturally legal, they ruled that it’s not, or vice versa.)
Indeed. Sad, maybe, but nevertheless true.
Not only that, but who’s to say whether such laws were really legislated as a result of clear majority preference? It’s clear to me that laws are passed routinely in so-called “democracies” without anywhere near even a simple majority of “citizens” actually supporting them. So I find it hard to believe that common-law legal systems would be just as bad as statist ones.
From what I understand, it’s been the opposite more times than not. Even desegregation was more of a state-vs-federal (i.e. jurisdictional) issue at first.
What about competing court systems that don’t violate negative rights? Those were implicitly included in my original question, as I made no distinction among competing court systems.
I just watched an interview with Alan Derschowitz: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036697/ns/msnbc_tv-hardball_with_chris_matthews/#47034974
One of his last statements is something like “The shame of this situation is that US is the only country in the world where we elect prosecutors and elect judges”. And in the whole interview he alleges that the prosecutor in Zimmerman case is trying to win a beauty contest to become a judge.
But what’s the alternative? That a judge is appointed by some bureacrat or a politician (who himself is trying to win a beauty contest)? I think if the Supreme Court judges were elected by the States, the situation would be much less out of control.
Suppose I murder someone, and the heir of the victim files suit against me and wins the case. But I’m of the opinion that murder is not criminal. I manage to find a firm (a “bit player” which serves a niche market - folks who don’t think murder is a crime) to agree with me that murder is not criminal, great. Now what? Do you think the heir of the person I murdered is just going to say, “O well, I guess he’s right, murder isn’t criminal.” No, he’s going to go ahead and act on the decision from his firm, and execute me (or force me to pay restitution), and he’ll do it with no problem at all because the majority of society will agree with him. And the same in the inverse. Suppose I’m a plaintiff and I’m trying to get restitution from Bob for selling “my book” (IP), but the majority don’t believe in IP, and I get some firm to agree with me that Bob should pay me restitution for selling “my book” - and what now? You think Bob’s going to say “O you’re right, I do owe you money.” Of course not, he’s going to refuse and society is going to agree with him. And if I try to take restitution from him by force, they’re going to agree with him when he gets a decision from an arbitrator saying that I robbed him. Do you see how this works? The minority opinion on any given question of law is going to lose - the law is going to reflect the majority opinion on every legal question.
doublepost…
With all due respect, I don’t see how we’re finished with the “drunk driving” scenario, so I’d appreciate it if you’d actually address the points I raised in my last post, instead of trying to change the subject.
Are you talking to me? Assuming you are…
Just a couple of things real quick:
In the case of “drunk driving” where no one’s hurt, who’s the plaintiff exactly?
It’s one thing to consider “drunk driving” per se to be a crime, but it’s another to satisfy a certain level of evidence that a given person was “drunk driving” at a certain point in time.
Note: I put “drunk driving” in quotes because, of course, the term is dependent on an arbitrary threshold (one’s blood alcohol level while driving).
Yes, drunk driving is not criminal - obviously. I was just using it as an example - probably not a very good one since it makes little sense in the absence of public roads. Look back at the comments where I used drunk driving as an example and substitute abortion.
EDIT: oops, I see that Autolykos was not talking to me. But I’m leaving this comment up because it is true that drunk driving is not a particularly good example. So for anyone raising an objection to me about my use of drunk driving as an example previously, do substitute abortion.
@Helloween:
You asked in one of the previous posts about how we should create private law that will be in competition with the state law. Well, private law has existed among public law. One example is, as I mentioned before, the Jewish law. For the last two millenia, religious Jews went to their own religious authorities for arbitration. There is no monopoly; in fact, a beis din (Jewish court) can consist of any three Jews who keep Sabbath. (Although normally, of course, it consists of competent rabbis.) To see a recent example of such a case (and decision making), see p. 82 of this journal issue.
In fact, Orthodox Jews in many cases are forbidden by Jewish law to go to civil courts (except as a last resort), simply because the courts in most societies operate according to legal principles and philosophies which do not always correspond to Jewish legal philosophies (most importantly, they are not based on Talmud). This idea is actually discussed in the above-linked journal issue.
For the most part the above applies to civil cases, but (although religious Jews are normally non-violent people) I know even of the cases of altercation, for instance.
So, one way to create a competition to public law is simply to do it! Libertarians should agree not to use the public court system ever and instead use private arbitration, choosing, each time, authorities from a list of competing candidates who use natural law as their guiding principle.
A private court based on libertarian values might be a good and feasible project! As far as I know, most governments today allow free competition for courts (arbitration boards) when both parties agree upon one in civil disputes. But…
Firstly, the laws of most governments about crimes and contract disputes are already quite reasonable from a libertarian point of view. I can’t imagine how they could become much more libertarian in any substantial way. The main problem with government is its exceptions from such laws.
Secondly, what to do when peope do not agree on who should be the arbitrator? What if they have picked an arbitrator acording to the contract, but one of the party ignores even that part of the contract? I’ve seen ancaps start talking about it causing bad reputation and social exclusion and such, so that rational people would come to an agreement. Maybe that’s true in a society with tight social control, like maybe jewish societies. But first of all there’s the question of evidence, without a fair trial I wouldn’t exclude anyone on hearsay. And especially when it comes to violent crimes, rationality is often long gone. I cannot imagine how that could be resolved by other means than the use of (retaliation) force in the service of negative rights. And anything but monopoly would at the best be ambiguous, and at the worst a bloody battle.
You didn’t answer my question, Helloween. I’ll ask it again: what about competing court systems that don’t violate negative rights? Do you think a monopoly court system would be committing aggression by shutting them down?