JoSH@RED.RUTGERS.EDU (JoSH) (10/19/85)
Poli-Sci Digest Sat 19 Oct 85 Volume 5 Number 43
Contents: Rights
Responsibility
Cops
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Abridged Rights
C: What it lacks in readability it makes up for with ambiguity.
Song-Of-The-Week: Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice
Date: 15 Oct 85 21:58:08 PDT (Tue)
From: Mike (I'll be mellow when I'm dead) Meyer <mwm@ucbopal.Berkeley.EDU>
"This Constitution ... shall be the supreme
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State
shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the
Constitution or Laws of any State to the
Contrary notwithstanding"
Seeing the above quote reminded me of something I'd done a while back,
that might interest readers of Poli-Sci. Better yet, do it yourself:
Dig out your copy of the Constitution, and look at the Bill of Rights.
Not counting VI, VIII (matter of opinion) and IX (nearly nugatory),
how many have not been abridged by either the federal or state
governments in the US?
I only count two, II and VII. I suspect that someone can provide
instances where those have been abridged.
<mike
[I can think of two: X and XIII. X reads:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."
XIII begins: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States..."
As far as I can tell, Congress does not consider itself bound
in the least by the lack of the delegation of some power in the
Constitution--In fact it strains at the boundaries of the
specifically prohibited ones. Article XIII makes no exception
for the government-- if conscription and indenture are prohibited
to private parties, the same should apply to Uncle Sam.
--JoSH]
------------------------------
From: jeff@isi-vaxa.ARPA (Jeffery A. Cavallaro)
Date: 17 Oct 1985 1433-PDT (Thursday)
(in response to the manufacture liability for handguns...)
Well, here is another example of compensation from the involved party
that can most afford it. Although, this case is a little different.
It is rather evident that more emphasis is being placed on liability
as a punitive weapon against handgun manufactures, rather than the
welfare of the victim. Thus, we have two scenarios:
1. Liability for victim welfare
2. Liability as a punitive action
When and why one of these liability scenarios can occur brings suggests
a issue that has (in my opinion) plagued the American Legislative and
Judicial systems - the slippery-slope fallacy. This fallacy has
become the bread-and-butter for many lawyers, politicians, and groups
such as the ACLU. A slippery-slope opinion basically holds that if
a judgement is made regarding a certain circumstance, then this same
judgement must equally applied to all similar circumstances,
absurdity or lack of precedence notwithstanding.
One can usually spot a SSF when the following statement is used:
"If ... is allowed to happen, then ... must also be allowed to happen."
One could probably argue that SS is a necessary attribute of egaltarianism,
but I am not quite convinced that this is the case. Ideal egaltarianism
is probably fine in a vacuum, but the complex American society is not a
vacuum.
So, the challenge:
Assuming that we live in an American democracy that strives for
egaltarianism:
1. Is it valid to make such liability decisions?
2. Is it valid to selectively apply such liability, depending on the
situation?
3. When applying such liability, is it valid to do so under different
pretexts (welfare vs. punitive)?
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 1985 01:35:47 PDT
Subject: Police
From: Roger Lewis <RLEWIS@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
I think JoSH may have a very good point on police attitudes (big city vs.
rural towns). In little old Miramar, Florida (pop. 27,000) our police
were exemplary. Maybe 'cause they didn't deal with the stresses that
L.A. police are subjected to. Still that's a small consolation if it's
your head that a big city cop takes a swing at.
But on to political theory: Who thinks that a government set up as a
pluralism (which is the way I see the U.S.) should have as its watchdogs
people who are chosen for their "stability"? How many people with pink
hair would pass the oral interview, the police psychologist interview,
and the background test, even if their answers were similar to other
applicants' answers? There is a mentality that is recruited for police
work and bleeding hearts, weirdos, freaks, communists (and until recently
racial minorities) need not apply.
What I'm getting at is that it appears that Western Civilization's
greatest strength is the diversity of beliefs and lifestyles it allows
its people. Why then, don't the people whose duty it is to uphold the
law reflect this diversity? What is *so* unstable about having tried
drugs? I wonder about the stability of anyone (in L.A. at least) who
hasn't tried drugs.
Imagine-
Interviewer: Have you ever taken drugs?
Applicant: Yes sir, LSD.
Interviewer: How many times?
Applicant: About a hundred times.
Interviewer: How can you convince us you're able to uphold the law
when you've broken it yourself?
Applicant: My LSD use was in 1966 when it was still legal sir.
Does the applicant get hired? What if he had done it last week while on
vacation in a country where it was legal?
What if a male applicant wears nail polish and a tastefully conservative
gray skirt? There is a marked lack of tolerance for "deviant" lifestyles
in the selection process of many police forces. This may be part of the
problem when the police and "deviants" meet. "Normal", "respectable"
people rarely receive the kind of harassment that the hippies of yesterday
or the punk rockers of today receive.
A clarification for RWhitney (the AZ cop): The cop hater from northern Cal
was correct about having firearms searched without cause. I can't find the
section of the penal code right now (its in the 12000's section) but I've
read it before and it does really grant California Peace Officers the right
to check any handgun (or was it firearm) to see if it is loaded. In
California possession of a loaded handgun in Public is by special (hard
to get in L.A.) permit only. If you have a handgun in a holster and are
eating lunch in the park the police can search your weapon "without cause"
(meaning they need no proof or indication that your weapon is loaded) in
California.
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 85 14:35:45 EDT
From: Mike <ZALESKI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Police know best?
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
It seems to me that they [the police] DO know best how to control
crime. They have been trained to deal with potentially violent
situations. ... They have lots of experience.
While the police may get lots of experience in target shooting,
a "potentially violent situation" implies real people are involved
and therefore will require making psychological judgements about
whether use of force will be needed at all. I don't think they
(on the average) get much practice or have much experience in this
area. Indeed, the average officer should need to unholster his/her
gun only once or twice during their career.
As an aside, the argument that the use of force may be unneeded,
even against armed criminals, is not completely off the wall. As
a psychologist friend of mine puts it, some criminals - when caught -
realize that it is over, but they will do things to delay the
inevitable, try to escape by car, fire a few random shots at the
police when surrounded, and so on. A police driving manual that
I have a copy of suggests slowing down when pursuing a fleeing
suspect. In many cases, the suspect will slow down too. A similar
strategy can potentially be used in potentially violent situations.
-- "The Model Citizen" Mike^Z
Zaleski@Rutgers [ ihnp4, allegra, topaz ] phoenix!mzal
------------------------------
Date: Wed 16 Oct 85 14:29:01-PDT
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Police know best?
I am not very familiar with police training. Are they really trained
only in target practice, and not in how to make judgments about how
to respond to the people in these situations, and how to judge whether
force is necessary? If so, it seems to me that something is wrong
with their training. When I was a monitor at a demonstration we
had to first spend several hours discussing and practicing how to
nonviolently ease potentially violent situations, and I would have
hoped that people who are going into a career where they can expect
to be in such situations would be better trained. If they are not
so trained, or if their training is no good, then that would put a
big hole in my argument for relying on them. I am not so much concerned
about the fact that the police can fight better than I can, although
I am fairly sure that whatever I tried to do to learn to defend myself
the police would always be able to defend me better. But I would
prefer that these situations be resolved without resort to violence,
and I am assuming that the police have received some training in that,
or can be trained in that. I am also assuming that, should there
be a fight and the police be called to stop it, the people involved
would be more likely to stop than if I personally tried to stop it,
even without the police firing a shot, and that therefore if, for
instance, my neighbor is beating his wife, I should call the police
rather than trying to stop him myself.
Lynn
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 85 20:11:44 EDT
From: Mike <ZALESKI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Police know best?
Perhaps my reply implied that the police receive no training in the
area of assessing and defusing potentially violent situation. As
a practical matter, I suspect that the training they receive (if any)
will vary greatly between locations.
The real point of my argument is that Lynn's comment that the police
have experience in this area is, I feel, somewhat weak if one
distinguishes between training and in-the-field experience. (I am
sure everyone who does computer programming will agree that their
work has made them more experienced than all the classroom lectures
they could stand to hear on the subject.)
-- "The Model Citizen" Mike^Z
Zaleski@Rutgers [ allegra, ihnp4, topaz ] phoenix!mzal
------------------------------
Date: Thu 17 Oct 85 10:16:42-PDT
From: Doug <Faunt%hplabs.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
From: sybalsky.pa@Xerox.ARPA
"--If it's a police officer's word against mine, he wins"
From: RWhitney@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA
This is not an automatic as you seem to think. Generally though I'll admit
you're basically correct. The reason for this though is that the officer
generally has nothing to gain if you're found innocent or guilty.
You can't really believe this last sentence. If the officer gives you
a ticket, and you're found not guilty, then she's wasted a lot of time
and energy of hers, the courts and yours. There's also the issue of
ego, and if you believe police aren't subject to such pressures, then
go play with Tinkerbell. I've gotten a traffic ticket because the
officer wouldn't admit that he'd made a mistaken assumption, went to
court, the officer lied, and it stood.
[I must agree. I would personally claim that the expense of, say,
a $50 ticket is quite negligible compared to the urge to win, to
be publicly justified, to be proven right. I'd easily spend $500
on a lawyer to beat a $50 ticket. There's no way that that same
competitive psychology isn't affecting the cop as well. --JoSH]
------------------------------
Date: Fri 18 Oct 85 09:46:49-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: Drugs/Cops
Perhaps someone said it and I missed it, but the obvious solution to
all of this would be to legalize drugs of all kinds for use by adults.
If they were taxed, you could eliminate the deficit in the bargain!
Too bad it won't happen!
TCS
[Legalizing drugs would help a lot, but eliminate the deficit? You've
got to be kidding. The first thing Congress would do would be
to provide price supports for marijuana farmers... --JoSH]
------------------------------
End of POLI-SCI Digest
- 30 -
-------poli-sci@cca.UUCP (10/19/85)
From: JoSH <JoSH@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Poli-Sci Digest Sat 19 Oct 85 Volume 5 Number 43
Contents: Rights
Responsibility
Cops
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Abridged Rights
C: What it lacks in readability it makes up for with ambiguity.
Song-Of-The-Week: Hansel and Gretel and Ted and Alice
Date: 15 Oct 85 21:58:08 PDT (Tue)
From: Mike (I'll be mellow when I'm dead) Meyer <mwm@ucbopal.Berkeley.EDU>
"This Constitution ... shall be the supreme
Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State
shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the
Constitution or Laws of any State to the
Contrary notwithstanding"
Seeing the above quote reminded me of something I'd done a while back,
that might interest readers of Poli-Sci. Better yet, do it yourself:
Dig out your copy of the Constitution, and look at the Bill of Rights.
Not counting VI, VIII (matter of opinion) and IX (nearly nugatory),
how many have not been abridged by either the federal or state
governments in the US?
I only count two, II and VII. I suspect that someone can provide
instances where those have been abridged.
<mike
[I can think of two: X and XIII. X reads:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution,
nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States
respectively, or to the people."
XIII begins: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as
punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States..."
As far as I can tell, Congress does not consider itself bound
in the least by the lack of the delegation of some power in the
Constitution--In fact it strains at the boundaries of the
specifically prohibited ones. Article XIII makes no exception
for the government-- if conscription and indenture are prohibited
to private parties, the same should apply to Uncle Sam.
--JoSH]
------------------------------
From: jeff@isi-vaxa.ARPA (Jeffery A. Cavallaro)
Date: 17 Oct 1985 1433-PDT (Thursday)
(in response to the manufacture liability for handguns...)
Well, here is another example of compensation from the involved party
that can most afford it. Although, this case is a little different.
It is rather evident that more emphasis is being placed on liability
as a punitive weapon against handgun manufactures, rather than the
welfare of the victim. Thus, we have two scenarios:
1. Liability for victim welfare
2. Liability as a punitive action
When and why one of these liability scenarios can occur brings suggests
a issue that has (in my opinion) plagued the American Legislative and
Judicial systems - the slippery-slope fallacy. This fallacy has
become the bread-and-butter for many lawyers, politicians, and groups
such as the ACLU. A slippery-slope opinion basically holds that if
a judgement is made regarding a certain circumstance, then this same
judgement must equally applied to all similar circumstances,
absurdity or lack of precedence notwithstanding.
One can usually spot a SSF when the following statement is used:
"If ... is allowed to happen, then ... must also be allowed to happen."
One could probably argue that SS is a necessary attribute of egaltarianism,
but I am not quite convinced that this is the case. Ideal egaltarianism
is probably fine in a vacuum, but the complex American society is not a
vacuum.
So, the challenge:
Assuming that we live in an American democracy that strives for
egaltarianism:
1. Is it valid to make such liability decisions?
2. Is it valid to selectively apply such liability, depending on the
situation?
3. When applying such liability, is it valid to do so under different
pretexts (welfare vs. punitive)?
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 1985 01:35:47 PDT
Subject: Police
From: Roger Lewis <RLEWIS@USC-ISIB.ARPA>
I think JoSH may have a very good point on police attitudes (big city vs.
rural towns). In little old Miramar, Florida (pop. 27,000) our police
were exemplary. Maybe 'cause they didn't deal with the stresses that
L.A. police are subjected to. Still that's a small consolation if it's
your head that a big city cop takes a swing at.
But on to political theory: Who thinks that a government set up as a
pluralism (which is the way I see the U.S.) should have as its watchdogs
people who are chosen for their "stability"? How many people with pink
hair would pass the oral interview, the police psychologist interview,
and the background test, even if their answers were similar to other
applicants' answers? There is a mentality that is recruited for police
work and bleeding hearts, weirdos, freaks, communists (and until recently
racial minorities) need not apply.
What I'm getting at is that it appears that Western Civilization's
greatest strength is the diversity of beliefs and lifestyles it allows
its people. Why then, don't the people whose duty it is to uphold the
law reflect this diversity? What is *so* unstable about having tried
drugs? I wonder about the stability of anyone (in L.A. at least) who
hasn't tried drugs.
Imagine-
Interviewer: Have you ever taken drugs?
Applicant: Yes sir, LSD.
Interviewer: How many times?
Applicant: About a hundred times.
Interviewer: How can you convince us you're able to uphold the law
when you've broken it yourself?
Applicant: My LSD use was in 1966 when it was still legal sir.
Does the applicant get hired? What if he had done it last week while on
vacation in a country where it was legal?
What if a male applicant wears nail polish and a tastefully conservative
gray skirt? There is a marked lack of tolerance for "deviant" lifestyles
in the selection process of many police forces. This may be part of the
problem when the police and "deviants" meet. "Normal", "respectable"
people rarely receive the kind of harassment that the hippies of yesterday
or the punk rockers of today receive.
A clarification for RWhitney (the AZ cop): The cop hater from northern Cal
was correct about having firearms searched without cause. I can't find the
section of the penal code right now (its in the 12000's section) but I've
read it before and it does really grant California Peace Officers the right
to check any handgun (or was it firearm) to see if it is loaded. In
California possession of a loaded handgun in Public is by special (hard
to get in L.A.) permit only. If you have a handgun in a holster and are
eating lunch in the park the police can search your weapon "without cause"
(meaning they need no proof or indication that your weapon is loaded) in
California.
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 85 14:35:45 EDT
From: Mike <ZALESKI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Police know best?
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
It seems to me that they [the police] DO know best how to control
crime. They have been trained to deal with potentially violent
situations. ... They have lots of experience.
While the police may get lots of experience in target shooting,
a "potentially violent situation" implies real people are involved
and therefore will require making psychological judgements about
whether use of force will be needed at all. I don't think they
(on the average) get much practice or have much experience in this
area. Indeed, the average officer should need to unholster his/her
gun only once or twice during their career.
As an aside, the argument that the use of force may be unneeded,
even against armed criminals, is not completely off the wall. As
a psychologist friend of mine puts it, some criminals - when caught -
realize that it is over, but they will do things to delay the
inevitable, try to escape by car, fire a few random shots at the
police when surrounded, and so on. A police driving manual that
I have a copy of suggests slowing down when pursuing a fleeing
suspect. In many cases, the suspect will slow down too. A similar
strategy can potentially be used in potentially violent situations.
-- "The Model Citizen" Mike^Z
Zaleski@Rutgers [ ihnp4, allegra, topaz ] phoenix!mzal
------------------------------
Date: Wed 16 Oct 85 14:29:01-PDT
From: Lynn Gazis <SAPPHO@SRI-NIC.ARPA>
Subject: Re: Police know best?
I am not very familiar with police training. Are they really trained
only in target practice, and not in how to make judgments about how
to respond to the people in these situations, and how to judge whether
force is necessary? If so, it seems to me that something is wrong
with their training. When I was a monitor at a demonstration we
had to first spend several hours discussing and practicing how to
nonviolently ease potentially violent situations, and I would have
hoped that people who are going into a career where they can expect
to be in such situations would be better trained. If they are not
so trained, or if their training is no good, then that would put a
big hole in my argument for relying on them. I am not so much concerned
about the fact that the police can fight better than I can, although
I am fairly sure that whatever I tried to do to learn to defend myself
the police would always be able to defend me better. But I would
prefer that these situations be resolved without resort to violence,
and I am assuming that the police have received some training in that,
or can be trained in that. I am also assuming that, should there
be a fight and the police be called to stop it, the people involved
would be more likely to stop than if I personally tried to stop it,
even without the police firing a shot, and that therefore if, for
instance, my neighbor is beating his wife, I should call the police
rather than trying to stop him myself.
Lynn
------------------------------
Date: 16 Oct 85 20:11:44 EDT
From: Mike <ZALESKI@RED.RUTGERS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Police know best?
Perhaps my reply implied that the police receive no training in the
area of assessing and defusing potentially violent situation. As
a practical matter, I suspect that the training they receive (if any)
will vary greatly between locations.
The real point of my argument is that Lynn's comment that the police
have experience in this area is, I feel, somewhat weak if one
distinguishes between training and in-the-field experience. (I am
sure everyone who does computer programming will agree that their
work has made them more experienced than all the classroom lectures
they could stand to hear on the subject.)
-- "The Model Citizen" Mike^Z
Zaleski@Rutgers [ allegra, ihnp4, topaz ] phoenix!mzal
------------------------------
Date: Thu 17 Oct 85 10:16:42-PDT
From: Doug <Faunt%hplabs.csnet@CSNET-RELAY.ARPA>
From: sybalsky.pa@Xerox.ARPA
"--If it's a police officer's word against mine, he wins"
From: RWhitney@HIS-PHOENIX-MULTICS.ARPA
This is not an automatic as you seem to think. Generally though I'll admit
you're basically correct. The reason for this though is that the officer
generally has nothing to gain if you're found innocent or guilty.
You can't really believe this last sentence. If the officer gives you
a ticket, and you're found not guilty, then she's wasted a lot of time
and energy of hers, the courts and yours. There's also the issue of
ego, and if you believe police aren't subject to such pressures, then
go play with Tinkerbell. I've gotten a traffic ticket because the
officer wouldn't admit that he'd made a mistaken assumption, went to
court, the officer lied, and it stood.
[I must agree. I would personally claim that the expense of, say,
a $50 ticket is quite negligible compared to the urge to win, to
be publicly justified, to be proven right. I'd easily spend $500
on a lawyer to beat a $50 ticket. There's no way that that same
competitive psychology isn't affecting the cop as well. --JoSH]
------------------------------
Date: Fri 18 Oct 85 09:46:49-PDT
From: Terry C. Savage <TCS@USC-ECL.ARPA>
Subject: Drugs/Cops
Perhaps someone said it and I missed it, but the obvious solution to
all of this would be to legalize drugs of all kinds for use by adults.
If they were taxed, you could eliminate the deficit in the bargain!
Too bad it won't happen!
TCS
[Legalizing drugs would help a lot, but eliminate the deficit? You've
got to be kidding. The first thing Congress would do would be
to provide price supports for marijuana farmers... --JoSH]
------------------------------
End of POLI-SCI Digest
- 30 -
-------