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Surrendering Rights March 13, 2007

Posted by ocmpoma in : society , trackback

On a thread in the forums, the following was said when discussing lawbreaking:

“When people break the law they automatically give up certain rights, like the right not to be incarcerated.”

Now, it’s not important which thread or who said it, because it’s a common idea and I’m not picking a fight with a particular person. Instead, I want to take a look at this assertion, because I don’t agree with it.

First off, unlike most people that I know, I don’t think that rights are inherent; we aren’t born with them. Rights are not universal. Nor are they granted, really. Instead, I think that rights are a social construct, and they are arrived at (when the concept of them exists at all) by some sort of vague consensus, much like morality.

But. That’s not really the issue, although I think it would make an interesting discussion.

Instead, even if we assume that rights are possessed at birth, etc. — does it still make sense, this assertion? It seems to me, that it is more of an excuse. What really happens is that, when someone breaks the law (and they are caught, etc.) society (hopefully via a government and legal system) deprives them of rights that they otherwise would be deemed to possess.

Now, let’s look at some examples, such as a certain family who broke the law. Did they ’surrender’ their rights? What about those who followed the law, and turned them in?

Of course, a common tenet of civil disobedience is that, if one is going to break the law, one has to be willing to accept the consequences. Furthermore, as someone once said: in an unjust society, a just man should be in prison.

The problem that I see with the assertion that lawbreakers surrender their rights is that it equates rights with laws. In a just society, that may be the case — although I’ve yet to encounter a society which has absolutely no unjust laws. A more sinister issue underlying that is the equation of what is legal to what is morally correct.

Both of those equations are false. One’s rights are not the same as one’s legal obligations; and what is right is not always what is legal. The assertion that lawbreakers have somehow given up their rights is nothing more than an excuse made by a society which does not want to take a cold hard look at the fact that, when you have a large group of people living together, push will come to shove, and someone’s going to get knocked down.

Rather than say that those who break the law surrender their rights, I think we should say that those who break the law have their rights taken from them by society. This corrects a deficiency of perspective, placing the responsibility on the society to ensure that the deprivation of those rights is as just as it can be. Because, in the end, it was those who unjustly deprived the Franks, and many millions more, of their rights, for breaking unjust laws, that are the real criminals.

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