Defending People

the tao of criminal-defense trial lawyering

Right v. Wrong

An under­stand­ing of the crim­i­nal “jus­tice” sys­tem has to begin with this:

The crim­i­nal “jus­tice” sys­tem is not about “right and wrong.”

Right and wrong” and “legal and ille­gal” are entirely sep­a­rate con­cepts. “Right” and “wrong” are moral terms, not legal terms. The fact that some­thing is ille­gal does not make it wrong, and the fact that it is legal does not make it right. (Flip­ping those two propo­si­tions, the fact that some­thing is right does not make it legal, and the fact that it is wrong does not make it ille­gal.) Some­thing that is wrong and ille­gal does not become right if it’s decrim­i­nal­ized. Some­thing that’s right and legal doesn’t become wrong if it’s criminalized.

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About The Author

Mark Bennett got his letter of marque from the Supreme Court of Texas in May 1995. He is famous for having no sense of humor when it comes to totalitarianism.

Comments

One Response to “Right v. Wrong”

  1. Scott Greenfield says:

    Kinda reminds me of Don Rumsfeld:

    Reports that say that some­thing hasn’t hap­pened are always inter­est­ing to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns ‚Äî the ones we don’t know we don’t know.

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