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Comment by genericresponse | Hacker News Reader

If this really is what Greenwald is saying, than he's pretty solidly turned into the Glenn Beck of the left.

The rule of law might not seem always fair, but it hampers the powerful much more than the weak. As an example: None of the billionaires in my city have set up their own duchy pressed us into an army, enforcing their own laws. Their taxes, while not as high as I would like, in fact pay for much of our city budget including city services. Even the poor in my city have access to clean water and the library system.

Just because we have to fight to maintain the sanctity of the legal system and because every actor isn't perfect, does not mean that it's entirely corrupt and captive. I would ask you to take a moment to compare the current rule of law, rule of law in a developing country, and rule of law without the rights guarded by a nation-state.

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Are you kidding me? Prisons are filled with poor black drug offenders. If you're wealthy you can literally be a convicted paedophile sex offender and not do time.

The fact you attribute clean water as a sign of a functioning justice system shows how low your bar is.

Edit: I will say we have rights that exist. You just need to able to afford high power attorneys to prove such.

Prisons are not in fact filled with drug offenders; the majority of all inmates are incarcerated for violent crimes.

http://harvardjol.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/HLL104_crop...

Your bar is too high; getting clean water consistently for almost a century straight, without any major interruptions, for 99% of the population is damn good proof that rule of law works.

> Prisons are filled with poor black drug offenders

How is that an example of the justice system not functioning? 80-90% of people think drugs other than marijuana should be illegal. 32% see drug abuse as a "crisis" and another 55% as a "serious problem": http://www.people-press.org/2014/04/02/americas-new-drug-pol....

People thinking drug use is dangerous and making it illegal, and then putting people in jail for trafficking in drugs (which accounts for the vast majority of sentences), is not a failure of the justice system.

EDIT: Since people seem confused by certain FUD on this subject. The vast majority of "drug offenders" filling prisons are there for trafficking not possession: http://www.drugwarfacts.org/cms/Prisons_and_Drugs (only 5.3% of federal drug prisoners are serving time for possession; 91.4% are serving time for trafficking). And 80-90% of people support keeping cocaine and heroin illegal: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/17/drug-legalization-p....

Also account for the time lag between changing public opinion and changes in policy. As recently as 2001, 45% of people polled (and probably a much higher percentage of actual voters, who skew older and more conservative), opposed getting rid of mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug crimes.

Probably due to the inequality of enforcement. If everybody agrees something should be a crime but offender group A gets a 5 year sentence and group B gets 10 years or one gets community service and the other gets jail there's some kind of problem.

Study controlling for type of crime and circumstances finds ~10% more severe punishment for crimes black to white: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1985377

Evidence that despite approximately equal occurrences of consumption of narcotics black citizens are arrested much more frequently than white citizens: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/06/04/the-b...

Did you even read the headline of the source you posted, let alone its content? It says the exact opposite of what you are claiming. Here's the sub-head: "Two-Thirds Favor Treatment, Not Jail, for Use of Heroin, Cocaine."

People do NOT support jailing offenders for minor drug offenders.

Your link is the opposite of what you claim - hell, the first paragraph clearly states that the bulk of people want rehabilitation rather than incarceration for users of harder drugs.

Isn't "trafficking" determined by amount, not activity?

I don't have appropriate legal citations, but yes, via the doctrine of "possession with intent to distribute" -- i.e. if you have more of the drug than one person could possibly hope to use, then courts have ruled that one can infer the person was intending to share or sell the drugs.

We need not tell you to do more than what you're obviously capable of: find some research into the difference in outcome for black people and white people.

A successful rule of law functions in spite of, and not at the utter service to, the majority.

>>The rule of law might not seem always fair, but it hampers the powerful much more than the weak.

I guess we live in different realities. The powerful have proven over and over that they are capable of subverting the system in their own favor using their resources and influence.

>>As an example: None of the billionaires in my city have set up their own duchy pressed us into an army, enforcing their own laws.

They haven't set up their own duchies with private armies because they haven't had to. The state already protects them. Here is a direct quote from Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations:

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.”

>I guess we live in different realities. The powerful have proven over and over that they are capable of subverting the system in their own favor using their resources and influence.

At least the post you are replying to had the courtesy of providing supporting arguments.

I don't think I agree with the extreme nature of the premise a number of comments up the thread, that said my favorite example of this:

http://www.vaildaily.com/article/20101104/NEWS/101109939 A hedge fund manager had his criminal charges substantially reduced over the victim's objections because having a felony would mean the hedge fund manager would have to admit what he did to his clients. The defendant in question struck a bicyclist in a hit and run, drove far away and called for roadside assistance for his car never mentioning anything about the bicyclist he left with lifelong injuries. Of course the excuse is that after he was caught he agree to pay some restitution to the victim...

Anyway, just a crazy story that I figured I'd share so not really a study of real national trends or anything.

Your whole second paragraph has literally nothing to do with the rule of law, just a basic functioning state.

The rule of law and the basic functioning of the state is one and the same. The state sets and enforces the law. The state's strength and the consent/will of the populace determines the success of the state and the law.

The states in the Arabian peninsula have strong legal systems, yet they are highly inconsistent when it comes to serving the people. For example, Saudi Arabia has very strong legal enforcement, but you wouldn't want to be black or a woman there.

But "rule of law" is not really the way to describe them, despite "strong legal systems".

> The rule of law might not seem always fair, but it hampers the powerful much more than the weak. As an example: None of the billionaires in my city have set up their own duchy pressed us into an army, enforcing their own laws.

And the poor haven't sacked them or hauled them to the guillotine. I still feel like the rich are winning here.

> Even the poor in my city have access to clean water and the library system.

Were there attempts to take those away that were successfully stopped in court? Because otherwise, you seem to be hand-waving more than arguing.

I don't consider it "winning" that people aren't hauled to the guillotine. I consider it their basic human right.

This reminds me, BTW, how lots of people have recently, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, urged us to sing La Marseillaise, to express sympathy to the French. That is slightly funny: the lyrics are rather blood-curling.

Do you hear, in the countryside, the roar of those ferocious soldiers?

They're coming right into your arms to cut the throats of your sons, your women!

To arms, citizens, form your battalions,

Let's march, let's march! Let an impure blood water our furrows! (Repeat)

I mean, it looks like people confuse it with All You Need Is Love which just steals the intro from it.

> I don't consider it "winning" that people aren't hauled to the guillotine. I consider it their basic human right.

Well, duh. Did you miss the comment I was replying to, which suggested that the poor are better served by our system of laws than the rich are because the rich don't press them into servitude and they have clean water?

>The rule of law might not seem always fair, but it hampers the powerful much more than the weak.

Yes in theory, but not so much in actual reality.

As Aesop said: "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office."

Rob a gas station and get 10+ years. Rob the world economy and get promoted to Secretary of Treasury and the most powerful Governor's seat of the IMF.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Lew

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