Hacker News Reader

Comment by gdhbcc | Hacker News Reader

There were plenty of laws banning black people from Sitting on the wrong place in the bus, and yet if someone were to defend the jailing of someone due to violating that law you'd be talking about the injustice that was.

The law is the law is only an argument if you're willing to always take it to it's full logical conclusion, so my question to you was, if this judge was ordering you to do something you felt was morally horrifying, such as for example sterilizing someone without their consent (as has been done in the past), would you accept it and do it?

View on HN

The law that says you must do what a judge orders isn't unjust. If people can ignore a judge's orders the entire justice system falls apart. Contempt of court is a serious thing.

If something is unjust, it must be complained about directly. In your example it is reasonable to complain about the law mandating sterilisation, but it is unreasonable to complain that a judge is requiring people to follow the law.

I don't really see how to get worked up about the publicly available information. The real issue is that the US government seems to have avenues available where it may be able keep not just the indictment process but also the trial itself secret; given all the damage done to the legal system in the hysteric response to 9/11 which will now be employed on people who are terrorising the US government.

I'm going to preempt anyone trying to say say that the FISA court system is not for cases like Wikileak's by pointing out that nobody knows what that court system is used for in practice. It is secret.

> The law that says you must do what a judge orders isn't unjust.

It has been argued for a VERY long time that grand juries (which is why she can be put in jail repeatedly like this) are unjust. Many states do not even use them because of it. Grand juries get special privileges, like compelling people to testify without lawyers, or through double jeopardy as is the case here.

https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/fifth-amendment-grand-ju...

> Many states do not even use them because of it.

Many states do not use them because they prefer to subject people to public accusation of crime without the filtering process of a grand jury up front, but instead with a preliminary hearing after the fact (and therefore after the harm of the public accusation is realized.)

> Grand juries get special privileges, like compelling people to testify without lawyers, or through double jeopardy as is the case here.

That's not a special privilege, regular courts do the same thing, whether when conducting a preliminary hearing instead of grand jury indictment or at other points in the process: witnesses, unlike defendants, have no right to representation by counsel.

I don’t think you quite understand what you’re talking about - do you realize Chelsea Manning is not the target of the grand jury? How can a person being compelled to testify for actions they’ve been granted immunity risk double jeopardy?

If the law asks me to do something I do not want to do for ethical reasons, I will not do it and accept to be punished. I expect the punishment to take into account the ethical reasons and to be small. Refusing to comply is the way to make the law change, but we have to accept the price.

The law can't handle willful lawbreakers that way; otherwise criminals would develop strong ethical reservations about all sorts of stupid things.

Ignoring a judge, purposefully and with premeditation, is not going to earn anyone reduced punishment. It is contempt of court.

Again, if the law has ethical problems it is reasonable to put up a bit of a struggle. Just don't complain about the justice system is somehow doing anything unexpected - the problem sits with the lawmakers.

> The law can't handle willful lawbreakers that way; otherwise criminals would develop strong ethical reservations about all sorts of stupid things.

The law or rather the judges make judgement calls all the time. Does someone get bail? Does this person hide something? Is this interpretation by a lawyer sound? What mitigating circumstances should be considered in a judgement?

It's not like people ask for something unprecedented here and the law up until now was some mechanical process that always lead to the same outcome.

It's reasonable to expect judges to use their judgment and discretion in applying the law. It's not reasonable to expect them to use your judgment and discretion.

It is completely reasonable to hold a judge's discretion and judgement under scrutiny.

I'd go as far to say it's your duty.

> The law can't handle willful lawbreakers that way; otherwise criminals would develop strong ethical reservations about all sorts of stupid things.

The fact that this has to be explained shows how sheltered and naive some people are

If they're not happy they can move to a low law enforcement country, apparently it would be the paradise for them (except for the fact you'll probably be robbed most often than not, still)

I disagree, I think it is fairly easy to prove that the ethical reasons make sense, or not, based on the other behavior of the person.

> If they're not happy they can move to a low law enforcement country, apparently it would be the paradise for them (except for the fact you'll probably be robbed most often than not, still)

Haha, yeah, because of high law enforcement the USA is a paradise where no violence or robberies take place. I don't know about robberies, but there's a lot less violence in my country than in yours where shootings are regular.

Agree. I live in the states, highest incarceration rates in the world. My apartment still got robbed, the cops still took a day to actually respond to it and investigate.

Would still rather my nation have fairer law enforcement practices.

> yeah, because of high law enforcement the USA is a paradise where no violence or robberies take place.

Sufficient enforcement is not a guarantee of lower crime rates

And again, it's a bit of lack of knowledge of how things work in the 3rd world

> The law that says you must do what a judge orders isn't unjust. If people can ignore a judge's orders the entire justice system falls apart. Contempt of court is a serious thing.

A normal legal system will have criteria of legality for what a court can demand, if not a clearly defined list of what it can and can not demand.

In US, well, a judge can demand you to stand on your head in the courtroom... and you will have to do that!

US has a history of people being hit with contempt of court for things being borderline silly.

Since mid century and on, you see how the line of reasoning "if I am allowed to do that, it's right" and legal casuistics completely hollowed out the moral integrity of American judiciary.

My business law prof was a lawyer who began his career as a trial lawyer in USA, and then moved to Canada. One of reasons he said made him drop it was him feeling despair every time he saw judges spending court breaks smoking with prosecutors, and giving him a gawking look when they saw him looking at them. He said he felt that judges and prosecutors were pretty much teaming up on poor defendants, and that he had to fight courts as much as the prosecution side.

He was one of defence lawyers for black rights movement, panthers and poorer black people, during seventies. He was one of youngest lawyers around back then, and he ended up defending such cases because nobody more senior in the defence lawyer community wanted to take upon such "hopeless" cases.

How would you not call such legal system a joke? How can it pretend having any decorum?

We can't defend everyone's morality equally. Most of us agree about the immorality of racist laws or forced sterilization. There just isn't the same kind of consensus about the morality of publishing leaked classified documents.

We're not talking just about some random criminal. Manning is a famous leaker. Everytime she stands up against a judge there's a discussion on the front page of HN, and a bunch of articles in the press. Her actions obviously provoke discussion in a way that some rando's thinking he's entitled to do what he pleases with regards to judges orders do not.

It may be, she's doing her small part to change something in the future. Her actions will be remembered. They already are by many people. And it's a bit myopic to just focus on "contempt of court" part.

Everytime Manning comes up, it just reminds me that US is still murdering people around the world without any justification or verification of who was killed in most cases, while the system is focussing on punishing her further - instead of trying to improve and save innocent lives.

Lets suppose that some of those classified documents would show for example evidence of war crimes, killing and torturing helpless people "by fun", or massively spy and lie to our own citizens.

I bet that to disclose hideous crimes would be unanimously seen as a morally acceptable act by the majority of the people.

The problem is not in the leaking act itself, the problem is the contents of the leaks.

There wasn't consensus before about racist laws and forced sterilization. As a matter of fact, they were completely moral! Consensus on the immorality of it was achieved after many people struggled with the judiciary system and lawmakers. It takes a whole lot of noise to open some eyes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com