You just started to work is a lab with another 50 people. After a few months a chemical is stolen. The police comes to check the place. Every one of the 50 have the key to the chemicals and it is impossible to find out who stole the chemicals. The story goes on the news paper and the rest of the community start to worry that there is a criminal in the town and one that definitely works in the Lab. They want something sorted and protests begin.
All the 50 workers have a guess of who it was, for some reason. So they decide to use, democracy. Everyone votes, secretly, in that person who should probably be the thief. Ends up to be you, with the excuse that you are the new one, and since nothing was stolen before, it has to be you.
You say you didn’t do it, which is true. But you go to court anyway. Some people from the community, who wants to find the one to blame, will judge you. In the end, they decide you are guilty and will have to be executed.
The majority has decided. Since the majority is happy with your execution, it’s said that it was very democratic.
Can the majority decide what is and what isn’t fair and just? Is democracy, after all, the best way of government?
It’s been said that “Five randy men and virgin girl don’t make a good democracy”, and I would agree. I think a Constitutional republic is a better idea than straight democracy, because there has to be an absolute limit even to things that the majority can request. With a set of unchangable ground rules, you can limit how much a majority can exploit a minority, and keep things fair.
Clementine, your argument is extremely one-sided. First, the DA’s office would not file charges unless their case was prima facie, which it isn’t. Then, your attorney would not accept a juror who has an already-formed opinion about the case. Also, the jury must vote not guilty if there is even a slight reasonable doubt. Finally, there are mandatory appeals with every felony. Therefore, your scenario is nearly impossible.
Limiting exploitation and not destroying it would still not be fair to those exploited. Fair would be not exploitation at all.
Well, it wasn’t supposed to be 100% possible, but if, as you said, is nearly impossible, it still has a chance to happen.
Gosh… you took it very serious…
I don’t think you can be sure is the juror has a already formed opinion on any case. Firstly you don’t know those people’s principles and if they are or are not capable of being impartial, it’s impossible to know such thing. If you get one person who is capable of persuading others you can change the mind of the whole juror…
Appeals might come to nothing if the judge decided not to accept it.
But the same goes to someone who does committee a crime and is set free for lack of evidences or even evidences that would put the person in jail but cannot be used in court for, ironically, legal reasons.
A representative system does seem more fair in that light, as Ucci said. However you can never have a government system that never goes wrong. Sometimes the majority is wrong. Sometimes special interests are wrong, but they usually get their way because nobody else cares as much and has the same level of organization. The advantage of representative democracy is that it has been tried and worked better than other forms of government.
Democracy is a lie.
The only power is found at the end of a sword/gun.
The only way to obtain power is to take it.
Now how you take it from others is what makes men theifs or Kings.
The principal flaw of democracy is this: that everything is correct and incorrect at the same time. Counting the heads of a formless mass in an earnest attempt to arrive at some sort of right or wrong is utterly preposterous. Only qualified people, therefore, ought to vote. When qualified people are brought together and institutionalised, they thereby become rationalised, and become worthy of the “voting” privilege. They represent not “the people”, but the necessity of discerning truthhood from falsehood. It is quite manifest that this cannot be done by counting the heads of unqualified people, which is precisely why technocracy–rule by technical experts–is necessary. This formless mass–“the people”–do not proportion ends with means, they believe in many things in which evidence is wanting, and they seldom if ever trod the path of Truth.
Clementine, your example is one of a democracy without a republic–the will of the people without any compromise or limitation. That clearly is awful, and it is why the framers of the US Constitution worried so much about “mob rule.” When most people think “democracy,” they are thinking of constitutional republics/liberal democracy governments you have in the West, which are definitely not pure democracies… and thank God. I suppose you could say the same thing about capitalism, as so much of what the government does is to mitigate market forces, though, ironically, without law there could be no free markets.
Is it fair? Well, “fair” in criminal matters means that each accussed goes through the same legal process as all the others, has the same rights and oppurtunities. The procedures of criminal prosecution are very little concerned with “the will of the people,” they are concerned with finding the truth (in principle, anyway). The US is pretty eccentric in having a jury system, and that’s about as close to your example as any real western democracy gets. And even in that the jury is obligated to follow restrictive criteria, not just “he looks guilty.” Now, some juries will shirk their responsibility and vote with prejudice or incompetence, but then the failure rests on their shoulders, and it is no longer a question of the “system” being fair or unfair. There is always the right to appeal in a different court, and to claim civil damages for wrongful prosecution.
The state cannot make things fair without the compliance of its citizens. No law can replace the basic necessity for trust and good faith… that is, if you don’t want a police state where everybody is coerced to do everything. But those are hardly any more “fair”, are they? So, expecting that a government is going to make it all fair all of a sudden is silly. Better to suggest concrete ways of improving the fairness of the system we actually have and then going through the democratic process to have them enacted. Of course you’ll have to compromise with all the people who don’t agree with you. Or you could go the Mao/Stalin route and simply refuse to compromise with the people on matters of democracy. If fair is something you have in mind, then the government will never be fair because it is always more and other than what you have in mind.
Clementine, your argument is extremely one-sided. First, the DA’s office would not file charges unless their case was prima facie, which it isn’t. Then, your attorney would not accept a juror who has an already-formed opinion about the case. Also, the jury must vote not guilty if there is even a slight reasonable doubt. Finally, there are mandatory appeals with every felony. Therefore, your scenario is nearly impossible.