All dreams about a better future world are just dreams without the solid foundation in good laws. Plato has shown us an excellent example, by moving from his Dialogue on Politeia to the next Dialogue on Laws. But once such good laws have been written, good law enforcement is not a surefire panacea for a normal functioning of a healthy republic, for even the best laws can fall victim to bad interpretations.
No society can be secure, functioning on an auto-pilot, that is, by entrusting its security and wellbeing to its law enforcement authorities. Let us take, as an example, the American society, and reformulate our query as follows: Are modern American laws (ostensibly the best national laws in existence) sufficient to guarantee a smooth operation of the political system, and to ensure the “liberty and justice for all”?
To begin with, the whole point of the “checks and balances” is to protect the laws from abuse and false interpretation, likely to be visited upon them, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the two kinds of such perpetrators: the wicked, and the ignorant. Society can, of course, make the expensive effort to protect itself from the ignorant public official, by allowing only top professionals (“all Harvard men,”) to apply for governing jobs (although I do not think that America is ever going to permit such elitist job discrimination!), but then, what about the wicked? They go to Harvard too, and more than occasionally graduate from it with highest honors!
But, even before any basic “checks and balances” even come into play, it is the duty of the people to make sure that their elected officials are not chosen frivolously, but have proved themselves to possess both good judgment and moral integrity. While those who have somehow “wormed their way through the cracks” in the selection process and while in office have exhibited serious flaws of character, or lack of adequate perspicacity ought to be resolutely and speedily impeached.
But unfortunately, American politics are deficient on both counts. Among the candidates running for public office, not the best and the wisest are chosen, but those who are best financed and staffed with the cleverest spin doctors. With regard to removing bad officials from office, the American political system has come to view impeachment of public officers as a disruption, rather than a correction of the normal political process, and this puts a big strain on the system of checks and balances, occasionally rendering it unworkable.
The importance of thoughtful selection of government officials comes clear from the following paragraphs of Hobbes’s Leviathan, Chapter XXVI:
“For, whatever men are to take knowledge of, for law, not upon other men’s words, but every one from his own reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all; which no law can be, but the law of nature. The laws of nature, therefore, need not any publishing nor proclamation; being contained in one sentence approved by all the world: 'Do not do to another, which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.'
Secondly, if it is a law that obliges only some condition of men or one man and is not written or published by word, then also it is a law of nature, and known by the same arguments which distinguish those in such condition from other subjects. For whatever law is not written or some way published by him that makes it law, can be known no way but by the reason of him who is to obey it; and is also a law not only civil, but natural. For example, if the sovereign employs a public minister, without written instructions what to do, he is obliged to take for instructions the dictates of reason: as if he make a judge the judge is to take note that his sentence must be according to the reason of his sovereign, which being understood to be equity, he is bound to it by the law of nature: or if an ambassador, he is, in all things not contained in his written instructions, to take that which reason dictates to be most conducing to his sovereign's interest; and so of all other ministers of the sovereignty, public and private. All which instructions of natural reason may be comprehended under one name of fidelity, which is a branch of natural justice.”
What Hobbes is essentially saying here is that governing is a serious and much-demanding business. A lot of things can and will go wrong, if the most excellent laws are entrusted to the care of the wrong people. A public officer (from the “President” down) must make decisions that are not self-evident, but based on his personal judgment, coming from his experience and moral standards, in accordance with natural reason. It is therefore essential that each public figure’s personal morality be seriously examined, but not with regard to his particular religious views, which always tend to be sectarian and divisive, but from the angle of how he or she understands, and has a track record of following, "universal" moral principles. One of such universal and practical natural laws is suggested here by Hobbes as his one-sentence rule of thumb: “Approved by all the world: Do not to another which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.”
In the same Chapter XXVI of Hobbes’s Leviathan, he makes this further argument for the importance of the public official’s good judgment not in enforcing the law, which happens to be less complicated, but in this law’s proper interpretation:
“The legislator known, and the laws by writing or by the light of nature sufficiently published, there wants yet another material circumstance to make them obligatory. For it is not the letter, but the intent in which the nature of the law consists; and, therefore, all laws, written and unwritten, have need of interpretation. The unwritten law of nature, though it be easy to such as without partiality and passion make use of their natural reason and therefore leaves the violators thereof without excuse; yet considering there be very few, perhaps none, that in some cases are not blinded by self-love, or some other passion, it is now become of all laws the most obscure, and has consequently the greatest need of able interpreters. The written laws if short are easily misinterpreted, for the diverse meanings of a word or two; if long, they be more obscure by the diverse significations of many words: in so much as no written law delivered in few or in many words, can be clearly understood without a perfect understanding of the final causes, for which the law has been made; the knowledge of which final causes is in the legislator. To him there cannot be any knot in the law insoluble, either by finding out the ends to undo it by, or else by making what ends he will by a legislative power; which no other interpreter can do.”
Here is the proper role of the Supreme Court spelled out and this will be a truly most outstanding institution to appeal to, when in doubt about what ‘is’ is. I wonder if a similar version of such a Court might be found, or even if the Supreme Court itself can be charged with this essential task: to clarify the definitions of basic political terms, being used by the other branches of power so that this nation can have its dignity restored by the responsible use of all such terms and by their appropriate applications.
Because---and this is the bottom line of everything I have said so far in this entry---the tragedy of grotesque misinterpretation of both national and international laws by wicked or ignorant public officials can be justly attributed mostly to the flaws in the definitions of the terminology being used, but alas, so far, looking at the US Supreme Court in action, I have not found in the Justices a particular desire to have this terrible flaw of ambiguity in usage rectified. Nor have I found such a desire in any international body so far, including the overpaid, but underperforming Secretariat of the United Nations, where bureaucrats are ever welcome, but serious thinkers are just as out of place as in any other bureaucracy.
(My last comment must in no way be interpreted as a disparagement of the United Nations as such, but this good institution, to which I once happened to belong, surely needs to improve the quality of its bureaucrats.)
No society can be secure, functioning on an auto-pilot, that is, by entrusting its security and wellbeing to its law enforcement authorities. Let us take, as an example, the American society, and reformulate our query as follows: Are modern American laws (ostensibly the best national laws in existence) sufficient to guarantee a smooth operation of the political system, and to ensure the “liberty and justice for all”?
To begin with, the whole point of the “checks and balances” is to protect the laws from abuse and false interpretation, likely to be visited upon them, either deliberately or inadvertently, by the two kinds of such perpetrators: the wicked, and the ignorant. Society can, of course, make the expensive effort to protect itself from the ignorant public official, by allowing only top professionals (“all Harvard men,”) to apply for governing jobs (although I do not think that America is ever going to permit such elitist job discrimination!), but then, what about the wicked? They go to Harvard too, and more than occasionally graduate from it with highest honors!
But, even before any basic “checks and balances” even come into play, it is the duty of the people to make sure that their elected officials are not chosen frivolously, but have proved themselves to possess both good judgment and moral integrity. While those who have somehow “wormed their way through the cracks” in the selection process and while in office have exhibited serious flaws of character, or lack of adequate perspicacity ought to be resolutely and speedily impeached.
But unfortunately, American politics are deficient on both counts. Among the candidates running for public office, not the best and the wisest are chosen, but those who are best financed and staffed with the cleverest spin doctors. With regard to removing bad officials from office, the American political system has come to view impeachment of public officers as a disruption, rather than a correction of the normal political process, and this puts a big strain on the system of checks and balances, occasionally rendering it unworkable.
The importance of thoughtful selection of government officials comes clear from the following paragraphs of Hobbes’s Leviathan, Chapter XXVI:
“For, whatever men are to take knowledge of, for law, not upon other men’s words, but every one from his own reason, must be such as is agreeable to the reason of all; which no law can be, but the law of nature. The laws of nature, therefore, need not any publishing nor proclamation; being contained in one sentence approved by all the world: 'Do not do to another, which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.'
Secondly, if it is a law that obliges only some condition of men or one man and is not written or published by word, then also it is a law of nature, and known by the same arguments which distinguish those in such condition from other subjects. For whatever law is not written or some way published by him that makes it law, can be known no way but by the reason of him who is to obey it; and is also a law not only civil, but natural. For example, if the sovereign employs a public minister, without written instructions what to do, he is obliged to take for instructions the dictates of reason: as if he make a judge the judge is to take note that his sentence must be according to the reason of his sovereign, which being understood to be equity, he is bound to it by the law of nature: or if an ambassador, he is, in all things not contained in his written instructions, to take that which reason dictates to be most conducing to his sovereign's interest; and so of all other ministers of the sovereignty, public and private. All which instructions of natural reason may be comprehended under one name of fidelity, which is a branch of natural justice.”
What Hobbes is essentially saying here is that governing is a serious and much-demanding business. A lot of things can and will go wrong, if the most excellent laws are entrusted to the care of the wrong people. A public officer (from the “President” down) must make decisions that are not self-evident, but based on his personal judgment, coming from his experience and moral standards, in accordance with natural reason. It is therefore essential that each public figure’s personal morality be seriously examined, but not with regard to his particular religious views, which always tend to be sectarian and divisive, but from the angle of how he or she understands, and has a track record of following, "universal" moral principles. One of such universal and practical natural laws is suggested here by Hobbes as his one-sentence rule of thumb: “Approved by all the world: Do not to another which you think unreasonable to be done by another to you.”
In the same Chapter XXVI of Hobbes’s Leviathan, he makes this further argument for the importance of the public official’s good judgment not in enforcing the law, which happens to be less complicated, but in this law’s proper interpretation:
“The legislator known, and the laws by writing or by the light of nature sufficiently published, there wants yet another material circumstance to make them obligatory. For it is not the letter, but the intent in which the nature of the law consists; and, therefore, all laws, written and unwritten, have need of interpretation. The unwritten law of nature, though it be easy to such as without partiality and passion make use of their natural reason and therefore leaves the violators thereof without excuse; yet considering there be very few, perhaps none, that in some cases are not blinded by self-love, or some other passion, it is now become of all laws the most obscure, and has consequently the greatest need of able interpreters. The written laws if short are easily misinterpreted, for the diverse meanings of a word or two; if long, they be more obscure by the diverse significations of many words: in so much as no written law delivered in few or in many words, can be clearly understood without a perfect understanding of the final causes, for which the law has been made; the knowledge of which final causes is in the legislator. To him there cannot be any knot in the law insoluble, either by finding out the ends to undo it by, or else by making what ends he will by a legislative power; which no other interpreter can do.”
Here is the proper role of the Supreme Court spelled out and this will be a truly most outstanding institution to appeal to, when in doubt about what ‘is’ is. I wonder if a similar version of such a Court might be found, or even if the Supreme Court itself can be charged with this essential task: to clarify the definitions of basic political terms, being used by the other branches of power so that this nation can have its dignity restored by the responsible use of all such terms and by their appropriate applications.
Because---and this is the bottom line of everything I have said so far in this entry---the tragedy of grotesque misinterpretation of both national and international laws by wicked or ignorant public officials can be justly attributed mostly to the flaws in the definitions of the terminology being used, but alas, so far, looking at the US Supreme Court in action, I have not found in the Justices a particular desire to have this terrible flaw of ambiguity in usage rectified. Nor have I found such a desire in any international body so far, including the overpaid, but underperforming Secretariat of the United Nations, where bureaucrats are ever welcome, but serious thinkers are just as out of place as in any other bureaucracy.
(My last comment must in no way be interpreted as a disparagement of the United Nations as such, but this good institution, to which I once happened to belong, surely needs to improve the quality of its bureaucrats.)
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