Joel Jacobsen

In The World of Odysseus, the great classicist M.I. Finley - whose unusual life story is summarized on Amazon - wrote about the ancient Greek method for settling disputes, as illustrated in the twenty-third book of the Iliad: 

Although there are a few fragmentary phrases in the poems about royal judgements, they are contemporary notes, and therefore anachronistic, when slipped in by the poet.  He was composing at a time when the community principle had advanced to a point of some limited public administration of justice.  But he was singing about a time when that was not the case ...   The principle remained... of strictly private rights privately protected.

The tension between the community principle and strictly private rights privately protected is never entirely resolved.  USA Today ran an article this week about NRA-sponsored "Stand Your Ground" acts, which have been passed in Florida, Indiana and South Dakota, authorizing citizens to kill even when their own lives are not in danger.  Such statutes abandon the ancient idea that death should not be inflicted except in a either-him-or-me situation.  Rather, individual citizens may decide for themselves (within limits) whether another person deserves to die for his actions.  Here's Florida's version, and here's the Indiana statute in marked-up form.

"'For someone attacked by criminals to be victimized a second time by a second-guessing legal system is wrong,' the NRA's Wayne LaPierre says."  That's the same LaPierre who called federal law enforcement officers "jackbooted thugs."  LaPierre's rejection of "the community principle" is consistent, at least.  The legal system, in his view, is just as illegitimate as the police.

From one perspective, of course, the Florida and Indiana statutes are expressions of the community principle, because they were enacted democratically.  But from a different perspective they reject that principle, because they deny the power of society to make a moral judgment, binding on all its members, regarding the relative value of human life and personal property.  That judgment can only be made on the scene, by the one with the gun in his hand.

The same tension between private rights and the community principle is expressed in constitutional rulings by courts.   All constitutional rulings, by their nature, deny the right of society to bind its members by democratic means with regard to the particular topic.  (See post 54 and post 70.)  In severely practical terms, a ruling that the police are forbidden from taking certain actions to protect members of society is the same as saying it's up to individual members to protect themselves - which is where the ACLU and NRA find themselves making common cause.