Joel Jacobsen

Post 375 linked to this article about Justice Souter's lachrymose farewell speech to the Third Circuit conference. The article contained this weird passage:

Without lawyers and the lawyers who go on to be become judges, he said, society would be prone to "private acts of vengeance."

It's not like I thought Souter was a particularly street-wise guy - I mean, he admits to enjoying Swinburne, which is like admitting you like to drink Karo from the bottle while listening to Montovani. But it's still kind of shocking that he thinks he lives in a society that isn't prone to private acts of vengeance.

Of course, he himself doesn't live in such a community, and neither does anyone he's been in the same room with since he left the trial bench in 1986. But a great many Americans live in exactly that kind of society. Here's a nearly-random example, from an unpublished California Court of Appeal decision from last week:

Sometime in July 2005, Greenwood drove [his girlfriend] Hamilton's car to a Ralph's parking lot. Hamilton was asleep in the passenger seat. Greenwood left the car for a while. When he returned, he was bleeding and upset. He said he had just had a fight with Loops. Hamilton did not know Loops, whose real name was Christopher Patron. Greenwood asked Hamilton for her mace. Then he began driving around, looking for Patron. When Greenwood did not find Patron, they returned to Hamilton's apartment. ... Greenwood told Hamilton he had been in an altercation with a woman, Patron had intervened, and the fight had ensued.

A couple of days later, Greenwood received a phone call and told Hamilton he had to go out and meet someone on Sepulveda Boulevard. Hamilton drove Greenwood to the appointment and parked behind a convalescent home. Greenwood got out, walked to the side of the building and was soon out of sight. A few minutes later, Hamilton heard gunshots. Greenwood and a man named Youngster came running back to Hamilton's car. Greenwood told Hamilton to take him to Van Nuys Boulevard. During the drive, Greenwood and Youngster “were saying that Loops was right on the corner; and did they get him; and they were saying, ‘I think we got him.’ “

But the next morning, when Hamilton asked if Greenwood's mission had been successful, he said, “The wrong person died.”

That's real life. Private acts of vengeance are a way of life for tens of millions of Americans. The alternative, of involving the police and court system to resolve one's disputes, doesn't even occur to them, because the alternative doesn't offer either justice or protection from retaliation. It's more dangerous to involve the justice system than to do it yourself.

That's why studies consistently show that people at the bottom of the social ladder are least likely to report victimizations to police. (Not just in the USA, BTW.)  The people at the bottom know that the legal system - the cops and courts - aren't for them.

It's only the people at the top, such as Souter, who don't know it, and then only because they insulate themselves from the reality they impose on the rest of us.

It's occurred to me that the dominant judicial philosophy in America can be compared to that of the welfare reformers of the 1990s. The latter wanted to end what they called a "culture of dependence" by encouraging poor people to take responsibility for raising themselves out of poverty.

Our judges, similarly, seem to want to end the culture of societal interdependence by teaching vulnerable people not to rely on organized society to protect them from violence. They're on their own. For example, you say you don't want your man to hit you, and yet you won't testify against him. That's why I, as a taxpayer and judge, wash my hands of you.

Certainly better-off Americans understand the point - the private security business is booming. The Washington Post reports: "The more than 1 million contract security officers, and an equal number of guards estimated to work directly for U.S. corporations, dwarf the nearly 700,000 sworn law enforcement officers in the United States." Jeremy Scahill puts those numbers into alarming (or at least alarmist) perspective over at RebelReports. 

The numbers are a quantification of the failure of our justice system.  The government doesn't provide safety, so people who can afford it buy it themselves. But if you can't afford private security, with all the unintended consequences of over-the-topness it threatens,what are you going to do?  The answer's pretty obvious: either resign yourself to being victimized or else get the .38 down from the top of the water heater.

At least Souter's cluelessness absolves him of the suspicion that he's spent his career deliberately speeding up these social processes.