When the Law...Isn't?
An interesting turn of events is unfolding across the pond in Great Britain.
They have a law, you see. A law which says that it is illegal for someone to aid someone else in committing suicide. It's fairly simple and straightforward.
Only it isn't.
Because while there is this law, it isn't necessarily enforced. Or at least, not consistently. And so, not surprisingly, a concerned citizen petitioned not long ago to have clarification on when the law would be enforced, and when it might not be. She wants specifically to know if *she* would be prosecuted for taking her husband to Switzerland to an assisted suicide organization.
And Parliament agreed that this was a reasonable request. They did not agree to simply eliminate the law, but they did feel it was reasonable to give some guidelines on when one might or might not have reason to suspect that they would be prosecuted for breaking the law.
So the law remains, but has to be clarified as to when it will be treated as a law, and when it will be ignored because certain people don't think that the law is appropriate. The clarification makes it rather clear that the perceived intent of the law, as far as the State is concerned, is to protect those who could be taken advantage of, or who might not truly wish to be assisted in a premature death, or may not have a convincing medical reason to seek premature death.
There wouldn't be this confusion if the law was just a law, enforced as most important laws are - not perfectly, but relatively consistently. And this is an important law, hence the reluctance of Parliament to rescind it. But if the law is important enough to have on the books, and not tamper with, shouldn't the population expect that the law is going to be applied without the need for a formal clarification of when the law will and won't be applied?
Are there other important areas where laws are arbitrarily applied, and where there are elaborate studies done to determine how they will - and won't - be applied? I'd be curious to hear about them, cause none come immediately to mind.
They have a law, you see. A law which says that it is illegal for someone to aid someone else in committing suicide. It's fairly simple and straightforward.
Only it isn't.
Because while there is this law, it isn't necessarily enforced. Or at least, not consistently. And so, not surprisingly, a concerned citizen petitioned not long ago to have clarification on when the law would be enforced, and when it might not be. She wants specifically to know if *she* would be prosecuted for taking her husband to Switzerland to an assisted suicide organization.
And Parliament agreed that this was a reasonable request. They did not agree to simply eliminate the law, but they did feel it was reasonable to give some guidelines on when one might or might not have reason to suspect that they would be prosecuted for breaking the law.
So the law remains, but has to be clarified as to when it will be treated as a law, and when it will be ignored because certain people don't think that the law is appropriate. The clarification makes it rather clear that the perceived intent of the law, as far as the State is concerned, is to protect those who could be taken advantage of, or who might not truly wish to be assisted in a premature death, or may not have a convincing medical reason to seek premature death.
There wouldn't be this confusion if the law was just a law, enforced as most important laws are - not perfectly, but relatively consistently. And this is an important law, hence the reluctance of Parliament to rescind it. But if the law is important enough to have on the books, and not tamper with, shouldn't the population expect that the law is going to be applied without the need for a formal clarification of when the law will and won't be applied?
Are there other important areas where laws are arbitrarily applied, and where there are elaborate studies done to determine how they will - and won't - be applied? I'd be curious to hear about them, cause none come immediately to mind.
Posted by Paul Nelson at 9/23/2009 4:25 PM 
Categories: Citizenship, Theology, Politics, Philosophy, Current Events
Categories: Citizenship, Theology, Politics, Philosophy, Current Events
Seems odd to me. If what they are saying is that they are fine with helping someone kill himself as long as that's really what he wants but not if it's not, then surely they can get rid of the law about suicide and just rely on laws about homicide to punish straight out murderers?
I don't know about comparisons -- maybe U.S. immigration law? Enforced selectively with lots of law kind of written around it (like having driver's licenses, etc.?) Statutory rape law? I imagine there is this kind of thing, but maybe not quite so far, in areas where a nation is in the process of changing it's collective consensus on a subject, or changing it back and forth?
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I'm assuming that they recognize that people - although nominally sympathetic to the plight of those in deep suffering - recognize that there's something very unnatural about recognizing officially that we are free to end our lives for this somewhat arbitrary reason. I think there's a lot of surface level talk about tolerance and the right to die and such, but at a more fundamental level, it makes people itchy and uncomfortable.
I'd like to think that this is the natural law written on our hearts peeking through layers of cultural accretions. Life is not our own. We didn't choose to be born, and there's something very problematic about saying that anyone has the right to end their own life. The rationale is medical for the moment, but once that's a given, who are we to say that the emotionally distressed don't deserve to end their own lives? What about the the deeply depressed? What about spouses who have just lost a loved one? What about people who don't appear to enjoy a 'standard of living' or 'enjoyment of life' that someone arbitrarily creates as a baseline? In short, once the state begins to interpose itself into the role of death and individual freedom, aren't we on a precipice that gives all of us a bit of vertigo at one level or another?
The examples you bring up are good examples of laws that are imperfectly applied - meaning that we aren't able to catch every illegal immigrant, or every statutory rape instance (because it may often be consensual). Yet in those incidents where these things do come to the attention of law enforcement, the reasonable expectation is that the law will be upheld. Immigration is tricky based on the apparent scope of the problem - law enforcement could spend 100% of their time on simply enforcing immigration laws, so there has to be a point at which they say we can do this much, and only this much. The law remains the law, and we're committed to enforcing it without conscious exception, except to the extent that limitations of resources prevent us from carrying it out.
I keep trying to come up with another example of a law that is legally acknowledged as non-binding, and yet legislators are unwilling to simply do away with it. If there's that sort of public pressure behind the scenes, perhaps there shouldn't be such visible exceptions up front!
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