Norm of Compliance

Friends,
This afternoon I had a lovely, fall, pensive walk scuffling along in the leaves and a golden trail covered in pine needles from this week's storms. And my solitude also led me  increasingly deeper thoughts about the “rule of law” following a very sobering NPR broadcast on genocide. 

I first reflected on what it means when we talk about genocide, but my thoughts then evolved around to the complex issue of the importance of law itself. In terms of genocide I learned that although there is a very long history of genocide, going at least back to biblical times, humanity has never even tried to establish laws that govern genocide until a post-Holocaust, 1948  Convention Against Genocide was established through the UN. Until then it was easier to legally  prosecute a single person for murder rather than hold someone legally accountable for killing of millions of people. The Nuremberg Trials and the trials that followed the Serbian genocide provided the precedents of successfully administering legal accountability for genocide, and we are still in the nascent stage of successful prosecution for the commitment of atrocities. . 

And then I widened my thoughts to the accountability to law in our current world-wide and national non-compliance with law. My good friend Jeff Rogers, a retired lawyer, helped me understand the difference between law and power. We can assume that once a law is passed and goes through a court review, we will honor that law or there will be consequences for not doing so, the basis of criminal justice I have worked in for a number of years. “Commit the crime and do the time!” In a civil society we obey to fulfill a “norm of compliance” to law that is one of the most crucial ways we provide for justice and peace in our communities and the wider world. Those who feel empowered to do so, feel they can ignore the law, so power can override law. 

The network of our social and governmental life is profoundly dependent on our compliance with just laws. We are free, in a democratic society, to challenge or change unjust laws through a process of representative government or through non-violent protest when necessary. And this goes for even the every day rules we are expected to follow in our everyday life - like the young women in the image above.

When leaders and the public begin to ignore the law, law fails, and unchallenged, unaccountable power takes over law itself and becomes authoritarian rule. Whether it is the Israeli government ignoring the International Criminal Court or the Trump administration saying they are not required to be in compliance with international or national law, or any other jurisdiction that defies the law, societal and governmental cohesion fails. And that is sadly our fate today.
 
But in reality the United States does have a long history of legal compliance, and the laws Trump is ignoring do still exist. This past week we have seen that our democratic system of voting still works. And we have seen a number of judges in the jurisdictional system holding the government to compliance with the existing law. And I am humbly hopeful the International Criminal Court in The Hague will begin to have the respect to try crimes against humanity like genocide and enforce accountability.

If you are still with me, here is my most profound personal question from my reflections on genocide and our understanding of the difference between power and law. I wonder if humanity has failed to date to reckon with being able to prevent the powerful from committing genocidal law with impunity. Why are we unable to name and prevent the powerful from committing such horrible genocidal treatment of minorities such as has happened in Herzegovina or Gaza? 

I have especially been examining my own liberal, Quaker unexamined thoughts about preventing atrocities. In my ultra-tolerant belief that there is “God in all people and all creation” and the sacredness of life, does this mean that I am therefore not able to identify and name the profound evil we are capable of committing and ignoring our responsibility to act against it? Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel is best known for his conviction that worse than evil itself is indifference to it. Can our use of a just legal system to name and, if possible, prevent, and when necessary, seriously prosecute in a timely and effective way those who perpetrate atrocity with the same conviction we do toward the most common criminal?

As I noted at the beginning I had a “pensive" walk. No apologies, but I do acknowledge many of you will not share my questions. But they are serious questions for the future, and I think they are actually serious questions for us today.

Peace,
Tom