Friday, June 03, 2011

welcome to post-legal america

TomDispatch | Is the Libyan war legal? Was Bin Laden’s killing legal? Is it legal for the president of the United States to target an American citizen for assassination? Were those “enhanced interrogation techniques” legal? These are all questions raised in recent weeks. Each seems to call out for debate, for answers. Or does it?

Now, you couldn’t call me a legal scholar. I’ve never set foot inside a law school, and in 66 years only made it onto a single jury (dismissed before trial when the civil suit was settled out of court). Still, I feel at least as capable as any constitutional law professor of answering such questions.

My answer is this: they are irrelevant. Think of them as twentieth-century questions that don't begin to come to grips with twenty-first century American realities. In fact, think of them, and the very idea of a nation based on the rule of law, as a reflection of nostalgia for, or sentimentality about, a long-lost republic. At least in terms of what used to be called “foreign policy,” and more recently “national security,” the United States is now a post-legal society. (And you could certainly include in this mix the too-big-to-jail financial and corporate elite.)

It’s easy enough to explain what I mean. If, in a country theoretically organized under the rule of law, wrongdoers are never brought to justice and nobody is held accountable for possibly serious crimes, then you don’t have to be a constitutional law professor to know that its citizens actually exist in a post-legal state. If so, “Is it legal?” is the wrong question to be asking, even if we have yet to discover the right one.

10 comments:

Constructive_Feedback said...

Dear KC Nulan:

I come to you to humbly submit a written piece for your careful consideration and review.
http://functionalculture.blogspot.com/2011/06/racism-chasing-journal-you-cant.html

This is my first sampling of the "olive branch" that you have so graciously provided for me.

nanakwame said...

Being Kind Doc, that is nice, we never know who will come to the plate when shits hit the fan, that has been my experience.

I truly believe that our nation's comics have been the most prophetic outside of our poets

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWiBt-pqp0E
You have no Rights

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcHOq8i5Pyk 1974
Winter in America bye Gil

nanakwame said...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Former Black Panther Party leader Elmer "Geronimo" Pratt, whose murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years in prison for a crime he maintained he did not commit, has died. He was 63.

wow

Constructive_Feedback said...

[quote]My question for you is, given your professional knowledge and skills, why do you spend so much time and energy talking about "racism chasing" rather than working with other professionals and community leaders on the specific tangibles you know how to help people deliver within the community?[/quote]


My Dear Friend Mr Nulan:

This question fully displays the issue that I have with you.

The other day you ask me, something to the effect of - "Why do you keep trying to up-end Black people who are trying to do something progressive for the community?"

In this loaded question there is a pre-supposition that those who are acting out - and whom I am most critical off are doing this FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE COMMUNITY.   Instead I see them acting for the advancement of the METHODOLOGY which they have "congregational agreement" as to its INTENDED benefit for the community.

Why is it that in my:
*Rebuttals to their antics
*My Application of MEASURES and CONSTRUCTS through which the community can determine the EFFECTIVENESS of these METHODOLOGIES
* Switching from a "Majority Rules and SETS THE RULES as to What ARE THE RULES" over to a "HERE ARE OUR PERMANENT INTERESTS - You TRANSPARENTLY PROVE that you have advanced them".

What makes you think that THIS is not a worthy contribution to "My People", Mr Nulan?

Should I throw away the years of business human resource optimization experience  that I have?   I am at this point CONDITIONED to think this way.   

Aside from the grammatical errors in my presentation what in the content shows a malicious intent on my part?

WHY hasn't anyone else popularly advanced such reforms?  (Reverse Engineering toward a certain end.)

CNu said...

Instead I see them acting for the advancement of the METHODOLOGY which they have "congregational agreement" as to its INTENDED benefit for the community.

lol,

Here's 98% of your self-inflicted difficulty/challenge Feed. I have no idea what this statement means. Can you parse or restate it in plain english please?

*My Application of MEASURES and CONSTRUCTS through which the community can determine the EFFECTIVENESS of these METHODOLOGIES
* Switching from a "Majority Rules and SETS THE RULES as to What ARE THE RULES" over to a "HERE ARE OUR PERMANENT INTERESTS - You TRANSPARENTLY PROVE that you have advanced them".


Sincerely, I need help understanding these statements, as well. What on earth are you talking about broken out in plain english?

What makes you think that THIS is not a worthy contribution to "My People", Mr Nulan?

At this juncture, that a significant percentage of your output is indecipherable gibberish?

Should I throw away the years of business human resource optimization experience  that I have?   

Yes.

Most of that is dishonest and/or malfeasant gibberish too.

I am at this point CONDITIONED to think this way.   

Free your mind and stop preaching.

Recast all your "good" intentions at an 8th grade level of comprehension.

Be direct and plain spoken.

Propose concrete solutions and back these with a helping hand.

WHY hasn't anyone else popularly advanced such reforms?  (Reverse Engineering toward a certain end.)

um.., because that approach doesn't work?

brotherbrown said...

Saint Nulan, you deserve a gold star for your efforts.  You have patiently attempted to make sense out of non-sense, or at least identified the non-sense in a (pardon the pun) constructive way to help the young man. 

I once wondered what would calm down his rhetoric. Would it help him to concede this or that point to drive his conversation toward an actual dialogue?  This is probably is his last best chance to do so, but I seriously doubt he can help himself.

CNu said...

brotherbrown, I long ago sensed a solution embedded in the problem

http://static.photaki.com/cow-dung-mushrooms_348751.jpg

Dale Asberry said...

I'm not sure, but I don't think he knows that we're not fooled by his flagrant racism simply because he's polite. And his name is strangely ironic. He is less Constructive than Nonsensical and he assumes a great deal of Self-Importance in that we don't even want his Feedback.

To this end, maybe he should change his name to Nonsensical_Self-Importance

Dale Asberry said...

So Constructive_Feedback is black? Grief, sorry for the faux pas on my part. No matter how much he sounded like a white racist, it wasn't appropriate on my part to call him that.

Dale Asberry said...

No punches will be pulled... he's definitely Nonsensical_Self-Importance to me now. Instead of any references to the foggy word 'racism' I shall focus in with laser-like focus on his thinking organ rather than where his foggy thoughts originate.

Master Arbitrageur Nancy Pelosi Is At It Again....,

🇺🇸TUCKER: HOW DID NANCY PELOSI GET SO RICH? Tucker: "I have no clue at all how Nancy Pelosi is just so rich or how her stock picks ar...