Posts Tagged ‘society’

Justified Coercion: The Purpose of Law and Legal Systems / 4

February 28, 2026

This essay is the fourth in a series and follows on from the essay on Natural Law:

The Skeptical Case Against Natural Law / 1

The Fallacy of Universalism / 2

The Skeptical Case against the UN Declaration of Human Rights / 3

Justified Coercion: The Purpose of Law and Legal Systems / 4

Introduction

A human legal system, in a strict, historical and anthropological sense, is a structured set of rules (laws) backed by some recognized authority and enforcement mechanism for a society to manage and regulate behaviour among its members. Law emerges wherever human societies have needed (and need) predictable patterns of conduct, conflict resolution, resource allocation, and exercise of power. (The exercise of power is when one person orders and effects the behaviour of others in accordance with instructions.) Law is a tool for social control and and effects this by social behaviour management even if some may flinch at the word control. Even the interactions in small gatherings of people (say 3 or 4 in a family group) are sufficient to give rise to laws. A semblance of laws is discernible even among animals which live in groups and where the complexity of interactions leads to rules (lion prides, baboon troops or even hunting gangs of orcas). Neither laws nor legal systems have anything absolute or universal or even objective about them. If all societies had behaviourally identical members there would be no need for any social management or any laws. It is the inherent diversity of human behaviour which means that in every society the behaviour of some will not be desirable as viewed by others. Those who have assumed the task of managing societies (by whatever means) need – in performance of their task – to limit behavioural friction among members to a level which is compatible with the satisfactory functioning of that society.

In his classic 1935 paper Cohen introduced his critique of “transcendental nonsense” which necessarily appears in the philosophy of all legal systems. Transcendental nonsense and the functional approach, Felix S. Cohen, Columbia Law Review, Vol. 35, No. 6 (Jun., 1935), pp. 809-849 (41 pages)

Cohen used the term to mock a style of traditional legal reasoning that treats abstract legal concepts (e.g. “property rights”, “corporate personality”, “contract”, “title”, “fairness”, or “due process”) as if they are real, independent, almost supernatural entities with their own inherent logical properties and existence separate from human behavior, social facts, or observable consequences. He saw that transcendental nonsense decided cases by manipulating these disembodied concepts and deducing results from their supposed “internal” logical relationships, rather than by openly examining the actual social effects, policy consequences, human behaviors, or empirical realities the decision would produce. These are concepts which cannot be assessed against any verifiable reality.  By using transcendental, Cohen was referencing philosophical transcendentalism where reasoning tries to deduce truths from abstract, a priori categories rather than from empirical consequences. By using the word nonsense, he meant that such reasoning produces arguments that sound logical but do not actually resolve real social problems or explain what courts are doing in practice. In addition to his specific example of a corporation, other examples of transcendental nonsense include legal personalities, property as an absolute natural thing, sovereignty, doctrines of jurisdiction, formal contract freedom and many other legal fictions.

The purpose and practice of human laws and legal systems is shrouded in a thick fog of various kinds of nonsense. But what Cohen described as transcendental nonsense, is just a part of what I would call metaphysical nonsense.  Here we find all the sanctimonious trappings which always appear as justifications of laws and legal systems (which are not verifiable against reality but may have other collateral benefits). These include viewing legal systems as a grand pursuit of Justice, or a reflection of Natural Law, or for the upholding of righteousness or as the sacrament of a sacred contract between the governor and the governed. These descriptions are intellectually comfortable and purport to be of high moral standing but they are functionally fraudulent and intentionally self-serving. If we strip away the pomp of high-ceilinged paneled courtrooms, the archaic robes, and the sanctimonious rhetoric of “fairness,” we find a far more visceral reality. At its core, a legal system is a tool for behavioural management and is designed to contain social disorder (a social entropy) through the threat or actual application of force. Its fundamental purpose is not the attainment of a moral ideal, but the maintenance of social stability through coercion, or the threat of coercion, as deemed to be necessary.

The functional purpose of law

To try and understand the purpose of any legal system, we must first define what a law is at its most basic, operational level. A man-made law is a tool to elicit desired behaviour. It is a formulation of prohibited (or occasionally compulsory) behavior, coupled with a specific enumeration of penalties for those found in breach. Any higher-level description that omits the threat of force is not a definition of law, but a definition of advice. For a law to be “useful” in a functionalist sense, it must exist in a state of tension. Behavior that humans are physiologically incapable of performing, such as flying, requires no legal prohibition. Conversely, behavior that all humans invariably comply with, such as breathing, requires no legal mandate. Therefore, the only “useful” laws are those that address behaviour that people are both capable of doing and inclined to do, yet which the societal power wishes to suppress for the sake of order. It is in the nature of human association that minority behaviour that gives offense to a majority is discouraged and even suppressed. It is very rare (and impractical) for majority behaviour to be suppressed by a minority.

This leads to a central paradox. A law that is never broken is redundant, as it reflects a pre-existing social or biological certainty, but a law that is never complied with is futile, as it represents a failure of societal power. The “success” of a law is found in the middle ground as that which permits a “judicious” amount of unwanted behaviour (crime or civil disruption or civil conflict for example). The societal power acknowledges that a certain section of society will always oppose its dictates.  The purpose of their law is to coerce a sufficient number of these dissenters so that the disruption they cause remains within manageable bounds. No legal system ever has the objective of achieving complete compliance with the law. “Just enough” compliance is the name of the game. As long as enough criminals are held accountable others may go unchecked. As long as the limited number of cases that the legal system system deals with is seen to be “fair and just” then the quest for “fair and just” for all cases can quietly be ignored.

If the purpose of law is primarily management of social behaviour (via coercion), why do we then invest so much energy in the “camouflage” of purpose by invoking majesty, sanctity, divinity, royalty, and honour? They are all, of course, metaphysical nonsense and invented, artificial, empirically unverifiable concepts. But in their sanctimony and appeal to metaphysics they do provide crucial psychological sustenance for human legal systems. They are principally cosmetic in nature though many people invest form with imaginary substance. The reality of societies is that raw force is expensive. A societal power that must place many policemen on every street corner to ensure compliance will eventually go bankrupt or collapse under the weight of its own friction. The “sanctity” of the legal system serves as a social lubricant. By imbuing the law with a sense of metaphysical justice or fairness, the societal power achieves a psychological victory that force alone cannot buy. When a citizen obeys a law because they believe it is right, or because they respect and accept the authority of the court or the majesty of the law, the cost of enforcement drops to zero. The robes and the wigs and the collars and the gavels may be steeped in tradition but their main function is to imply that law and the legal system is supra-human. Metaphysical. Majestic. Even Divine. This theatre in a circus serves to camouflage the messy, coercive, necessary code running silently in the background. Legal systems and law are tools for threatening, and doing, harm to some as deemed necessary for the greater good.

The transcendental illusions

Much of the metaphysical nonsense is sanctimonious packaging. It exists to create justifications in the form of moral illusions for imbuing a false notion of high purpose and of easing the conscience of individual practitioners in being party to doing harm. It is difficult for a person to spend their life suppressing the impulses of their fellow humans if they see themselves as a mere bully. By framing their work as serving justice, they are granted a moral alibi and a place in heaven. They are no longer crass individuals exercising or threatening harm. Instead they are elevated to be instruments of an abstract, higher Good. This depersonalization is essential for the sustenance of the system. In a legal system cloaked in theism and honor, the enforcers use sanctimony to create a moral subsidy. Practitioners adopt the illusion of great moral significance into their own actions as a way of increasing worth and job satisfaction. Young lawyers and police are often recruited on the premise that they are protecting the innocent or upholding the Right. This belief allows them to perform tasks that would otherwise be psychologically damaging (levying penalties, seizing property, depriving people of liberty, enforcing evictions and even inflicting pain). If the system were stripped of its false camouflage, the cost would also include a psychological tax. To recruit a person to be an admitted instrument of raw coercion, would need to compensate for the perceived social stigma and the internal mental stress. Public servants would seem more like mercenaries. When the system is wrapped in apparent sanctimony, it attracts, and above all retains, people who value stability and order. These individuals are often more reliable and less prone to individual corruption because they believe they serve a Higher Power (be it God, The Law, or The Constitution). The trappings (the robes, the ritual, the language, the architecture, the pondus) also serve to clothe the practitioners with the paraphernalia. the trappings of a high calling with metaphysical goals. Not unlike the priests of suspect religions. When a judge says, “It is the law that sentences you,” they are distancing their own humanity from the act of coercion. This depersonalization is a vital retention strategy. The “sanctimony” allows the practitioner to remain “cold” and functional over a forty-year career.

The “divinity” and “pomp” of the law is a cost-saving measure in the labor market. It allows the state to recruit high-quality, stable, and disciplined “mechanics” at a fraction of the price of mercenaries, while shielding them from the psychological consequences of their own coercive actions.

The primary purpose is social stability

In this functionalist framework, the “goodness” of a legal system is decoupled from morality. A “good” system is not one that eliminates crime. To do that would require a level of surveillance so total and a cost so high that the society would cease to function. Rather, a “good” system is one that allows some necessary social friction and yet maintains a level of equilibrium judged necessary by the societal powers. The system monitors social friction and adjusts its coercive output accordingly. It allows for a certain amount of undetected crime and a certain number of unjust decisions, provided these outliers do not threaten the overall perception of order. If a law becomes too difficult to enforce (such as by the prohibition of a widely practised behaviour), a “good” (rational) system will eventually abandon it, not because the behavior has become “moral,” but because the cost of coercion exceeds the benefit of stability. In a system or thermodynamic sense social entropy is a measure of disorder in the system. In this perspective the legal system is essentially a tool for managing social entropy. In any collection of eight billion unique individuals, the natural state is chaos. The legal system is the energy expended to keep that chaos at bay. It is in the nature of every adversarial court judgement that one party is favoured and the other penalized. The penalty always involves the doing of some form of explicit harm to the disfavoured party and may, in civil cases, involve some real benefit to the other party. Some of the transcendental and metaphysical nonsense helps the losing party to accept, even if reluctantly, the institutional harm imposed upon him. The law threatens the doing of harm (and thus coerces) and every application of a legal judgement does always involve the doing of harm to the losing party. A modern state is characterized by its effective monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force within a territory. The access to superior force is the necessary, but not sufficient, requirement for any legal system to function. Without this the system is advisory rather than legal. Advisory or normative systems rely on persuasion, reputation, or voluntary adherence. Legal systems rely on the availability of institutional enforcement backed, at the final resort, by coercive power. But force alone does not generate a legal system. That requires an institutionalized, routine, rule-bound deployment of structured coercive capacity rather than the discretionary use of raw force.

The “rights” we cherish are not inalienable truths. There is a pretense, but no real attempt, of legal systems pursuing absolute justice or absolute fairness (even if they could exist which they don’t).  Over 60% of a thousand murderers every day go free. The global society finds that not unacceptable. Over 85% of car theft does not lead to any prosecution. Society (with its insurance industry and the high cost of apprehending petty criminals) finds this not unacceptable. Most car thieves get away with it. A quest for absolute fairness never comes into play. The 40% of murderers who get caught and are held accountable might even think it unfair that 60% go free. The law and the legal system need not do more than enough (and only just enough), to convince the general citizenry to remain productive, cooperative, and, most importantly, compliant. It does not need to do any more for societal needs. More is often pretended to as part of the metaphysical camouflage.

Conclusion

I am left with a somewhat cynical but logical conclusion that for a legal system to be truly “good” (meaning effective and sustainable), it must camouflage its own nature to protect its own functionality. If a system were to be perfectly transparent, if the judge were to say, “I am taking your property because it serves the current stability of the state to do so”, the illusion of legitimacy would shatter. The coerced minority would no longer feel they had “lost a fair trial”; they would feel they were victims of a hostile power, and they would act accordingly. The “Justified Coercion” of the title is therefore not a moral justification, but a functional one. The coercion is “justified” only in the sense that it is required for the machine of society to continue turning. The purpose of the legal system is to manage the inevitable conflict between individual desire and social necessity, using just enough force to keep the peace and just enough “sanctimony” to make that force palatable.

To view the law through this functional lens is to see it as a tool. It is an artefact, a social construct rather than a sacred text. In many ways it is not dissimilar to a religion. But that is because every religion, is about controlling the social behaviour of its members. We must judge law not by how “just” it is in some abstract, transcendental sense, but by how well it performs its cold, rational task of behaviour coordination and suppression. The legal system is a necessary evil of the human condition; a complex, expensive, and often deceptive engine built to ensure that our collective life remains “manageable.” By stripping away the false camouflage of Natural Law and universal morality, we gain the clarity to evaluate our laws for what they truly are; the tools of a species that has learned that it is better for their societies to be managed than to be “free” in a state of anarchy and chaos.

There is no righteousness or divinity or sanctity in laws and there are no such things as Natural Law or Divine Law.

Not unrelated:

On the nature and purpose of law

Laws are made to be broken

Why cannot a concept of tort or “product liability”apply to scientists?

 

Tags:, , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Ethics, Law, Philosophy, Social Science, society | Leave a Comment »

The UK grooming gangs have been active for at least 40 years

January 5, 2025

I am surprised at the denial we see now. The UK Pakistani-British grooming gangs have been active for over 40 years. The scandal has even made it past the Wikipedia political correctness police.

Wikipedia:

The Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal consists of the organised child sexual abuse of girls that occurred in the town of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, Northern England, from the late 1980s until 2013[9] and the failure of local authorities to act on reports of the abuse throughout most of that period.[10] Researcher Angie Heal, who was hired by local officials and warned them about child exploitation occurring between 2002 and 2007, has since described it as the “biggest child protection scandal in UK history”,[11] with one report estimating that 1,400 girls, primarily from care home backgrounds, were abused by “grooming gangs” between 1997 and 2013.[9] Evidence of the abuse was first noted in the early 1990s, when care home managers investigated reports that children in their care were being picked up by taxi drivers.[12] From at least 2001, multiple reports passed names of alleged perpetrators, several from one family, to the police and Rotherham Council. The first group conviction took place in 2010, when five British-Pakistani men were convicted of sexual offences against girls aged 12–16.[13]

In the first half of the 80s I used to travel regularly to the Grimethorpe/Doncaster/ Bradford area and recall first hearing vague pub gossip about gangs exploiting young girls who were in care by creating and feeding their drug habits. But it was just gossip then. It was at a time when it was taboo to say anything negative about the immigrant community. Truth be damned. It was only in the 90s that some few journalists began writing about this. Council politicians, social workers, policemen and the politically correct fraternity did not just turn a blind eye. The girls were mainly “white trash” and “in care” after all. They actively protected the perpetrators and demonised the victims. The current groomers are not new immigrants with a culture gap. They are second-generation, but brought up in their multiculturally allowed grooming culture.

So why the hand-wringing and surprise now.

I told you so.

I wrote this post almost 11 years ago:

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

A “culture” is both the glue that binds any society of humans and lubricates the interactions within that society. It applies as well to a family or an association or a sports club or a company or a geographic area (say a country). The culture of any sub-society – a sub-culture – must be subordinated to that of the larger society it is  – or wants to be – part of.

Of course one can have – if one wishes – many different cultures within different sub-societies in a single geographic area. But if these sub-cultures are not subordinated to a larger culture then the sub-societies cannot – because it becomes a fatal contradiction – make up any larger society. Multiculturalism dooms that geographical area to inevitably be a splintered and fractured “greater” society – if at all.

The politically correct “multiculturalism” followed in Europe in recent times has effectively preserved and maintained each ethnic group in its own cultural silo and – inanely – made a virtue out of preventing the evolution of any overriding, common culture. This has been the fundamental, “do-gooding” blunder of the socialist/liberal “democrats” all through Europe. Creating a society of the future with a common culture as the glue has been sacrificed in a quest for some imagined God of Many Cultures. For an immigrant – anywhere – how could it be more important to keep the language of his past rather than to learn the language of his future? The “do-gooders” have prioritised living in the past to creating and living in a new future.

Hence Rotherham and Bradford or Kreuzberg or Rosengård or Les Bosquets,

Multi-ethnic communities particularly need both a glue and a lubricating medium. And that has to be an overriding common – new – culture and not some mish-mash, immiscible collection of sub-cultures – each within its own silo, insulated and held separate from all others.

  1. Multi-ethnic societies are inevitable around the world.
  2. A single society has a single culture.
  3. To have many cultures in one area – which are not subordinated to a larger culture (values) – is to exclude a single society.
  4. Promoting multiculturalism is to promote the fracturing of that area into many immiscible (inevitably ethnic) societies.

Multi-ethnicity – especially – requires a mono-culture to be a society at all.

Multi-ethnic and multi-cultural is separatism and serves to ensure that a single society will never be established.

and again 8 years ago ..

“Multiculturalism” always gives fractured and segregated societies

It seems obvious. Multi-ethnic societies, even with well -developed sub-cultures, work very well under an over-riding common culture. In fact the over-riding common culture is dynamic and takes on parts of the various sub-cultures. But societies with parallel cultures with no over-riding common culture can only give a fractured society. It  prevents any common culture developing and inevitably gives ethnic segregation. For over 5 decades, these parallel cultures have been promoted by the liberal, social-democratic, do-gooding, misguided elite of Europe.

It is not at all surprising that the cities of Europe now have segregated and have no-go ghettos which consider themselves outside of the main society and not subject to the rules and behaviour expected in that society.

Well, I did tell you so.

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics, UK | Comments Off on The UK grooming gangs have been active for at least 40 years

A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

September 4, 2014

A “culture” is both the glue that binds any society of humans and lubricates the interactions within that society. It applies as well to a family or an association or a sports club or a company or a geographic area (say a country). The culture of any sub-society – a sub-culture – must be subordinated to that of the larger society it is  – or wants to be – part of.

Of course one can have – if one wishes – many different cultures within different sub-societies in a single geographic area. But if these sub-cultures are not subordinated to a larger culture then the sub-societies cannot – because it becomes a fatal contradiction – make up any larger society. Multiculturalism dooms that geographical area to inevitably be a splintered and fractured “greater” society – if at all.

The politically correct “multiculturalism” followed in Europe in recent times has effectively preserved and maintained each ethnic group in its own cultural silo and – inanely – made a virtue out of preventing the evolution of any overriding, common culture. This has been the fundamental, “do-gooding” blunder of the socialist/liberal “democrats” all through Europe. Creating a society of the future with a common culture as the glue has been sacrificed in a quest for some imagined God of Many Cultures. For an immigrant – anywhere – how could it be more important to keep the language of his past rather than to learn the language of his future? The “do-gooders” have prioritised living in the past to creating and living in a new future.

Hence Rotherham and Bradford or Kreuzberg or Rosengård or Les Bosquets,

Multi-ethnic communities particularly need both a glue and a lubricating medium. And that has to be an overriding common – new – culture and not some mish-mash, immiscible collection of sub-cultures – each within its own silo, insulated and held separate from all others.

  1. Multi-ethnic societies are inevitable around the world.
  2. A single society has a single culture.
  3. To have many cultures in one area – which are not subordinated to a larger culture (values) – is to exclude a single society.
  4. Promoting multiculturalism is to promote the fracturing of that area into many immiscible (inevitably ethnic) societies.

Multi-ethnicity – especially – requires a mono-culture to be a society at all.

Multi-ethnic and multi-cultural is separatism and serves to ensure that a single society will never be established.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Politics | Comments Off on A “society” – to be a society – can be multi-ethnic but not multicultural

When the law is an ass

April 4, 2013

“‘You were present on the occasion…and, indeed, you are the more guilty of the two, in the eye of the law; for the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction.

“‘If the law supposes that,’ said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, ‘the law is a ass — a idiot. If that’s the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is, that his eye may be opened by experience — by experience.'”  Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens

Of course any society can make any law it likes to ensure the proper functioning of that society. And such laws are nothing more than rules made by the majority of that time for the functioning of the society of that time. Systems of law are thus just exercises in pragmatism for the current time. But there is an implied “sanctity” and “immutability”  to systems of law which is neither justified nor rational. They are never laws in the sense of the Natural Laws which are not time-dependent and where compliance is inherent in the formulation of the law. Even the laws of God depend upon which religion one chooses to follow and when that religion was invented. The Big Ten as handed down to Moses no longer all apply. Times change, societies change and the laws of man (and those of God as formulated by man) must follow – but they don’t. It should not be beyond the wit of man to make such laws subject to the common sense of the time. Perhaps every law made by man should also have a term of validity. But that would be asking too much. And time and time again “the law is an ass” in its formulation or in its application!

“It is a rule of evidence deduced from the experience of mankind and supported by reason and authority that positive testimony is entitled to more weight than negative testimony but by the latter term is meant negative testimony in it’s true sense and not positive evidence of a negative, because testimony in support of a negative may be as positive as that in support of an affirmative…” Blackburn v. State, 254 Pac. 467, 472 (Ariz. 1927)

Just 3 examples from today’s news.

  1. The Independent: A Dutch appeals court has lifted a ban on an organisation which lobbies for the legalisation of sex between adults and children, after finding that the group was not breaking any laws in The Netherlands. ….. an appeals court in Leeuwarden has ruled that the group, which claims it does not promote sexual abuse and insists it is “a platform for discussion of paedophilia”, could not be outlawed because its existence did not threaten society, the Dutch News website reported.
  2. (Reuters) – Amnesty International has condemned a reported Saudi Arabian court ruling that a young man should be paralyzed as punishment for a crime he committed 10 years ago which resulted in the victim being confined to a wheelchair. The London-based human rights group said Ali al-Khawaher, 24, was reported to have spent 10 years in jail waiting to be paralyzed surgically unless his family pays one million Saudi riyals ($270,000) to the victim.
  3. RollingStone: …. Despite the passage in late 2012 of a new state ballot initiative that prevents California from ever again giving out life sentences to anyone whose “third strike” is not a serious crime, thousands of people – the overwhelming majority of them poor and nonwhite – remain imprisoned for a variety of offenses so absurd that any list of the unluckiest offenders reads like a macabre joke, a surrealistic comedy routine. Have you heard the one about the guy who got life for stealing a slice of pizza? Or the guy who went away forever for lifting a pair of baby shoes? Or the one who got 50 to life for helping himself to five children’s videotapes from Kmart? How about the guy who got life for possessing 0.14 grams of meth? ….

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Behaviour, Social Science | 1 Comment »