Assignment 8

Part I:

How does M.L. King argue that segregation laws are unjust?

 M.L. King argues that segregation laws are unjust on the basis of moral responsibility. He believed that one had the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Unjust laws should be disobeyed in a nonviolent way to set an example for gaining civil rights. This tied into natural law, which gives authority based on moral merit. Segregation implied a moral injustice in its implications of placing one race above another based on a superficial trait such as skin color. Therefore, segregation laws are morally unjust.

Why, according to King, should we disobey unjust laws?

 According to King, we have the moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. Similarly, he approved of obeying just laws. This goes back to the response to the first question where he felt that unjust should be disobeyed nonviolently because the main interest here lies in moral standards.

How does Aquinas determine if a law is just or unjust?

Aquinas determines if a law is just if it: is established for the common good (intention is to uplift and protect rights), does not goes beyond the authority of its creator (is not designed to give the creator of the law more power than he/she originally had, and does not put any unfair burdens on the ones affected by the law. He emphasized the higher form of eternal law (as opposed to human law) that should override a human-made law on the basis of morality and reason (such as opposing segregation laws).

 How would a Legal Positivist judge segregation laws?

A Legal Positivist would probably validate the segregation laws during that time frame. The Legal Positivist values the way the laws is established over the actual morality of the law. The Legal Positivist may see how naturally the historical events have progressed up to the segregation laws and validate them based on the seemingly existent progress of society from slavery to segregation. This is applicable in today's society, where marijuana (especially recreational is still illegal/decriminalized in many states). A Legal Positivist may judge the laws as valid because of the legal circumstances surrounding medical and recreational marijuana over the past few decades. An advocate of natural law may be less patient and demand faster legalization of marijuana because he/she may argue that it is our right as humans to use/grow a plant (which of course is a product of nature) if we so choose to do so.

Part II:

Martin Luther King, Jr. quotes Saint Augustine’s famous remark that “an unjust law is no law at all.” It has been objected that this claim is plainly false. How can something fail to be “law” simply because it is unjust or in some other way immoral? King, himself, critics point out, was punished and put in jail for, as we would say, “breaking the law.” Assuming that King was right and the racially discriminatory statutes and practices of the South were unjust, does the fact that King wound up in jail prove that unjust laws nonetheless remain laws? Does that fact in itself refute Augustine? If not, why not?

This is a prime example of unjust laws remaining laws. In my opinion and based on Aquinas' three criteria for a just law, there is no doubt that our current society is governed by many unjust laws. History has shown time and time again that laws can be unjust.

I do think King's imprisonment refutes Augustine's statement. Legal positivism opposes his idea, especially because one cannot expect all the laws the entire system to be morally just in today's corrupt society. Laws are laws, and whether they are morally just or not is a separate issue.

All laws should be just. But they are simply not, which is why Augustine's statement is refuted here. However, this can be a subjective issue, because one can simply view the unjust laws as rules that are forcefully pushed upon us, and not laws. Therefore, in my opinion, unjust laws do remain laws in many situations. If this wasn't the case, then someone breaking an unjust law should not be arrested or fined.

Assignment 7

Part I

1) Jackson's arguments in support of the Charter of London were based on giving Nazi defendants the fair trial and opportunity in court. Also, the Charter had three main charges to try the defendants with: crimes against peace (the conspiracy of waging war against peaceful states), war crimes (starvation of others in occupied states, stolen materials/property and torture of prisoners) and crimes against humanity (the mass murder and all other crimes against humanity that took place during the war). (London Charter, 1945, Art. 6a, 6b, 6c)

2) Wyzanki was against the legality of the Charter because he was against the use of the Ex post facto, which can criminalize actions that were legal during the time they were committed. Thus, he believed the soldiers had the right to follow their orders during wartime. Eventually, Wyzanki agreed that justice should be upheld and generally condemned acts should be discouraged and criminalized. He said. "...failure to criminalize...universally condemned conduct....would be more likely to promote arbitrary and discriminatory action..." ('Crimes against Peace and International Law, Stellers 136). This is an example of a higher purpose overriding a lower purpose (which in this case, is the challenging of Ex post facto). This served the higher purpose of the international law and community and its safety.

Part II

          I think that a less harsh sentence should be made for Charles Graner. The problem here seems to lie in the larger punishment system of Abu Graib, including the intelligence agents. I believe that controversial cases like this can end in the blame being burdened on one person to keep the rest of system in tact, when that seems to be the wrong idea. However, what was done to the prisoners was morally unjust and there must be punishment given in order to seek retribution and deterrence.
         To uphold the principles of higher justice, yes Graner should be punished (to a much lesser degree), but so should everyone else even remotely involved in the incident. When there seems to be a corrupt system at hand, we cannot isolated one part of the incident without thorough investigation, unless there is an unfair interest in maintaining a corrupt system. These type of situations can easily hint at a much larger scheme or many more similar corrupt situations underneath the surface.

Assignment 6

1. What is the difference between criminal law and tort law?

2. What are the conditions for strict liability and negligence?

3. What does it mean that an event A caused another event B? Give an example.

4. What is legal causation? Give an example.

5. What were the reasons for the court's decision in Lynch vs. Fisher? Do you agree - why or why not?

6.What were the reasons for the court's decision in Palsgraff vs. LIRR? Do you agree - why or why not?

1) Criminal law is focused on the wrongdoer him/herself and how the criminal should be punished. Tort law focuses on how the victim should be compensated, such as a financial compensation.

2) The conditions for strict liability can cover a situations where legal responsibility is given whether or not the the person held responsible is actually at fault or not. It is a situation where someone has to be held responsible. Strict liability usually applies in a scenario involving product liability (in tort law), where a possible defective product might have caused an injury to the plaintiff.

Negligence involves the harm done to a victim as a result of carelessness, usually as a breach of duty, or absence of a job/favor that the defendant should have done for the plaintiff. Duty, standard of care, breach of duty, cause-in-fact, and proximate cause are included in the conditions for negligence.

3) When one says that "event A caused event B", it is meant that event B could not have occurred if event A did not occur first. Event A had to have happened to bring about event B. For example, event A could be someone spilling oil into a healthy, thriving ecosystem that had no other source of potential contaminants besides the spill. Event B would encompass negative effects of the oil spill in the ecosystem that occurred has a direct result of the oil spill.

4) Causation covers the circumstances between action and result. Factual causation is considered before legal causation. Factual causation consists of using the logic mentioned in the previous question, whether event B would have occurred without event A occurring first. If the answer is no, then a conclusion is reached. There is a direct relation between the action and the harm done to the plaintiff. If not, legal (proximate) causation is considered, where the harm is done to the plaintiff indirectly. For example, a principal makes the mistake of giving a child a time out when it wasn't the child's fault. When the child walks back to his class, he slips on a spill that occurred while he spent time in the principal's office. If he had not been mistakenly called to the principal's office, he probably would not have been at the site of the spill later that day. This is a case where the proximate act of the principal's mistake affected the probability of the child slipping on the spill, even though the principal did not mean to harm the child at all.

5) The court decision was that the truck driver was at fault. This was a case of proximate cause. The truck was poorly parked out of negligence. Of course he did not intend to do any harm, but Fisher parked his truck in a dangerous spot, which was enough for proximate cause, which is why the court found him liable. I do agree with this decision because the shot fired from Lynch and the surrounding events would not have occurred had Fisher not been in position in the first place. This is a solid example of a case of proximate cause.

6)  The court ruled that the LIRR (Long Island Rail Railroad) was not guilty. I agree with this because this case seemed to be an example of an intervening cause, which was the third party. The third party was the men with the box of firecrackers. In my opinion, Palsgraff sued the wrong party. The intervening cause rightfully took the blame away from LIRR. There was no negligence, or breach of duty owed to the plaintiff, on the side of LIRR. I agree with the decision that Palsgraff was not determined to be in a foreseeable zone of danger, unless, every train station was required to check every single parcel for potentially dangerous items brought into the tracks before this court case happened.