I was called for jury duty last week and it got me thinking, how important are laws to you? For this month’s COTM I’ve asked the princesses to think about their personal biases and how much they affect their upholding of the law.
I hadn’t thought too much about how I feel about laws until I was sitting alone in front of two attorneys and a judge in a court room. It was after 5 hours of answering surveys and raising hands that I’d been selected as a finalist in the jury selectin process. They had some follow up questions for me so they brought me into the room alone, asking me to speak as truthfully as I could. The case was a civil one, during a hockey game two men had collided and after playing the rest of the game one decided to sue the other for his cracked ribs and emotional stress.
I was honest when I said that I would expect proof of some serious malicious intent if I was going to find an athlete at fault during a match. Can you imagine playing a sport while also worrying about being sued for accidentally breaking someone’s finger? But the questions didn’t stop there and after all three of the men in the room asked me the same question in different ways I realized I was answering abnormally. If your personal bias disagrees with a law would you go against it? I answered honestly, saying I don’t know. I’d do my best to follow the law, but there is no guarantee. And as I walked out of the room (and out of the building a half hour later – they didn’t pick me) I realized what I said applied to more than just making some hockey player pay for the medical bills of another. I would vote innocent if I felt a murderer was justified and I would do my best to lessen the punishment if I felt a thief was desperate. I don’t think I’ll ever expect to be exempt from laws, but I hope that if I have broken a law and am faced with atoning for it I’ll be treated with understanding and some wiggle room.
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I have to say that I am typically a goody two shoes. If I am aware of a law, I’m following it. Even if I’m 99 percent certain that the law is stupid and I won’t get caught breaking it, I still stick to it.
However, when I’m in the position of enforcing laws or rules things are not as black and white. I care about people too much, and I won’t get them in trouble if they aren’t doing anything that is hurting anyone else. I was always everyone’s favorite supervisor for this reason. I wouldn’t scold them for being 5 minutes late if I knew they were students and I would generally join in on the random shenanigans that were technically against policy. I do think if anything serious happened like stealing, I would deal with it and discipline the guilty party. It is always hard to be completely objective when it comes to such things though.
I don’t think I would ever want to be on a jury though. I wholeheartedly believe in forgiveness and I don’t know if I could decide someone’s fate like that. I would be the one thinking about how the sentence would affect the criminal’s family, even if I knew for certain that they were guilty. I want justice, but I want mercy equally. It’s hard to reconcile.
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I have a hard time answering this question—it seems like there are pitfalls on both ends. In general, I suppose I would say I believe in following the law. When we live as part of a society, I feel like there should be a tacit agreement to live by the rules established by that society. I also feel like there is something dangerous in the position that rejects established law and says: I will only obey whichever laws I want because I am the sole arbiter and judge of justice. There is arrogance in this position and also I think a tendency towards selfishness: most often the laws you decide are legitimate are those that benefit you and those rejected the ones that disadvantage you.
Yet I feel like I am in a difficult position of having a strong hypothetical belief in following the law, coupled with an up-bringing that says that minor laws are unimportant and you shouldn’t let yourself be a slave to the state. Of course, if you are a Christian you might look to the Bible wherein you can find ample support for following the law of the land. For instance, you have Paul writing: ‘let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.’ But is Paul really talking about the necessity of not j-walking? Is he saying we are morally at fault if we don’t have a litterbag in our car? I somehow doubt it. But then where do you draw the line? For instance, is properly paying your taxes always a moral dictate? Would it make any difference if you were in debt and had a family to feed?
I feel like there has to be some sort of caveat that comes with the statement ‘follow the laws of the land.’ Too often terrible acts have been defended by the law, whether the owning of slaves in America, the burning of heretics in Europe, the persecution of Jewish people, etc. I think it is too easy to just say: ‘well that’s the law, and I am societally and morally bound to uphold the law.’ I think this type of black and white, follow-the-law, thinking can be dehumanizing: it frees us from the responsibility of having to make difficult ethical and moral decisions.
In the end, I am not sure about the law. I think it is a good thing, a thing to be respected, but perhaps not a thing to be enslaved by.
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I’m generally a rule-following, goody-two-shoes type, but I also know that I have a rebellious streak that tends to think rules don’t apply to me. I now live in a country with many laws that I personally disagree with. Some of these, I follow. Some, I don’t. I guess my perspective is that if a law violates my personal beliefs, I might disregard it, if the issue is important enough to me. I might vote innocent in a murder trial if I thought the killer was justified. I think nothing of going to our clandestine church here each week, though technically it is illegal. Alcohol is also forbidden here, but my husband and I have been making our own wine at home for the better part of three years now, and have no qualms about doing so. On the other hand, I haven’t taken part in any campaigns for getting women the right to drive. Even though I strongly disagree with the law (it’s more of a social custom than an actual law, actually) that bans women from driving, I’m not willing to risk hurting my husband’s career and possibly getting us both deported, which could happen if I was arrested while driving. I suppose I am a cautious rule-breaker…willing to do so when my beliefs demand it AND when the benefits outweigh the risks.
Simultaneously, though, I think most laws are in place for a reason, and society only functions well if everyone respects that. I don’t agree with people taking the law into their own hands. Our legal system might be very sick, but if we all start ignoring it, we’ll just ensure its demise.
I like how we all see some wiggle room between following laws and thinking about our morality. I’d love to be on jury duty again, just to force myself to really think about what I believe and how to best enforce it.