Given how easy it is recognize in both paradigms that justice is about victims, why do people so often think justice is about punishing the criminal? Often, when protesters call for justice in the name of a victim, they call not for reparations or restitution, but for criminal prosecution of the perpetrator. Why does this attitude persist? Even libertarian theorists, most notably Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty, attempt to move from justice for victims, restitution, to criminal law, retribution.

For too long, the state has had a stranglehold on justice. Frederic Bastiat noted that when justice is perverted by the state, the people come to know nothing else but the state’s actions as “justice.” It is no surprise, then, that justice is thought to be some kind of persecution of those who do harm to others. The state uses justice as the banner under which it may take its looter’s share. By parading about as the “thin blue line” police become symbols of morality, even as they leave destroyed lives in their wake. Prisons are warehouses for the socially discomforting and pens for the downtrodden who would otherwise mar the cityscapes of the influential, not temples of justice, nor cages for social decay. The state and its agents have stolen justice from its citizens.

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Justice is the virtue of giving each his or her due. As a person, as a human, as a members of various relationships, each person deserves some particular kind of treatment. Justice is thus, in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas, “a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will.” So justice is about the person with whom one interacts, their dignity and standing as who and what they are. Other virtues, like prudence or fortitude, are about the agent who wishes to display them. To be insufficiently brave is to feel too much fear, or to feel fear of an improper object, but justice is about other people.

This makes sense in libertarian theory. The non-aggression principle is not framed in terms of the violator. It is wrong to aggress against another person’s justly held property primarily because it harms the victim, not primarily because the gains therefrom are not real accomplishments (though this is the case). The right of self-ownership does not follow from the fact that others have no ability to control one’s will but from the fact that one has the inalienable ability to make decisions for oneself. Even the law of equal authority is fundamentally about the wrong done to someone when power is expressed over them.

Leftists recognize that justice is about victims, also. When explaining the problems in rampant bossism, the callousness inculcated in bosses is morally secondary to the vulnerability endemic to the employees’ position. Underprivileged groups’ stigmatization is a wrong committed by the privileged against the marginalized. Privilege is not about the privilege holder, it is about the unfairness of the social dynamic it forces onto the underprivileged.

Given how easy it is recognize in both paradigms that justice is about victims, why do people so often think justice is about punishing the criminal? Often, when protesters call for justice in the name of a victim, they call not for reparations or restitution, but for criminal prosecution of the perpetrator. Why does this attitude persist? Even libertarian theorists, most notably Murray Rothbard in The Ethics of Liberty, attempt to move from justice for victims, restitution, to criminal law, retribution.

For too long, the state has had a stranglehold on justice. Frederic Bastiat noted that when justice is perverted by the state, the people come to know nothing else but the state’s actions as “justice.” It is no surprise, then, that justice is thought to be some kind of persecution of those who do harm to others. The state uses justice as the banner under which it may take its looter’s share. By parading about as the “thin blue line” police become symbols of morality, even as they leave destroyed lives in their wake. Prisons are warehouses for the socially discomforting and pens for the downtrodden who would otherwise mar the cityscapes of the influential, not temples of justice, nor cages for social decay. The state and its agents have stolen justice from its citizens.

State interest in retributive, perpetrator-focused justice is natural. It makes the rightness of a choice dependent on the one performing the act against another. Taking property from another is theft, unless the state is levying a tax. Shooting another person without cause is murder, unless an “officer of the law” is holding the gun. The quasi-divine sanction of the state removes moral responsibility from one who would rightly be a criminal. The victim is of no importance under a state’s so-called justice system. The perpetrator is everything, and the state has the power to decide who the perpetrator is, criminal or agent of the law. This is the identifying feature of the state and the source of its influence. It claims the final right in deciding the legitimacy of a use of force. It holds itself up as the final arbiter. It decides who matters.

To have true justice the state’s model of punishment must not be the operating paradigm. Those who have been harmed by another, no matter who the other was, must be made whole again, and it is the responsibility of the damaging party to ensure that this is so. This cannot be done by focusing on the perpetrator. Only the victim’s status matters in evaluating whether justice has been done, and victims deserve better than the farce the state has conducted for centuries in the name of its own victims. They deserve justice.

Maria Isabel Veliz Franco was 15 when she was sexually abused, tortured and brutally murdered in Guatemala in 2001. Her mother fought for justice and, on July 28, 2014, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled that the Guatemalan authorities had not adequately investigated the murder, neglecting it in an environment of systematic violence and discrimination against women.

Sebastian Elgueta, a researcher from Amnesty International who writes on Guatemala, stated that the “lessons from this case will only be apprehended when the death of every women in Guatemala is taken seriously, and when concrete measures begin to be taken to prevent violence against them, creating a safe and respectful society for all.”

This tragic case highlights the importance of courts and rulings outside the nation state, for they judge whether governments are respecting so-called obligations they take upon themselves to respect human rights and hence legitimize their power.

The first case I researched in the jurisprudence of the Inter-American Court was also a Guatemalan case, Street Children (Villagran Morales et al) v. Guatemala.

I was already a libertarian then and I was actually surprised to see that the case of five kids killed by the police, which no doubt would’ve been ignored forever if it was up to the Guatemalan state, had been taken to an international independent court that would rule and sentence the state to compensate the families of the victims, investigate and punish the responsible and take measures to avoid that situation in the future.

The emergence of these courts is important in that it’s at least an independent power acting to limit the state and challenging the idea that the state is the final arbiter of our liberties and rights within its borders. The state here is faced with the awkward situation of being the defendant rather the accuser in a court that holds them up to the standard of actually respecting the rights they vowed to uphold.

In a Brazilian case of a mentally impaired patient, Damiao Ximenes Lopes, who had been neglected and died in a nursing home linked to the government health care system, the Brazilian state was condemned for lack of investigation of the occurrence. Another case involved the disappeared people from the Araguaia guerilla during the military dictatorship, where the Court understood that the Brazilian Amnesty Act, forgiving blatant violations of human rights committed by the dictatorship, was illegal, something I’ve touched upon in other article.

From a radical free market perspective, these international courts could allow us to argue that Brazil violates human rights for not allowing union freedom to its citizens.

The possibility exists because the Inter-American Court of Human Rights can evaluate rights violations listed in the American Convention on Human Rights, which deals with civil and political rights, but can also examine some of the provisions of the Protocol of San Salvador, that deals with economic, social and cultural rights. Among them, there’s this one:

Article 8
Trade Union Rights
1. The States Parties shall ensure:
a. The right of workers to organize trade unions and to join the union of their choice for the purpose of protecting and promoting their interests. As an extension of that right, the States Parties shall permit trade unions to establish national federations or confederations, or to affiliate with those that already exist, as well as to form international trade union organizations and to affiliate with that of their choice. The States Parties shall also permit trade unions, federations and confederations to function freely . . .

Since Getulio Vargas, Brazilian workers have had no freedom to unionize, for they must submit to “union oneness,” a legal monopoly that allows only one union to represent a given segment of workers in a territory. No wonder the largest unions in the country, CUT and Forca Sindical, are firmly aligned with corporate interests.

That’s also one of the reasons the Brazilian government doesn’t recognize the Convention No. 87 of the International Labour Organization. ILO in its own constitution establishes the freedom of union association, but by ratifying it Brazil would have to commit to the application of the principle in its work relations. Article 2 establishes that workers, without distinction and previous permission, have the right to constitute the organizations they deem convenient and to affiliate themselves to them, provided they respect their internal statutes. ILO’s Article 2 and PSS’s article 8 are very similar and are meant to protect a simple principle of union relations that the Brazilian government violates.

Should we secure a condemnation of Brazil in an international court for impeding the functioning of a free union, outside its monopoly system, that would be a very important step in calling attention of workers of this aburd denial of their righs to free association and better work conditions.

Thus, international courts may possess one of the few authorities a state might be forced to recognize, and we can use that to have it investigate the murder of street kids or to have it sentenced for not respecting workers’s rights to unionize the way they see fit. The means might not be radical, but the idea is: the state can’t have the last word on our lives and rights.

Legislative activism will not guide us to freedom, but there’s a law on our side, we might as well exploit it.

Translated into English by Erick Vasconcelos.

Think about it like this. Suppose you’re hungry for some delicious pizza, like I am right now. When I finish writing this, I’m going to pick up the phone and place an order for some pizza. But I have to decide what size I want. As is the case with pizza, my eyes (or ears since I’m ordering on the phone) are bigger than my stomach and I’m tempted to order a large. Problem is, I won’t actually be able to finish the whole thing. It’s just too much pizza (this concept is actually incoherent, but this is only an analogy). Of course, I don’t want to order a small either. It won’t fill me up and I will want more pizza. Considering all the variables – my body type, my appetite, the size of my wallet, etc – I have to get the pizza that is proportional.

Proportional pizza is not actually a philosophical concept, which is a travesty. But we do have something like it that was developed by some guys named Socrates, Plato, and Aristote, among others. In the ancient Greek tradition, this is called the Golden Mean. According to Socrates, “man must know how to choose the mean and avoid the extremes on either side, as far as possible.” In the Aristotelian tradition, a virtue such as courage is action that falls between acting too rash and too cowardly. Aristotle thought all the virtues depend upon a mean between two extremes. There is no doubt he would have ordered the medium pizza.

What can this tell us about non-aggression, proportionality, and justice? The Golden Mean shows us that acting just requires a sense of proportionality. It explains why when someone steals my television, killing them would be doing too much and doing nothing would be too little. Justice lies somewhere between the two. Responding to an act of aggression with a disproportionate amount of force misses the Golden Mean.

This idea means we are committed to a specific form of retaliation. We can act violent insofar as that violence is needed to defend ourselves or make ourselves whole. Taking my television back and breaking the thief’s arm is not needed to defend myself nor make myself whole – it’s not proportionate. Any action I take that goes beyond self-defense and restitution is, itself, aggression. In the case of the television, justice requires me taking back my television along with some compensation for what I had to go through (maybe I had to run after the thief and tore my shirt on a tree branch). Nothing more and nothing less.

Now, what kind of blog post would this be if I didn’t call for the abolition of prisons? One of the reasons I’m a prison abolitionist is because locking people in cages for months, years, or decades, is not needed for self-defense. Imprisoning the television thief goes beyond the proper form of retaliation because prison is all about punishment for punishment’s sake. Once I get my television back, the thief is no longer a threat and I have no claim to any of his property except the appropriate restitution.

Forcibly restraining someone for an extended period of time could only be justified if they are an on-going threat to society. Considering the few number of people who are actually a continual danger to others, this hardly justifies prisons. There are more effective and more moral alternatives for this small minority. Consider a system of house arrest. Or perhaps a rehabilitation clinic.

A proper concern for non-aggression and proportionality entails the absolute rejection of a system based on punishment for its own sake, which is what prisons are. It implies a system based on restitution, on making the victim whole. Let’s not forget Aristotle’s Golden Mean when we are ordering pizza or when we are discussing the proper treatment of criminals.

Robert Henry needs your help. Less than 25 days remain until Florida executes Robert using makeshift science and a cruel, untested lethal cocktail. Governor Scott has signed a death warrant and scheduled Robert’s execution for March 20th, 2014. Robert was sentenced to death in Broward County for the 1988 deaths of Janet Cox Thermidor and Phyllis Harris. Now, Robert’s family and friends, along with religious advocates, abolitionists, and activists across Florida and the U.S. are calling on Gov. Scott to STAY the execution.

Florida has recently implemented a dangerous, untested and non-FDA approved method of sedating death row inmates: Midzolam. Renowned anesthesiologists in the field have denounced the use of this new, experimental method as inhumane because it can cause the inmate to feel as if he is being buried alive.

Ohio, the only other state to use this experimental, non-anesthetic drug for its lethal injection, witnessed the horrific failure of this method in an execution just last month. The inmate, Denis Mcguire, choked to death for at least 10 minutes in an experiment that went horribly wrong.

Journalist Justin Peters has noted rolling the dice with this novel execution method is at odds with our democratic values:

Respect for the prisoner and for the process is what separates a state-sanctioned execution from a lynch mob. Justice requires patience. Vengeance values speed. By rushing to use an untested execution drug despite valid concerns about its safety and efficacy, Florida is willfully flouting this process.

Please help us save Robert from state-sanctioned torture. Take a moment to pass the message along to your friends, families, and other like-minded advocates.

—
__
Tell Gov. Scott to STOP Robert’s execution! Call 850-488-7146 or email: Rick.Scott@eog.myflorida.com.

Sign the petition: http://chn.ge/1fLpxSg.
Blog: www.nocruelcocktail.wordpress.com/
Twitter: @SaveRobertHenry
Facebook: www.facebook.com/SaveRobertHenryFL

All too often, torture is part of how the American state administers its death penalty. Incidents like the horrific death of Dennis McGuire in Ohio illustrate the cruelty of such methods of execution.

Moreover, cruelty and torture don’t simply occur in how the execution itself is administered. Death row itself often features cruel and torturous conditions. The Center for Constitutional Rights has lots of enlightening material on how the state tortures its victims before it kills them. The report highlights, among other abuses, pervasive use of solitary confinement. As I have repeatedly pointed out, solitary confinement is recognized as torture by voices across the political spectrum.

Beyond the torture angle, the death penalty itself is an extreme and downright creepy form of state coercion. Rather than simply killing in self defense, state agents kill someone who is subdued and confined. They meticulously plan and premeditate this killing when they have their victim in custody, and thus have already engaged in sufficient force to protect anyone the offender might harm. Thus, this extra violence cannot be defended with the same types of argument Roderick Long uses to defend some forms of incarceration.

I truly realized the morbid nature of the state and its execution tactics in 2010, when I participated in a vigil on the night that the State of Utah executed Ronnie Lee Gardner. The state of Utah used a firing squad rather than a new torture technique to kill Ronnie Lee Gardner, but it was still profoundly creepy and disturbing to watch a government leader walk out to triumphantly, coldly, and clinically tell reporters and family members that the state just killed a man. I sat with people who would never see a member of their family again, because state agents deliberately killed him for purposes of punishment.

The arguments made for the death penalty are all insufficient to justify the torture and premeditated killing it entails. The evidence for deterrence is very weak, with most criminologists saying the death penalty does not provide extra deterrence. And even if the kind of torture and premeditated killing the death penalty involves could somehow be ethically justified for dealing with murderers (and I don’t think it can be), there is substantial evidence that innocent people have been executed by the state.

Let’s end state sanctioned torture and premeditated murder. Let’s save Robert Henry, and all others the state plans to abuse in such brutal ways.

Nel 2009 la Knox fu accusata di aver ucciso Meredith Kercher, una studentessa britannica con cui condivideva l’alloggio durante gli studi all’estero. Nel 2011, prima dell’assoluzione in seguito ad appello, la corte costituzionale italiana ordinò il rifacimento del processo. In seguito a ciò, la Knox fu trovata nuovamente colpevole.

Fin dall’inizio, indagini e processo sono stati segnati dalla frenesia dei media. Generalmente parlando, ci sono due partiti opposti: Quelli che pensano che le indagini e il processo siano un’ingiustizia alimentata da anti-americanismo e misoginia, e quelli che pensano che l’oltraggio in sé sia una forma di sessismo al contrario che ignora le prove.

È lo stato italiano che ne fa una vittima e una zoccola? È il pubblico americano che la mette su un piedistallo e le tributa un trattamento speciale per il suo temperamento? È l’una e l’altra cosa?

C’è un’altra storia che non viene detta: Il privilegio influisce sulla giustizia non solo in America, ma particolarmente in America.

In un’intervista a The Guardian il giorno del verdetto, la Knox ha spiegato come dall’inizio del processo la sua vita sia cambiata e come questo abbia influito sulle sue certezze.

“Sono una persona marchiata. Chi non è marchiato non può capire. È come non sapere più dove sono. Qual è il mio ruolo nella società?”

La seconda frase è particolarmente importante. Cosa significa “non essere marchiato”? Questa è la condizione di chi è privilegiato.

Il privilegio si manifesta in diversi modi, ma l’esperienza che produce è sempre la stessa: non essere notati. È più o meno come non notare che non si ha un mal di testa o non notare che non si possiede una mano. In realtà, però, significa non notare il fatto che non si è discriminati, regolarmente, per qualcosa che non si può controllare.

Un altro aspetto del privilegio è la propensione a non credere nella sua esistenza. Chi solitamente non è discriminato, trova difficile credere che altri possano esserlo. Questo porta molti a mettere in questione l’onestà o la salute mentale di chi dice di essere discriminato sulla base del colore della pelle, il sesso, l’orientamento sessuale, l’espressione del proprio genere e altro. O mentono oppure hanno le fantasie.

Un articolo del Guardian del 2011 parla del sospetto che circonda le minoranze e di come la misoginia abbia influenzato il modo in cui la polizia italiana indagò sul caso. L’articolista spiega come gesti e azioni, come baciare il proprio ragazzo o mostrarsi felice, furono usati per determinare la sua colpevolezza. Dice:

“Alla radice del sessismo e del razzismo c’è la tendenza a ipersemplificare la mentalità e le ragioni dell’altro.”

Immaginare i pensieri e i sentimenti reali di una persona osservandola attraverso le lenti di un’opinione predeterminata è la definizione di pregiudizio. L’uso del pregiudizio nella giustizia criminale è chiaramente un problema, e un problema troppo diffuso.

Quello che la Knox sta vivendo è realtà quotidiana per molti negli Stati Uniti, il paese con il più alto tasso di detenzioni al mondo. Le denunce di violenza sessuale contro le donne sono regolarmente trattate con superficialità dalla polizia; uno studio di Human Rights Watch ha rivelato come il 40% delle denunce di stupro non sono oggetto di documentazioni o indagini adeguate. Le persone di colore finiscono dietro le sbarre in proporzione maggiore rispetto ai bianchi: rappresentano il 30% degli arresti ma il 60% della popolazione carceraria.

L’avvocato americano Alan Dershowitz è uno dei critici più duri del tifo sfrenato per Amanda Knox.

“Il sistema giudiziario americano tratta i poveri e le minoranze molto peggio di quanto non faccia l’Italia, perciò non abbiamo proprio alcuna ragione per elevarci e dire agli altri paesi che il loro sistema è ingiusto. Sulla base [delle prove contro la Knox], se non fosse una ragazza attraente – se fosse una persona ordinaria – accusata sulla base di queste prove, qui in America sarebbe stata condannata all’ergastolo o, peggio, alla pena di morte.”

Da notare che, se Dershowitz colpisce nel segno con la prima frase, con la seconda si contraddice. In un’altra intervista ha detto: “A conti fatti, è molto probabile che abbia commesso il fatto, ma non ci sono abbastanza elementi per provarlo oltre ogni ragionevole dubbio.” E si sentì anche in dovere di aggiungere che non avrebbe voluto che suo figlio uscisse con lei. Non è chiaro a chi stesse rispondendo.

La dannazione della Knox è arrivata per mano dello stato italiano. Negli Stati Uniti, se il razzismo è un problema radicato nella cultura e nei comportamenti, le sue manifestazioni sistematicamente più gravi passano attraverso il sistema giudiziario.

Chi dice di essere oltraggiato dal trattamento riservato ad Amanda Knox dovrebbe riflettere sulla natura del privilegio e sull’influenza e il controllo che questo esercita sul complesso industriale carcerario americano. C’è molto da fare.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

The first is that I don’t fully know. A free society would involve a diversity of institutions emerging and a market discovery process going on along with various decentralized democratic community experiments, so there’s not going to be one philosopher or economist that predicts in full what’s likely to happen.

That said, I have a pretty strong preference towards moving from criminal law towards civil or tort law, and away from punishment towards restitution.The advantage of civil law over criminal law is that the goal is compensating the victims of crimes and abuses and having that payment serve as a way of holding perpetrators of abuse accountable. This means that addressing harm is the key issue, rather than simply punishing those who violate the commands of the state. Economist and legal scholar David Friedman has done lots of great work on what a society based on purely civil law might look like. For example, I highly recommend this video, where he discusses abolishing criminal law.

The next point is that we see some examples of what prison abolitionist approaches to crime might look like already, because marginalized communities are actively oppressed by and underserved by the criminal justice system. People of color, transgender people, sex workers, immigrants, and sexual assault survivors are all often poorly served or actively oppressed by the criminal justice system. As such, many of them have built up alternatives to the system for dealing with the abuse and violence they suffer. One good example of this is the Audre Lorde Project’s Safe OUTside the System Collective in New York. Victoria Law discusses a few more such examples in her video Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons. Still more examples are discussed in Rose City Copwatch’s zine Alternatives to the Police.

The state’s prisons and police do not effectively deal with violence and abuse – they perpetrate violence and abuse. As Dean Spade puts it, “The prison is the serial killer, the prison is the serial rapist.” Recent reports of rampant sexual violence against inmates in prisons like Alabama’s Tutwiler Prison for Women highlight this horrible truth. We must seek to abolish this systemic aggression. But those of us who seek to abolish the state’s systemic violence should also consider how to craft better institutions to defend from the violence the state purports to protect us from.

In 2009, Knox was charged with murdering Meredith Kercher, a British student she roomed with while studying abroad. After being acquitted following an appeal in 2011, the Italian supreme court ordered a retrial. Knox was subsequently found guilty again.

The investigation and trial has been a media-fueled frenzy from the beginning. There are generally two polarized camps on the issue: Those who think the investigation and trial are an injustice fueled by anti-Americanism and misogyny, and those that think the outrage itself is a form of reverse-sexism that ignores evidence.

Is she being victimized and slut-shamed by the Italian government? Is she being pedestal-ed and given special treatment by the American public for being hot? Or both?

There’s another story waiting to be told here: The story of how privilege affects the administering of justice not only – also - in America, but especially.

In an interview with The Guardian, on the day of the verdict, Knox explained how her life has changed since the trial began and how it’s affected things she used to take for granted.

“I’m a marked person. And no one who’s unmarked can understand that. Like I don’t even know what my place is anymore. What’s my role in society?”

The second sentence is especially important. What does it mean to be “unmarked?” This is the condition of being privileged.

Privilege manifests in various ways, but the experience of being privileged is always the same – it’s unnoticed. It’s kind of like not noticing not having a headache or not noticing not having a hand. Really, though, it’s not noticing not being discriminated against on a regular basis for something you have no control over.

Another aspect to privilege is the propensity to not believe it exists. For those not routinely discriminated against, it’s hard to believe it happens to other people. This leads many to question the honesty or mental health of those claiming to be singled out based on things like skin color, biological sex, sexual orientation, gender expression and so on. They must either be lying or it’s in their heads.

A Guardian article written in 2011 illustrates the phenomenon of distrusting minorities and how misogyny affected the way the Italian police investigated the case. Talking about the way her gestures and actions, like kissing her boyfriend or looking happy, were being used to determine her culpability, he said:

“An inclination to oversimplify the minds and motivations of others lies at the root of sexism and racism.”

Guessing what someone is really thinking or feeling by studying them through the lens of predetermined beliefs is the definition of prejudice. Using prejudice in criminal justice is obviously an issue and one that is seen too often.

What Knox is going through is an everyday reality for many in the United States, the country with the highest incarceration rate in the world. Reports of sexual violence against women are regularly mishandled by police; in one Human Rights Watch study, it was found that 40 percent of rape reports were not adequately documented or investigated. People of color are put behind bars at a higher proportion relative to whites, making up only 30 percent of arrests but 60 percent of the prison population.

One of the harshest critics of the overwhelming support of Amanda Knox is American lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

“We treat poor people and minority people much worse in the United States by our criminal justice system than they do in Italy, so we really have no standing to tell other countries that their system is unfair. And based on [the evidence against Knox], in America, if she were not an attractive young woman — if she were an ordinary person — charged on the basis of this evidence, she would be convicted and would be serving life imprisonment, or even worse, the death penalty in the United States.”

It should be noted that while Dershowitz hits the nail on the head in the first sentence, he contradicts himself with the second. In another interview, he stated, “On balance, it’s more likely than not that she did, but there’s not enough evidence to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt.” He also felt the need to add that he would not let her date his son. It’s unclear who was asking.

Knox’s damnation came at the hands of the Italian government. In the United States, while racism is a problem rooted in cultural beliefs and attitudes, its most systematically-onerous manifestation comes through the justice system.

Those outraged by Amanda Knox’s treatment must also look at what privilege is and how it affects and controls the prison-industrial complex in America. There’s a lot of work to do.

Translations for this article:

• Italian, La Lezione di Amanda Knox su Privilegi e Giustizia.

The Danvers High School student, prosecutors allege, followed 24-year-old math teacher Colleen Ritzer into a bathroom, punched her in the face and slit her throat with a box-cutter.

Philip Chism isn’t allowed to quit school until he’s 16 years old — not even if he’s offered a contract to play professional soccer for the New England Revolution, a contract which, not being 18 years of age, he would in any case be ineligible to sign on his own authority.

Philip Chism isn’t allowed to drive a car for two more years, either.

Massachusetts’s “age of consent” laws are kind of strange — it’s possible that he might be allowed to have sex at 16, unless he’s lived a “chaste life” from which he was “induced,” in which case the age becomes 18. Either way, the other party to the sexual act is considered a criminal and a predator.

Nor can he vote, enlist in the military, own real estate, register a limited liability company or charter a corporation for four more years.

He has to wait seven more years before he can even legally walk into a bar, sit down, order and drink a beer.

There are very few exceptions to these legal restrictions on what Philip Chism may do and what others may do with him. These restrictions are, their supporters claim, based on the notion that at 14, Chism is not mature or competent enough to do those things. He doesn’t understand the implications and consequences. He’s a child, not an adult. He needs to be, in a word, protected.

But the instant he’s accused of a crime, all that goes out the window. For the convenience of the state and the pacification of the mob, he is magically and retroactively transformed into an “adult.”

There’s a word for that kind of thing, but I can’t use that word in a family-friend publication (it has to do with what comes out the rear ends of male cattle).

If Philip Chism is a child when it comes to school attendance, contracts, sexual encounters, driving, voting, enlisting, drinking, etc., he’s a child when he’s thought to have killed someone.

If Philip Chism is not a child when he’s thought to have killed someone, he’s not a child with respect to any of those other matters, either.

Philip Chism is either a child, or he’s not.

I’m an anarchist, but even I acknowledge that children and adults are different and will always, in any society, be treated differently.

The problem with the political way of handling these differences is that it amounts to having politicians draw numbers out of hats, letting them impose protections/restrictions (on children and adults alike) based on those numbers, and allowing them to discard those protections/restrictions when they become politically inconvenient.

If those protections and restrictions are just, they remain just even when they become politically inconvenient, and should be rigorously and universally maintained. If they are unjust, they should be discarded completely, no matter how politically convenient they may be.

While I can’t guarantee that the coming stateless society will birth a more just and sound model for handling the differences between children and adults, I’m fairly confident — if for no other reason than that it would be hard to come up with a LESS just model than the arbitrary and capricious standards now being applied to Philip Chism.