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A person who has been imprisoned and denied due process, is not there for breaking laws at all - at least, not if the principle of the presumption of innocence is still a foundation of the law.
Are you under the impression that the principle of the presumption of innocence is
a scientific discovery of anthropologists?!? It is a normative principle that evolved to serve the goal of preventing tyranny. It is an "ought". You are attempting to derive an "is" from an "ought". How does that work?
Historically, mankind has had laws thousands of years longer than we've had due process and presumption of innocence. You're arguing in effect that nobody in ancient Babylon was ever in a dungeon for breaking Hammurabi's laws.
Nobody is “arguing in effect” about ancient societies. This is the problem with your arguments in general, you muddy the issue with irrelevant analogies instead of addressing the claim being made.
Dude! I was exactly addressing the claim being made. For your inspection, I've requoted the claim above. If the claim being made were true then that would directly imply that nobody was ever imprisoned for breaking laws until due process and the presumption of innocence were established. Due process is only eight hundred years old -- it's based on the Magna Carta. The presumption of innocence isn't all that much older -- it goes back to Roman law, in the period of the "Five Good Emperors". You don't want to hear about Hammurabi, fine, we'll do without. So let's put it this way: the claim being made has absurd implications, so why should we believe the claim being made is true?
Modern states derive legitimacy from due process.
But state legitimacy wasn't part of the claim being made. If bilby had written *"A person who has been imprisoned and denied due process, is not there in custody of a legitimate state at all - at least, not if the principle of the presumption of innocence is still a foundation of the law." then he'd have had a far better case and I wouldn't have brought up Babylon. But that's not what he said. I addressed the claim being made.
When due process is bypassed and enforcement tracks appearance more than adjudication, the causal basis of detention changes.
The causal basis of detention happens prior to detention. Bypassing of due process happens after detention. Unless you know where we can find one of those extra special hot tubs, no, it can't change the causal basis of detention.
Bruh....
Again, nobody is claiming ancient societies didn’t throw people in dungeons. The point is about legitimacy within a system that claims presumption of innocence as foundational. In a rule-of-law structure, detention is “for breaking the law” only after guilt is established under that framework. If the state skips that step, you don’t magically inherit legitimacy just because an accusation exists. That’s the whole point of due process.
And on “causal basis,” you’re fiddling with word games and sequence. Yes, an allegation comes first chronologically. But in a modern legal system, the legally operative cause of detention isn’t “Becky said you did it.” It’s adjudicated guilt. If adjudication is bypassed, the institutional basis of detention moves from proven violation to executive action. You can call the accusation the cause if you want, but legally speaking it never matures into one.
You’re arguing history. The claim is about American constitutional standards, not Bomb#20’s habit of exploiting vague wording to derail the thread.
I find it utterly disingenuous that Bomb is here hand-waving away people acting as arbitrary judge, jury, and executioner at times of American citizens on the basis of mere appearance and without trial, and yet somehow stands on the same side without conflict or confrontation as someone who thinks it unconscionable for me to
so much as suggest that it might be correct for someone immediately present to an illegal action in progress of far worse magnitude to do something about it!
In fact, that person has had the gall to accuse me of saying it should be done on my say so, and yet here's someone apologizing for those that do on their say so, and yet... Somehow it's not so important to that same party.
Especially when I
didn't say people should do any such thing based on mere accusations or suspicion but
only in the action of direct participation in a horrific action in the absence of any other option for prevention of imminent harm. And in some respects additional responsibilities echo out to all who didn't act earlier.
I find this kind of double-standard back and forth group-based group hypocrisy to be boorish and sophmoric of the high-school variety.
Innocence is proven guilty specifically in the course of the act and the repetition leading to the same before those people.
These folks have an obligation to resist illegal actions, and to use force on those to their left and right if need be to prevent horrible actions.
Derek Chauvin should have been arrested then and there before anyone died. The ICE officers who murdered American citizens and who deprived people of due process should have been detained by ICE officers and surrendered to local law enforcement for trial.
If ICE recruited absolutely correctly, nobody would have been killed or illegally detained or brutalized in detention: none of the people slavering to do evil things would have access to inflict evil deeds.
And if second amendment supporters were right about who needs guns to be good guys and that guys with guns can be good in a situation... Well, the ICE officers with guns should be good enough to stop the bad guys, specifically those in the act of shooting American citizens without due process, with their guns. Yeah? That's part of the logic of the Right, right?
But again, that's like having to pull Ansul when the fryer is on fire: you REALLY don't want it to get that far, but it's better to shoot onside than allow the murder of civilians, especially for the sake of government sanctioned terrorism. Better to need to deep clean the kitchen than to burn the place down.
