Right of Conquest

[Politesse]

WHAT isn't WHERE in the law? What makes a legal principle "fake"?

It's fake if you say "x is legal" and cannot then follow it up with the citation of a law.

Provide a counter-example them.

I'm questioning the claim, often made, that a "Right of Conquest" exists. If I am right, there will be no evidence, as it is a false claim. "We won, so shut up", is an emotive, not a legal, claim.

Now who is "handwaving? How else does a First Nations Tribe or person gain "legal" results?

Usually, through appeal to the actual law. In the case of the US, almost always to the Constitution, a document which cites its own legal justification as residing within the will of the American people, or to a duly signed treaty, not the sustained application of violence.The reason First Nations people have legal representation and appeal today is because they pursued those rights by legal means. Not by killing people. This was tried by a handful of nations, and it ended up better for some than others. But ultimately, all of the significant victories in indigenous rights over the past century have been in the courtroom, not the battlefield.

 

[Politesse]

What does legitimate mean? It existed. It had definable borders and a political order. Might makes right. That’s the law of nature. Only in the 20th Century has did “legitimate” become a question of international order - like the Gulf War. Once America fads away, it’ll be might makes right again.

So you do not believe that any nation-states are legitimate? Or you believe that it is the use of mass violence that makes them legitimate?

How is it that you define "rights", exactly?

I think he is stating that "legitimacy" is not a category that applies to states. Saying a state is or is not legitimate is basically equivalent to stating "I like this state" or "I don't like this state".

I tend to agree.

So there is no "Right" of Conquest. There's just conquest. Yes?

 

[J842P]

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, though. The idea is that only violence can truly produce rights, since the law is irrelevant to "practical reality".

Conclusion: I need to just start murdering the neighbors. If the basis of conduct in this country is natural law, and natural law rules that only those who exercise violence can have rights, I'm to blame for not killing every last homophobe in this country (for instance) rather than stupidly pursuing legal means of defining the rights of citizenship. Yes? Forget suing to get wedding cakes made, the ideal solution is to steal the cake and burn down the shop, in accordance with the "law of nature".

This is going to be a fun Pride month!

This is a really strange post. You are very much free to try to do that. We'll see what happens.

 

[Politesse]

I think I'm starting to get the hang of this, though. The idea is that only violence can truly produce rights, since the law is irrelevant to "practical reality".

Conclusion: I need to just start murdering the neighbors. If the basis of conduct in this country is natural law, and natural law rules that only those who exercise violence can have rights, I'm to blame for not killing every last homophobe in this country (for instance) rather than stupidly pursuing legal means of defining the rights of citizenship. Yes? Forget suing to get wedding cakes made, the ideal solution is to steal the cake and burn down the shop, in accordance with the "law of nature".

This is going to be a fun Pride month!

This is a really strange post. You are very much free to try to do that. We'll see what happens.

I have no interest in the attempt. I actually favor the imposition of a system of laws, provided people have adequate representation in defining those laws.

 

[J842P]

So if they had fought back and murdered every police officer that stepped foot in their zone, and then every zone, until the world got sickened from the violence and the troops stopped being sent, you would consider the protestors to then "own" that patch of land? Under what law?

Yes, under this scenario, they do "own" that patch of land, as long as they can maintain control of it.

The question of *law* is irrelevant, a category error. It is like asking what color my computer program is.

So you agree that violent seizure of land is not legal?

It may or may not be "legal", depending on who you ask and whose laws you are talking about, what I'm saying is that isn't relevant or important.

 

[J842P]

I think he is stating that "legitimacy" is not a category that applies to states. Saying a state is or is not legitimate is basically equivalent to stating "I like this state" or "I don't like this state".

I tend to agree.

So there is no "Right" of Conquest. There's just conquest. Yes?

Yes. Absolutely. There are no rights at all, other than "legal rights", which aren't much of anything in the scenarios you are talking about. They are only really meaningful in a scenario where those that establish those "rights" have the power to defend them. Again, "right of conquest" seems like a category error to me, it mostly seems to mean just "conquest" as far as I can tell.

In other words, when someone says "I own this by right of conquest", they are just saying, "I conquered this".

 

[Politesse]

I think he is stating that "legitimacy" is not a category that applies to states. Saying a state is or is not legitimate is basically equivalent to stating "I like this state" or "I don't like this state".

I tend to agree.

So there is no "Right" of Conquest. There's just conquest. Yes?

Yes. Absolutely. There are no rights at all.

Yet, you would claim certain rights from your government, no? Among them, protection of your personal property?

 

[prideandfall]

I don't think that at all, I think it's stupid as fuck to say that humans should follow the same "Laws of Nature" that wildebeest and artichokes do. Of course we're in differerent circumstances. That's why I think your entire line of reasoning is dumb as shit.

what line of reasoning are you even talking about? try, for once in your posting history, to actually respond to what a person has said and not whatever elaborate fantasy you've concocted to make yourself feel smugly superior.

i'm willing to guess that we could spend the next 5 days posting back and forth about it and you would never get close to even understanding what i was saying in my first response here, but since i'm the sort inclined towards intellectual fappery i'll give it a try just to amuse myself:
with limited exceptions (especially at this point in human history) very few societies (and their subsequent laws) occupy geographic regions that were not obtained through the conquest and subjugation of a pre-existing populace.
land ownership and legal systems have been implemented since then, but nearly all of those laws and legal frameworks were built upon a paradigm that was originally established through violent conquest, and the entire point of those laws was to try to limit the amount of violent conquest that would happen in the future.

as such, there is not really a starting point for which one can argue a legal justification for land ownership that didn't start with conquest, so your original question can't really have an answer because it's abstract to the point of being purely theoretical.

So we are, or aren't, beholden to honor wolf laws? You're not being consistent here.

i'm being completely consistent, you're just demonstrating once again that you have a severe lack of reading comprehension.
let me try to spell this out for your reeeeally slowly using small words:
once upon a time, natural law was all that existed.
as humans developmed and modern civilization started to emerge, abstract notions began to slowly integrate with natural law.
eventually, humans (mostly) moved away from operating on pure instinctive psychology and started operating by cognition, and yet the world we lived in upon which our cognition could be used was still built on principles derived from natural law.

so the answer to the original question of if there is a legal framework for the right of conquest is: no, not really, because the right of conquest exists prior to the concept of legality - the best you could ever hope for is some after-the-fact rationalization for it.

Or do you know something I don't?

based on your posting history here i'd have to say you've done nothing but give evidence that you know incredibly little, so i'd have to assume the answer to your question here is yes.

 

[prideandfall]

Yet, you would claim certain rights from your government, no? Among them, protection of your personal property?

if your government has decided to have rights, sure.

human rights are like religion - they don't exist in a vacuum. they aren't inherent to the natural order of biological life and they aren't a naturally occurring element of the universe.
in some extreme hypothetical where a human was born in the wild and somehow survived into adulthood with zero contact with another human being, they would never naturally come up with the idea that the judeo-christian god exists, nor would they ever come to the natural conclusion that property ownership is a legal right.

but just because 'rights' and 'law' are arbitrary and only defined by the ruling class doesn't mean they don't exist, it just means that if as a mental exercise you drill down far enough into rational explanations for it you are sooner or later going to run into a dead end where what is now was derived from what was then; and what was then was derived from instinct and natural law and there's no real reason for it other than 'it is.'
this is why your original question doesn't have an answer.

though i suppose an alternative is that if you believe in an all powerful sky fairy that imbued the fabric of reality itself with logic, then your question is just answered by 'god did it' and it's still pretty much unanswerable from a rational perspective.

 

[Elixir]

It's fake if you say "x is legal" and cannot then follow it up with the citation of a law.

I'm questioning the claim, often made, that a "Right of Conquest" exists.

How can you differentiate "right of conquest" from "result of conquest", when the conqueror can spell out rights in laws that they can cite without contradiction and enforce without hindrance?
I am asking for a counter-example: a law or a legality that exists aside from what is established by conquest.
We agree that conquest is immoral and unethical. But you keep reverting to "legality" as if that is something that exists apart from conquest, so I am asking for an example.

 

[Politesse]

human rights are like religion - they don't exist in a vacuum. they aren't inherent to the natural order of biological life and they aren't a naturally occurring element of the universe.

And yet, you keep talking about "natural law", as though we were somehow beholden to it even over and above the rights we define for ourselves. Your position is not consistent.

 

[Politesse]

How can you differentiate "right of conquest" from "result of conquest", when the conqueror can spell out rights in laws that they can cite without contradiction and enforce without hindrance?

They can't, and didn't. The population would not, in fact, accept a purely dictatorial government over the long term.

I am asking for a counter-example: a law or a legality that exists aside from what is established by conquest.

The entire system of law supposedly exists by common consent, not conquest. The US Constitution lists out a number of reasons and justifications for its own existence, none of which inlcude this mythical "right of conquest". From the Preamble:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."​

Not only is there no endorsement of violent conquest as a means to create new rights or title, I would argue that such a practice is in direct opposition to the principles of domestic tranquility, liberty, and common defense.

Now, they did not at the time believe that they were granting these rights to everyone within the land area of the Colonies. This is obvious. However, because they set up an ongoing system of law, redress of grievances, and the creation of new rights by common consent, the American people were able to amend the Constitution over time to ensure equal representation under the law. By diplomacy and common agreement, not by violence. "I killed him, so I get his stuff" is not a legal argument that would be recognized in any American courtroom as valid.

 

[prideandfall]

human rights are like religion - they don't exist in a vacuum. they aren't inherent to the natural order of biological life and they aren't a naturally occurring element of the universe.

And yet, you keep talking about "natural law", as though we were somehow beholden to it even over and above the rights we define for ourselves. Your position is not consistent.

i keep talking about 'natural law' because it's a term with a definition that means the thing i'm talking about.

well ok... i'll grant you my use of the term 'natural law' is questionable, since that label is technically applied to a specific field of argument trying to justify the existence of god, but even the most basic use of reading comprehension could conclude that i'm talking about ethology when i say that, especially given the other terms i've used to describe the same thing.
and for the purposes of this reply i asked 4 people i know what they think of when i say 'natural law' or 'law of the jungle' or 'law of nature' and they all responded with thinking of those terms corresponding to ethology, so i'm reasonably certain that i'm not going out on a limb to say that even if i was using the terms wrong, i was doing so in a common way.

so i'll go out of my way here to be extremely generous and give you the benefit of the doubt that you're having some kind of inability to figure out the concept of a colloquialism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolutionary_psychology

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethology

also, i'm not talking about ANYTHING other than the fact that your original question is invalid due to actual literal history. i'm not making a value judgment about humans or commenting about anything related to human nature, so i have no idea what the hell you're on about suggesting that i'm saying we're beholden to anything.

though, i need to heed my own posts and remember that you don't reply to people, you just hallucinate straw men and then vomit out completely unrelated garbage based on your own insanity, so i don't know why i keep thinking your responses should have any connection to what you're replying to.

 

[prideandfall]

interesting side note:
prior to WWII the right of conquest was actually defined in international law.
'international law' can roughly be described as a codified set of agreements nominally established in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia.

right of conquest was recognized as a principle of international law up until world war 2, after which the UN proscribed it as part of the Nuremberg Principles and criminalization of wars of aggression.

 

[Trausti]

interesting side note:
prior to WWII the right of conquest was actually defined in international law.
'international law' can roughly be described as a codified set of agreements nominally established in 1648 with the Peace of Westphalia.

right of conquest was recognized as a principle of international law up until world war 2, after which the UN proscribed it as part of the Nuremberg Principles and criminalization of wars of aggression.

So, yeah. Once American influence fades, it's back to might makes right.

 

[untermensche]

US influence has never been anything but might and claims of the right to use it. The US is not an example to anyone except criminals.

 

[Trausti]

US influence has never been anything but might and claims of the right to use it. The US is not an example to anyone except criminals.

Well, duh. Just like the Gulf War. The US threatens to use force if another country attempts conquest of another. When the US fades, and it certainly is fading now, that threat goes away. Pax Americana will come to end soon.

 

[prideandfall]

Well, duh. Just like the Gulf War. The US threatens to use force if another country attempts conquest of another that the US has a direct vested economic interest in.

added a bit there to fix that for you.
the US does not give a single solitary shit if one country invades another so long as there's no impact to its economic or theological interests.

When the US fades, and it certainly is fading now, that threat goes away. Pax Americana will come to end soon.

at which point either economic or social pressure will replace the looming threat of a tiny dick and a big gun, and the world will continue chugging along and not notice or care.

 

[Trausti]

Well, duh. Just like the Gulf War. The US threatens to use force if another country attempts conquest of another that the US has a direct vested economic interest in.

added a bit there to fix that for you.
the US does not give a single solitary shit if one country invades another so long as there's no impact to its economic or theological interests.

When the US fades, and it certainly is fading now, that threat goes away. Pax Americana will come to end soon.

at which point either economic or social pressure will replace the looming threat of a tiny dick and a big gun, and the world will continue chugging along and not notice or care.

Right, the world will continue chugging along like it did before WWII. Without the US, the UN is useless.

 

[Emily Lake]

Does a military victory, alone, constitute a legal means of acquiring new territories? If so, on what moral or legal basis? Does the conquering "army" have to have the official imprimatur of their government in order for an invasion to be legal, or can random settlers acting unofficially be the basis of a new territorial acquisition?

Asking for a First Nation.

It doesn't constitute a legal or a moral right. It constitutes a "might makes right". It's only through legal and moral frameworks that we curb that tendency.

ETA: Do you have a Flag sums it up fairly well with some grade A humor.