This is Sidney Axinn explaining:
The point of having a law is not that it will prevent the action that it calls illegal. Many cities have a law against parking in front of fire hydrants; yet the law does not stop the practice. Laws against murder do not seem to stop that activity. The fact that laws do not totally deter crime does not mean that we should repeal them. The point of having laws was expressed nicely by Professor Roger Fisher of Yale Law School:
“The essential talent of the law lies not in producing perfect order but in coping with disorder in an orderly way. Contract law, negligence law and criminal law ‘work’ not in the sense of producing a society with no broken contracts, no negligence and no crimes, but by telling us how society should respond when things go wrong.” (Quoted from page 70 of A Moral Military, by Sidney Axinn. Temple University Press. 2009.)
For a brief biography of Sidney Axinn, click here. For a brief biography of Roger Fisher, click here.
Comments