Saturday, October 30, 2010
Really Depressing Documentary
It's about the Trail of Tears. I assigned it to my students, and it is worth watching. To PBS's credit, they did a very good job of presenting the complexity of why this happened, and why one unrepresentative group of Cherokees signed the treaty that ceded the Cherokee lands. Was it a bad decision on their part? Would trying to fight have been a better decision? Almost certainly not--and President Jackson's famous words, "The Supreme Court has made their decision. Let them enforce it" are a reminder that the whole system of a rule of law only works as long as those responsible for enforcing the laws obey them.
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Actually, the "let them enforce it" edict is a good reminder about the tri-cameral nature of criminal law: a criminal conviction requires the consent of all three branches, legislative, executive, and judicial.
ReplyDeleteThe legislative branch must pass a law specifying a criminal act (e.g. the speed limit).
The executive branch must consent to enforce that law (the highway patrol, the sheriff, or the city police write a speeding ticket).
And then the judicial branch must confirm that the accused broke the law for no good reason (the cop wrote a ticket, and the judge confirmed that the defendant's mother-in-law in the car, wasn't on the way to the hospital for chest pains, no matter what the defendant claimed).
When it works, it works well, indeed.