From: hal@rain.org
Date: Mon Mar 22 1999 - 12:50:26 MST
Lee Daniel Crocker, <lcrocker@mercury.colossus.net>, writes:
> What methods do states use to restrain the initiation of force by
> the state, and what backs them up if those methods fail? I can think
> of only two such means: jury nullification and armed rebellion (I do
> not include elections or recall, because they are more likely to
> support the majority's use of violence than to restrain it). Do you
> think "complex market mechanisms" are less stable or in some other
> way inferior to those methods?
I don't think either of these two examples, jury nullification and
armed rebellion, have traditionally been used to restrain the initiation
of force. Both of these approaches have often been used to further the
use of force by the majority against the minority.
Jury nullification was primarily used in the Old South to make sure that
white defendants were acquitted of crimes against blacks (lynchings,
beatings, robbery, etc.). And of course the biggest armed rebellion
the U.S. has seen was its Civil War, which was largely motiviated by
the South's wish to continue to allow the whites to enslave the blacks.
Hal
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