Are Criminal Court Judges the Criminals?

Sometimes it is hard to escape the impression that criminal court judges are the criminals in some cases. Specifically, I am referring to those judges who are willing to enforce any law, no matter their personal judgment of its validity. Sadly this seems to be all of those who rule over courtrooms.

Now, it is not an easy matter to say when a judge is in agreement with the law if he doesn't state his beliefs openly. It is also difficult to say just how far a human should go to enforce laws that are deemed by those humans to be unjust. Is it ever okay? Or is it only when you enforce laws in ways that truly trample the rights of the defendant that you have committed a crime against another human?

Of course, all of this is based on a premise that you may not share, which is the idea that "crime" is something to be understood beyond law. At the extremes I am pretty sure you agree. It IS a crime to kill people merely because of their race, for example, even if the law of the land makes it legal. I would also argue that it is a crime to jail a man for speaking his mind, but as we get into many areas we would certainly disagree on what the law can "make right."

But let's get to specific examples. Drinking a beer does not directly harm anyone. It does not violate another person's rights. Even if we do not like to see a man drinking, we would probably feel that we were violating his rights if, just because of our dislike for drinking, we put him in a cage for years to "punish" him.

Now, we come to an interesting question about right and wrong and Democracy. If forcibly taking away this man's freedom and locking him in a cage for years because of our preferences is a violation of his rights, how does it become less of a violation when a government does it? A Democratically elected government, after all, is just a group of employees hired by those who vote for them. Can we vote away rights? Can we justify actions merely by majority agreement? I don't think so. I don;t think that even if 90% of people were for racist laws, for example, that the actions they produce become less wrong because of consensus.

So if beer is made illegal, those who enforce such a law become violators of the rights of individuals. But what about marijuana? Most serious scientists and and health workers would acknowledge that it is demonstrably safer than alcohol, yet it is illegal. Is it really a crime for a man to choose what he puts into his body when he is hurting no one else? (And if the crime is in hurting himself - an interesting precedent - wouldn't we have to prove that he has harmed himself to convict him?)

Here is where we get to criminal court judges and the lines they must sometimes cross. As of 2010, almost half of the people in the United States favor decriminalizing marijuana. Based on that we can probably assume that some judges are also in favor of this change. Maybe not half, but some think there is nothing wrong with a free person choosing to ingest this plant.

Now, how many times have you heard of a judge who refuses to lock a person in jail because the person has done nothing wrong by smoking or eating the marijuana plant? If it happens it is rare, to say the least. This suggests that there are judges out there who know in their hearts that there is no crime here, yet are willing to take away a person's freedom nonetheless. To me, locking a person up in a cage for years is a pretty serious crime against human rights.

Some might argue that the judges who think the law is proper are not knowingly committing a crime. Perhaps. But then there are other laws that make crimes of activities which have no victim, and it seems likely that many judges disagree with some of these laws, yet punish defendants even though they have by their own judgment done nothing wrong.

And for those Judges who would argue that whether or not a law should exist, that there is some crime in breaking it, all I can say is just wait. There will be another Hitler for you to follow someday.