The New Law 3

Seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that the entire natural law can be compressed into a single, simple reciprocity principle so that no one can ever plead ignorance as an excuse for violating it: If you are about to do something, imagine yourself on the receiving end; if you would blame the other person for doing it to you, you are legally and morally forbidden from doing it. This is a "sanity check" designed to strip away the capricious nature of arbitrary rulers.

We have mentioned this principle before, for example in The New Logic.

The modern system has abandoned the law, replacing equal protection with institutional immunity, so you see law enforcement speeding, running red lights, or carrying restricted weapons, termed "Legal Positivism," wherein the state has written specific exemptions into its own statutory codes that legalize actions for its agents while criminalizing the exact same behavior for the public.

In almost every state vehicle code, police officers are granted statutory immunity from speed limits and traffic signals. While the law claims this applies only to "emergency operations," the administrative apparatus rarely audits them, creating a culture in which officers routinely bypass the rules for personal convenience. In states with highly restrictive gun laws, the statutes almost always include a carve-out exempting current and retired law enforcement. This directly violates the natural reciprocity principle. If a tool is deemed too dangerous for a peaceful citizen to use for self-defense, it is logically too dangerous for a state agent to carry in the exact same space.

Double Standard Judicial Doctrine

The courts have built a legal wall to protect these double standards from ever being challenged by the public under the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.

1. Qualified Immunity (The Civil Shield): The 1967 Supreme Court case, Pierson v. Ray (386 U.S. 547), started the ball rolling for this concept, which protects police officers from being sued in civil court when they violate a citizen's rights. To beat qualified immunity, a citizen cannot simply prove the cop did something wrong; they must find an identical prior court case in the exact same jurisdiction where a cop was convicted for the exact same action. If no identical case exists, the cop is free of liability.
2. The "No Duty to Protect" Doctrine: In the landmark 2005 case (Castle Rock v. Gonzales), the Supreme Court ruled that the police do not actually have a constitutional duty to protect any individual citizen from harm. This is a reasonable finding, since the Constitution does not impose such a duty, and imposing one would likely cause chaos in the courts. However, it does mean we need to reexamine and reassess the role of police.
3. Instead of qualified immunity, criminal trials against police officers are governed by state use-of-force statutes and the Supreme Court precedent set in Graham v. Connor (1989). Under Graham, an officer's use of force is judged by whether it was "objectively reasonable" based on the facts and circumstances known to the officer at that exact moment, where the law explicitly requires juries to view the situation from the perspective of an officer making a split-second decision in a tense, chaotic environment, rather than with 20/20 hindsight. This standard gives law enforcement immense benefit of the doubt in a criminal trial.

The fallout of this is that the state has no legal obligation to protect you, yet you face criminal charges if you carry the tools to protect yourself. If a state agent harms you, the courts provide them with a liability shield, creating a separate class that is legally allowed to trespass against the natural rights of others without reciprocity. This ceases to be a system of "law," and becomes a system of raw administrative compliance backed by force, a tyranny.

We need to be sensible, not dictatorial. The U.S. has common law, then as soon as it seemed inconvenient, trashed it! The Commonwealth countries pay lip service to common law, but can override it at a whim by passing a contrary "law."

In most other countries, it's a free-for-all where they don't even seem to have an enlightened or civilized view on rights and the law, yet those countries often have more real freedom than in the U.S., which is number one worldwide for incarceration, with ~1.8 to 1.9 million people currently locked up across federal and state prisons, local jails, juvenile facilities, and immigration detention.

In the common law countries, who is going to say we are not under common law? It would be very awkward for any politician.

They're in a conundrum. "Are we in a free country?" you ask the government. "Of course we are!" is the inevitable reply.

But when it comes down to the hard truth, there is no real freedom, and they don't even want to keep up the pretext.

Obviously, something to be considered when devising our new law principles.

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