It seems to me that a big issue with hate crimes is that in the past, they were actually seen as less serious than normal crimes. Could hate crime laws be viewed as a sort of legal affirmative action, to try to balance out an assumed tendency for people commiting hate crimes to recieve lower sentences?
A Hate crime is the only instance, of which I am aware, that the government uses only motivation to determine the severity of the crime. In virtually all other laws motivation is irrelevant, but in Hate crimes it suddenly matters. Why? If I rob a bank to get money to help my sick child I am just as guilty of armed robbery as if I stole the money to buy coke. If I kill someone because I like to eat people I am just as guilty as if I did it because they were sleeping with my wife. The law makes no distinction between motivations for crime except in the case of Hate crimes.
Thus far I have seen nothing to actually justify Hate crime legislation other than politicians looking for a 'civil rights feather' to put in their cap.
We take motive into account as an aggravating factor in pretty much every crime. If you're stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family because you lost your job, you're not going to be given as harsh of a sentence as if you steal a loaf of bread to sell because you wanted a little extra cash to buy those spinnaz.
All hate crime legislation does is codify that, and allow for harsher sentencing for things which deserve harsher sentences than the law would otherwise allow (like, as was already mentioned, cross-burning).
I meant something more along the lines of a hardcore utilitarian argument as a way of sidestepping the question of morality - something along the lines of Devlin's argument that social cohesion is more important than the moral "correctness" of laws - but I understand what you're getting at.
Yeah--I'm not a fan of that style of argument. In some sense, it has its heart in the right place. Regardless, it's pretty confused on some core concepts.
In what sense? I mean, I'm not a fan of it either, but I only just started Jurisprudence this semester, and I'm still kind of feeling my way through it.
It betrays a conceptual confusion to argue both that law n is morally correct and that we shouldn't implement law n. If it's morally correct then we should implement it, and if we shouldn't implement it then it's not morally correct. Biconditional, baby.
Really, his argument would make more sense if he argued that such-and-such traditional considerations should take a back seat to social cohesion when deciding the laws. However, then he wouldn't be arguing outside of or above moral considerations, he would just be arguing that social cohesion is the trump moral concern. His argument would then boil down to the much less flashy: "I think the good laws are the ones the promote social cohesion, and we should pursue that," instead of "It doesn't matter which laws are good--social cohesion is above morality!"
Could you also argue that since all laws promote social cohesion to one degree or another, Devlin's model lacks any useful application?
I meant something more along the lines of a hardcore utilitarian argument as a way of sidestepping the question of morality - something along the lines of Devlin's argument that social cohesion is more important than the moral "correctness" of laws - but I understand what you're getting at.
Yeah--I'm not a fan of that style of argument. In some sense, it has its heart in the right place. Regardless, it's pretty confused on some core concepts.
In what sense? I mean, I'm not a fan of it either, but I only just started Jurisprudence this semester, and I'm still kind of feeling my way through it.
It betrays a conceptual confusion to argue both that law n is morally correct and that we shouldn't implement law n. If it's morally correct then we should implement it, and if we shouldn't implement it then it's not morally correct. Biconditional, baby.
Really, his argument would make more sense if he argued that such-and-such traditional considerations should take a back seat to social cohesion when deciding the laws. However, then he wouldn't be arguing outside of or above moral considerations, he would just be arguing that social cohesion is the trump moral concern. His argument would then boil down to the much less flashy: "I think the good laws are the ones the promote social cohesion, and we should pursue that," instead of "It doesn't matter which laws are good--social cohesion is above morality!"
Could you also argue that since all laws promote social cohesion to one degree or another, Devlin's model lacks any useful application?
I think the point is that a good law is not just belief, but belief backed with fact. I had discussed this in the late, unlamented belief thead - while if you ask someone why we have freedom of speech you'll usually get the response "because freedom of speech is good", that is also backed up with evidence that allowing for the freedom of speech acts as a check against the government.
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All hate crime legislation does is codify that, and allow for harsher sentencing for things which deserve harsher sentences than the law would otherwise allow (like, as was already mentioned, cross-burning).
Could you also argue that since all laws promote social cohesion to one degree or another, Devlin's model lacks any useful application?
I think the point is that a good law is not just belief, but belief backed with fact. I had discussed this in the late, unlamented belief thead - while if you ask someone why we have freedom of speech you'll usually get the response "because freedom of speech is good", that is also backed up with evidence that allowing for the freedom of speech acts as a check against the government.