[HPforGrownups] HP and the democratic equilibrium(Re: Umbridge, brooms and DEs)

Shaun Hately drednort at alphalink.com.au
Mon Dec 15 22:44:36 UTC 2003


No: HPFGUIDX 87140

On 15 Dec 2003 at 15:06, Ali wrote:

> It is not dishonest if Umbridge had the legal authority to do it. 
> Certainly, British pupils would expect their teachers to confiscate 
> property that they owned at school. Nor has Umbridge appropriated 
> the broom for herself. She has stopped Harry from using it though.

This is a report of part of something I posted on OT - it seems 
other people think it's ontopic here, so I'll stick it in here.

First of all, I'm in Australia, just for the record - which also 
does to a great extent share the Common Law basis of British law.  

Now - we know Wizarding Law is not identical to British Law 
(English or Scottish) though we don't know the precise differences.  

But given that the Wizarding World was does seem to have had rather 
close contact with mainstream Britain prior to around 1692 - well, 
I think we can assume some similarities.  

But there are important differences - for example, at Hogwarts, it 
seems to be *legal* for students to be beaten with horsewhips - 
while corporal punishment was still legal in British independent 
schools at the time the Harry Potter books are set, that would 
legally have gone too far.  

But anyway - confiscation.

I *really* can't see any reason why teachers at Hogwarts wouldn't 
be allowed to confiscate things like broomsticks - either legally 
or socially.  

In fact I would say that for most students at Hogwarts, this 
ability on the part of teachers would seem virtually like a fact of 
life - not something you question, even if you resented it.  

I base that on two things.

(1) I do have some understanding of how laws work in this 
area.

(2) I experienced life in a British style boarding school in the 
late 1980s/early 1990s - so I think I have a reasonable grasp on 
the likely attitudes have in such schools.  

A lot of people, I've noticed don't seem to understand that while 
Hogwarts is certainly a very unusual school in many ways, in a lot 
of ways, it's a fairly typical British boarding school with fairly 
typical British boarding school attitudes (in fact, if you want to 
get technical, JKR seems to have drawn on the British Boarding 
School story tradition - from the late 19th Century onwards, the 
'Boarding School Story' has been a staple in British children's 
literature. It is a *massive* genre of hundreds - probably 
thousands - of books, which millions of children have read over the 
years - and it has its own rules and conventions and the Harry 
Potter books follow these pretty well.)  

I don't want to go into massive analysis of this point - but I 
quite often see threads in various Harry Potter forums from people 
who obviously have a limited understanding of the tradition the 
books are set within in. For example, Americans who can't 
understand why there are no cheerleaders at Hogwarts, or who refer 
to Graduation etc - just cultural differences.  

I grew up reading British school stories - so I'm very familiar 
with those traditions. I also attended a very exclusive British- 
style school which reinforced a lot of them. So when I look at the 
HP books, I think I see things some people don't.  

And with regards to confiscation - while students might certainly 
resent it, I doubt many would think that the teacher really had no 
right to do it.  

And purely legalistically, I would think she probably did.

Common Law is the key here - the doctrine of in loco parentis 
(where a teacher, or any other adult in authority, is actually able 
to act 'in place of the parent') is a Common Law principle and I 
would expect it is one that does apply at Hogwarts. In confiscating 
property for a student at Hogwarts, a teacher is not acting as a 
law enforcement officer - they are acting as a parent. A parent 
does have the right to take something off a child - so too does a 
teacher acting in loco parentis - and in a boarding school, where 
children seem to have fairly limited contact with their children 
(and that is true of Hogwarts), in loco parentis is likely to be a 
very real principle.  

Taking a child's property and selling it - that would almost 
certainly be theft. Taking a child's property to temporarily (even 
for a fairly long period) deprive them of it as a punishment 
wouldn't even come close.  

While bikes are almost certainly not as valuable as Harry's broom - 
well, at my school, if a bike owning boarder misbehaved, it wasn't 
that uncommon for their bike to be locked away for a few weeks or 
even a term. And while a particular case might be viewed with 
resentment, anger, or a perception that that particular case was 
unfair, I don't think the idea that the teacher didn't have the 
*right* to do it, would have occurred to most of us. Of course they 
had the right. They were a teacher. Some teachers abused their 
rights, sure - but the right was there and seemed almost like a 
force of nature.  

I honestly think many Hogwarts students would see it precisely the 
same way.  



Yours Without Wax, Dreadnought
Shaun Hately | www.alphalink.com.au/~drednort/thelab.html
(ISTJ)       | drednort at alphalink.com.au | ICQ: 6898200 
"You know the very powerful and the very stupid have one
thing in common. They don't alter their views to fit the 
facts. They alter the facts to fit the views. Which can be 
uncomfortable if you happen to be one of the facts that 
need altering." The Doctor - Doctor Who: The Face of Evil
Where am I: Frankston, Victoria, Australia


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