[HPforGrownups] Re: WW law

[Alexander]

No: HPFGUIDX 71439

Greetings!

Mark D. wrote:

>> The whole hearing left a bad taste in my mouth. Are you
>> sating that in the UK the judge can change the time of a
>> hearing w/o notifying the accused? The accused does not
>> have the right to counsel and the judge could decide
>> against him by merely calling him a liar? Fudge's
>> administration seems full of favoritism, descrimination,
>> and outright bribery. Are there no checks and balences
>> against a MoM from outright trading favors for gold? (See
>> Lucius Malfoy)

  WW court system is the result of First Voldemort War, so
it should be compared not with American Civil Courts, but
with military tribunals of countries engaged in deadly wars.
Naturally, when the same system carries on into peaceful
times, the results may be, well, strange, from the point of
view of modern American. :)

  Then there's the classic logic of totalitarian regimes:
"if you have been brought to court, then you are probably
guilty, because if you weren't guilty, why would you be
brought to court in the first place?". Again, it may sound
as complete rabies for modern American, but as an ex-Soviet
I can assure you that this is how Soviet criminal courts
worked...

And then Przemyslaw Plaskowicki replied:

PP> Harry was notified -- an owl was sent but they left
PP> before it arrived. That was just a 'creative' way of
PP> using legal procedures ;-) And _technically_ it was a
PP> disciplinary hearing not a felony case. I belive, that
PP> every law, even the one most fair, can be used to
PP> achieve unfair results.

  I will add two sayings that were born in Soviet times:

  "If there's a man, there's a law against him."
  "If you are not in jail, it's not your achievement - it's
   our oversight."

  Yep, that's how Soviet courts worked. And that's how WW
court system works. This is a system optimized not for
justice, but for time-efficience.

Though Mark D. still had something else to say:

>> I realize that according to the Potterverse we American
>> are not considered smart enough to figure out what a
>> Philosophers Stone is, but I feel our government makes a
>> little more sense.

  Install modern American law and court system into WW of
the Potterverse, and the WW will crumble in a year and will
fall to Voldemort. Different times create different needs.
WW has experienced the need for a time-efficient court
system in the past, and it will have need for it now.

  It is war.

Sincerely yours,
Alexander Lomski,
Gryffindor/Slytherin crossbreed,
always happy to throw weird ideas into community.

  "Survival first, morals later." (Hester)