zlacker

>>YeGobl+(OP)
Powerful article. What strikes me as a layman (non-lawyer, non-law enforcement), is how prevalent these methods of forensic science have become, without any solid scientific basis backing them up - such as peer reviewed studies with quantifiable evidence. You'd think that in order for the state to take the life of a human being, you'd need to prove it using means that are more thoroughly vetted than "[one doctor] who in 1971 suggested the cause might be violent shaking" (emphasis mine).

>>GlumWo+lb
IMHO our system of law cares more about precedent than almost anything else. The first case addressing a situation sets the bar, which is backwards. The most important decisions are made when we, collectively, know least about the topic at hand.

>>primer+sc
Common law is only one basis of law and it's almost exclusively an English thing. In England, alternative bases of law were associated with horrific abuses of power. In response the Anglosphere has adopted a sort of extreme legal conservatism: anything other than inviolable natural rights decided on the basis of "we've always done it this way" is not freedom, but privilege[0]. Every acquittal binds the law, ideally forever. This is the same form of law that gives us things like "human rights are what you afford your worst enemy", which is contradictory[1], but sounds like a really strong bulwark against tyranny.

Outside of the Anglosphere judges are free to ignore precedent, which they call "jurisprudence". This is a tradeoff: you get justice "in the moment" in exchange for less future surety about how the legal system will react. The legal system might just decide that you doing the exact same thing someone else did and got away with is now illegal.

My personal opinion is that any basis of law can be used for tyranny, and that common law and inviolable rights are less protective than we have been propagandized to think. Even common law legal systems occasionally overturn precedent if they feel like it - remember when anti-abortion laws were a violation of the 4th Amendment until they weren't?

[0] This even extends to the word "franchise", which means "French-ize", as in to be given freedoms by being turned into a Frenchman

[1] What if your enemy seeks to take away your rights?