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đŸȘ” The Threshold

Modern atrocity operates inside the law rather than through its suspension.

Properties2
tagsja-picks, contrarian_or_surprising, singleton, xref, category/contrarian-or-surprising
aliases@chamayou_theory_2013, loc. 680

4 min read

Modern atrocity operates inside the law rather than through its suspension.

Evidence

What is most surprising is that this could still come as a surprise. The greatest crime lies not in an open flouting of the law but in the recesses of its sovereign application. This ordinary military atrocity lies well within the law, and except under the most imperative conditions, it does not have to emerge. Most of the time it does not need to. Contemporary forms of atrocity are hugely legalistic. They are the rule rather than the exception, not so much because the law has been suspended, but rather because it has been spelled out in accordance with the interests involved to the point where it capitulates with scant resistance. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 680 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

First: the escalation evidence. Gershoff’s meta-analytic finding that corporal punishment is associated with physical abuse at an effect size of d = +0.69 is not a statistical curiosity. It is a large effect in a field where effects of 0.20 are published and discussed as meaningful. It means that the practice defenders call “discipline” is itself a risk factor for the thing everyone agrees is harmful. The most common argument for the legal line — that it permits the harmless and prohibits the dangerous — collapses if the “harmless” practice is a demonstrated pathway to the dangerous one. The line is supposed to prevent abuse. The evidence suggests it facilitates it. — , The Rod and the Child, 6685 (#expands, via linked claim)

The specific mechanism was proposed in a 1973 report by the government’s Children’s Rights Commission — BarnrĂ€ttsutredningen — which argued that the Parenthood and Guardianship Code was the right instrument. A criminal prohibition would criminalize parents and overwhelm the courts with cases prosecutors could not practicably pursue. But amending the civil code — adding language to the statute that already defined parental responsibilities — would send a cultural signal without creating a new criminal category. 
 The commission’s key insight was that law shapes norms even when it does not generate prosecutions. The child labor prohibitions of the early twentieth century had not primarily worked by prosecuting parents who sent children to factories; they had worked by making the practice publicly unacceptable. A generation grew up understanding factory work as a wrong done to children. The same mechanism, the commission argued, might apply to hitting. — , The Rod and the Child, 7224 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

  • XREF: connects to: Contemporary wartime atrocity is legalistic, achieved through the law’s own application.; Atrocity now operates within the law through its spelled-out specifications — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 680; Law changes norms even when it never produces prosecutions — , The Rod and the Child: A Global History
, 7224 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

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