Summary Justice Takes Over

Speaking of justice, we all know that our American concept of same involves granting the accused the due process of law. We have a visceral dislike of summary justice and of retaliatory justice-- to say nothing of lynchings. And we believe fervently in forgiveness-- we are strongly opposed to the concept of an unforgivable sin-- unless, to quote the New Testament-- it involves blaspheming the Holy Ghost. For those who are not very well versed in theology, Augustine interpreted it to mean that the only unforgivable sin was impenitence.

Anyway, we live in a time when all of that has been turned to rubble. Summary justice, destroying careers, lives and families, declaring the use of the wrong language to be an unforgivable sin-- these are the hallmarks of today’s Black Lives Matter protests. The radical left in this country has no use for due process of law-- certainly not when it comes to tearing down statues, fire bombing stores, assaulting police officers...regardless of the law. And those who are accused of thought crimes have no chance to defend themselves. 

Due process of law involves rational judgment and the rights to confront one’s accuser. It also involves being judged by a jury of one’s peers.

As noted, no one cares about that any more, a distinguished product of the Anglo-Saxon judicial system. Our radical left, lacking in the rational capacity or the temperament to engage in an unbiased determination of guilty or not guilty, has resorted to summary judgment.

They rationalize their position by saying that once upon a time blacks were subjected to summary judgment, even to the point of being lynched. They are simply returning the disfavor, by the law of the talion: an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They would have done better to go back to the Bible where it says not to get even, but to do unto others as one would have others do unto you. This is to be found in the book of Leviticus and in the Gospels.

Anyway, where did our social justice warriors get the idea that we should dispense with the due process of law and proceed to retaliatory justice. You guessed it: they got it from the Obama Department of Education. By the use of administrative edict colleges and universities were told by the Obama administration that they were no longer to grant due process of law to any man accused of sexual assault. Presumably it would empower women and allow them to destroy men's lives on their say-so. 

The New York Times reports on the Obama rule, recently overturned by the Trump Education department (via Maggie’s Farm):

The Obama administration directives created a system centered on the person making the complaint. They discouraged universities from giving the accused the right to question accusers or to learn the identity of witnesses. In some cases, the accused could not see the full evidence against them. The rules defined sexual harassment broadly as “any unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature.”

Perhaps most controversially, Obama officials encouraged universities to appoint a single official who acted as detective, prosecutor, judge and jury. And they set a lower bar to determine guilt, changing from “clear and convincing” to “more likely than not,” known colloquially in legal circles as the “50 percent plus a feather” test.

Now, it has all been changed by Betsy DeVos. The Times continues:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos fired a shot last month in the nation’s culture wars, overhauling how colleges handle investigations of sexual assault and ending what she called Obama-era “kangaroo courts” on campus.

The new Education Department rules give more protections to the accused, primarily young men who face discipline or expulsion as a result of allegations of sexual misconduct.

As you may know, leftist advocate groups were horrified to see malevolent creatures like toxic males granted the right to due process of law.

The move set off a liberal uproar, denounced by unions representing teachers and college professors, by the National Organization for Women and by an array of Democratic senators. The Trump rules, they said, constitute a radical rollback of protections for victims who seek justice after sexual assaults.

And yet, unsurprisingly, a band of intrepid feminist legal scholars applauded the DeVos initiative. I say, unsurprisingly, because legal scholars have long objected to the Obama administration rules and have long testified in favor of the men who were unjustly convicted by said rules.

… an influential group of feminist legal scholars … applauded the administration for repairing what they viewed as unconscionable breaches in the rights of the accused.

“The new system is vastly better and fairer,” said Prof. Janet Halley, who specializes in gender and sexuality at Harvard Law School. “The fact that we’re getting good things from the Trump administration is confusing, but isn’t it better than an unbroken avalanche of bad things?”

Coming from law professors, it’s good news indeed. Unfortunately, those who have no use for the rule of law or the due process of law are now marching through American cities and through the American media meting out retaliatory and summary justice.

Now we know that such people ever had any use for democratic institutions.