From: "Gabriel Ash" <Gabriel.Ash.1-AT-nd.edu>
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1998 12:25:57 +0000
Subject: Re: revenge / justice & Rule of Law


On Mon, 16 Nov 1998 01:53:57 PST, Jon Rubin wrote:

>Nietzsche's point is that once people lose their stomach but not their 
>taste for blood they invent Justice. 

Also sprach Nietzsche, but he also said that those who worship his statue
should beware lest it burry them when it comes crushing. 
Apropos his statement,  granted that it does catch some of the contradictions 
of the state sponsored justice system, isn't it a bit outre', as an acount for justice as such?   

And if all those wanting Pinochet's blood are only driven by vengeance, 
what's wrong with that? What is at stake in making the desire for vengeance  
illegitimate if not the state's legal machine in its beaurocratic extreme, i.e., as a system
of law that has no goals (and hence no place from which to judge it) outside itself? 


As for the rule of law, if Pinochet is indicted, the result is not clear to me:  it can be portrayed as 
a victory for the rule of law based on an international idea. but in practice it is alse a  blow to the rule of law 
in its present parameters. In practice, the rule of law referes to the principle of sovereignty, and therefore
trying a head of states for the way he went about doing his business as head of state
undermines the principles of sovereignty on which the rule of law rests. Since European 
courts are not an international supreme court, they actually assert the right to judge not just
Pinochet, but a whole political-legal machine, without having a position of strictly legal authority
to do that. (they may claim moral authority, but that is preciesly where they go beyond the rule of law.)
So the whole issue is ambiguous, and this isn't a bad thing.  

>Clearly Pinochet never suffered from such qualms.
>Lock him up and throw away the key - worry about whether it was revenge 
>or justice or symbolically upholding the rule of law later.

This is prime rhetoric. Unfortunately, the goal of rhetoric (was?) is to affect action. And 
I don't really see what action is being called--since I hold no keys 
to no dungeon. 




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Gabriel Ash
Notre-Dame
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