Dutch beach volleyball player Steven van de Velde, who served time in prison after he was convicted of raping a 12-year-old girl, won his second match at the Paris Olympics and received an even harsher reaction from the crowd on Wednesday than for his first match.

  • Flying Squid
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    110 months ago

    I think you underestimate how many laws you need to keep a nation functional.

    Even Hammurabi had 282 written laws and his was a ‘whatever the king says is illegal is illegal’ empire.

    You need laws to cover everything from murder to product safety to child custody after divorce. And none of those are able to solved simply every time because many cases have a lot of nuance.

    On top of that, as I said, you need a lot of rules covering courtroom procedures. Expecting a random citizen to understand things like when something can be presented as evidence and what sort of questions a witness can be asked is expecting too much of them.

      • Flying Squid
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        110 months ago

        A system of laws has nothing to do with capitalism. Pre-capitalist nations had laws, so did (and do) communist nations. Laws simply keep everything operating smoothly. And if you have an entity the size of a nation, you’ll need a lot of laws to cover the many issues regarding the many people in that nation. That has nothing to do with the economic system or the form of government.

          • Flying Squid
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            110 months ago

            Okay, well then if laws exist, in your scenario, everyone would have to be equally familiar with them.

              • Flying Squid
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                110 months ago

                First of all, that also has nothing to do with people needing to know the entirety of a system of laws if they are expected to be randomly selected to adjudicate.

                Secondly, when are you going to take it into your own hands?

                  • Flying Squid
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                    110 months ago

                    A fair and democratic process requires a whole bunch of laws to ensure that process is, in fact, fair and democratic, so…