I
have read the Blanket with pleasure for nearly
a year now and thank you for the stimulating, varied
and committed voices you bring to my attention.
I
refer to N. Corey's bewildering article on the civil
cases under way or proposed concerning various acts
of violence. He appears to equate the rights of
individuals to go to law with their grievances as
a form of state control. I would contest this.
There
is an interesting link with an article in this week's
Times Literary Supplement; a review by Thomas Nagel
of collected lectures and writings by the American
Feminist academic Catherine A Mckinnon. Nagel includes
the following quote from Mackinnon in his review.
"In
societies governed by the rule of law, law is typically
a status quo instrument; it does not usually guarantee
rights that society is predicated on denying."
Further
into the review he summarises Mackinnon's response
to this quandrary.
"...the
means of attack (against unjust weighting of law
in favour of status quo) should be not the criminal
law, whose enforcement is too easily neglected by
male authorities when it threatens male domination,
but the civil law, which pernits injured women and
their lawyers to initiate action and claim redress."
In
short, the civil law can represent the interests
of the least powerful when the political forces
which prejudice criminal law (including the unrestrained
power of revolutionary forces) fail them. This seems
a particularly marked issue in a state which has
denied the right to fair public trial before a jury
of one's peers in recent
history, where the police force remains legitmately
regarded as partial and constrained and where forces
of resistance to the state's authority often behave
as though they are subject to no agreed legal restraint.
I
see no witch hunts. I see cover ups and attempts
to bring what is hidden into the public light. I
wish the plaintiffs in these cases well and would
wish for a wider use of peoples' law against the
powers of the state and the state's organised antagonists.
Citations:
Corey N.: Civil Case/Witch
Hunt
Nagel
Thomas: "Legal Violations," The Times
Literary Supplement, May 20 2005, reviewing
Mackinnon Catherine A.: Women's Lives, Men's
Laws, Harvard University Press, ISBN 0674015401
