• ArcticLynx@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    the law is determined by the will of the people […] so yeah criminality is subject to opinion

    this doesn’t matter. a judge only cares about somebody’s actions and what the law says about these actions. jurisprudence isn’t democracy. if the majority of people thinks that someone is guilty it doesn’t matter. what matters is if they violated laws and that can only be evaluated by a professional. so if the majority of people thinks that Bush for example is a war criminal it doesn’t matter if he didn’t violate any laws. of course this goes the other way around too: if 99% of people think that he isn’t a criminal, but he violated laws, he is guilty. the majority of people can’t decide whether someone is guilty or not.

    of course the majority of people votes the government which passes laws to it’s voter’s liking, so there’s a big intersection between existing laws and the will of the many. but ultimately the judge doesn’t care about all of this. for them it’s simply “does action violate law?”. outside of this question nothing matters.