Re: SF Politics and Super Tuesday

Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
news:m2lk5wpv9t.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 

> "Michael S. Schiffer" <mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

>> Peter Bruells <usernet@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in
>> news:m2ir10rgph.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
 
>>>> A common law system allows and requires judges to make
>>>> reasonable interpretations and interpolations where the
>>>> statutes are vague or ambiguous.  Given the choice between
>>>> "Superman is legally a non- person or an animal" and
>>>> "Kryptonians are legal persons", I'd predict most judges
>>>> would choose the latter.  And if he's a person, then the law
>>>> applies to him as much as it does the purest H. sapiens.

>>> So do they apply to the enslaved gorillas in DC-US zoos? 
>>> After all, they a hardly different from the obvisously
>>> intelligent people of Gorilla City. :-)

>> :-)  If one of them demonstrated he could understand an oath
>> :and 
>> generally behave as a citizen, I'd guess he'd have a case.  

> Why? Many of them were born in the United States and unless I'm
> very mistaken even the most severly mentaliy handicapped humans
> born in America are citizens by default.

Because the law is a mishmash of rules and standards, not a 
complete, consistent system.  :-)  There are various gray areas wrt 
"alive", "person", etc., and what direction they're approached from 
will have an effect on what conclusion will be reached.  Starting 
from an unambiguous case (mentally and physically healthy adult, 
able to speak and read the local language and answer questions 
coherently and reasonably, etc.), take away or change various 
conditions, and eventually you'll reach a point that people start 
to disagree quite a bit.  (How much brain damage before you're not 
talking about a human?  How far back in development do you go?  
Etc.)  Go further beyond it, and they'll start agreeing again.  (No 
one argues about an unambiguous corpse; no one claims that an 
unfertilized egg is a person, etc.)

The gray area gets lines drawn within it by judicial decision and 
legislation as the issue comes up-- often somewhat different lines 
from state to state or circuit to circuit, contingent on the 
prevailing beliefs and the way the issue is approached.  The 
existence of nonintelligent gorillas almost certainly doesn't 
prevent the law from recognizing the existence of intelligent 
gorillas as people (unless there's some very broad precedent that 
I'm unaware of).  But the job of persuading the court would 
probably be somewhat harder than it would be for the human-to-
casual-observation Superman.  (Though if Superman had already 
established a precedent, they might find it easier, and conversely 
a previous ruling established for intelligent animals might create 
more hoops for Superman to jump through.)

Now, if some prior case established e.g., a DNA standard for 
humanness-- which could happen if some case had, for example, had 
to stop someone from using an army of androids to swing a local 
election-- that might cause Superman a problem.  But there are too 
many people with that issue in the DCU for that to stand 
unmodified-- depriving Superman, but clear US citizens with public 
careers like Firestorm, Captain Atom, etc. of their legal rights 
would quickly reach the Supreme Court and/or Congress if it 
happened in the first place.

>         ....
 
>> Though it might be that intelligent members of what look like
>> ordinary animal species would present the biggest challenge.  
 
> Poor Krypto!

Life has never been fair to Krypto.  (Though Superman gave him more 
autonomy than he did Supergirl, early on.)

Mike

-- 
Michael S. Schiffer, LHN, FCS
mschiffe@[EMAIL PROTECTED]