When Laws Are Structurally Unjust

In Tucson for a few days, where passage of a new law by the AZ legislature, a law feared by many to glaringly point in the direction of  increased discrimination, can not escape my attention.

When a law violates common sense, the result can be catastrophic: harm/injustice rather than protection/justice to people.  Is common sense that uncommon? Yes, if we believe Jefferson who wrote: "No race of kings has ever presented above one man of common sense in twenty generations."


Take something that I just learned reading Louise Eldrich's The Round House, a great novel, which won the 2012 National Book Award for Fiction.

This book can be and is about many themes: adolescence, integrity, conscience, identity and its complex threads, minority identity, the ties that bind us. It's also about the law. About a law which constrains the ability prosecute non-native americans (or specifically without ties to the native americans) who have committed crimes on native-american reservations. There have been steps in the right direction allowing for more punishment of non-native americans, in particular the 2010 Tribal and Law and Order Act or TLOA signed by President Obama, but much room for improvement remains.

What happens when common sense, this most important ingredient which should be but is not in fact "common", is violated. What happens when laws are structurally unjust?

It is ugly.

It is estimated that native american women are raped at alarmingly high rates (a third of all native american women, which is about 10 times the average rate for US women). The murder rate for native american women is also much higher than the murder rate for other women. Native American women are also the most common victims of domestic violence.  Not all of this burden is caused by non-native american men but a large part is, which can be directly attributed to non-sensible laws: the rapes of native american women are largely committed by non native american men.  So, a law restricting the prosecution and punishment of criminals facilitates the commission of crimes and, even if you don't agree with that statement, certainly does ensure that many of these crimes are unpunished (common sense!). In fact since passage of the TLOA prosecutions are up, but the damage from the initial bad legistlation is far from being erased by that one step in the right direction.

So, a very beautiful but very sad day in Arizona,

Till Later,

Anne