Parallel legal systems
OP - March 23, 2015, 09:30 PM
https://lawyerssecularsociety.wordpress.com/2015/03/23/the-insurmountable-problems-of-parallel-legal-systems/MARCH 23, 2015 BY LAWSECSOC
The insurmountable problems of parallel legal systems
By LSS member Daniel Anderson
The attempts to establish parallel legal systems can in fact be seen as a project to transfer legal rights away from people and to groups instead.
Certain groups, usually based on a culture or religion, are deemed by proponents of parallel legal systems as worthy of having their own separate legal rights, and so parallel legal systems are consequently proposed to make this a reality.
But this attempt to transfer legal rights to groups causes problems that the advocates of parallel legal systems can only fail to address. Below are some of these problems.
Problem: not all people within the group will actually be part of the group
Some people may decide not to be part of a group by choice. Some people may be unwilling to be part of a group due to that group being perceived as having a marginalised status within society. Furthermore, some people may decide to voluntarily leave a group. And some people may be forced out of a group due to being declared ‘heretics’.
What happens to all these people if legal rights are to be transferred to the group that they supposedly belong to? The advocates of parallel legal systems are silent on this point.
Problem: not all people within a group think the same way
Advocates of parallel legal systems seem blind to the reality of human individuality. Put another way, they seem unable to comprehend the simple fact that not everyone within a group will think exactly the same about everything as other individuals within that group.
Therefore, who gets to decide which thoughts within the group take precedence over others when granting that group legal rights? Unfortunately, we get no answers from the advocates of parallel legal systems.
Problem: people within groups can cause harm to each other too
This is an ugly fact, and it is one which proponents of parallel legal systems often hurriedly gloss over. This observation is perhaps best encapsulated by the term “minority within a minority”. And such scenarios inevitably crop up because the rights of minorities within the group end up being sacrificed to the deemed needs of the collective whole.
.......
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.
A.A. Milne,
"We cannot slaughter each other out of the human impasse"
Topic: Parallel legal systems