But the main point i wanted to bring out is that the natural law may evolve slowly and maybe even differently in different places. Infact, the point about restitution that you made is a good example to highlight that. You prefer restitution, probably via work prisons. But debtor’s prisons and work prisons are a practice that is largely abandoned today. So, one can say that it is a practice that has failed in some way. But it makes eminent sense to a libertarian (including me).

So, wouldn’t writing this “best practice” down in a constitution be a better thing than allowing people to wander through the entire miasma of cruel and unusual punishments before they reach this practice?

And it is in this interpretation of the constitution that parliaments would be a safer mechanism than a king.

pierre joseph proudhon and karl marx both hated property - but ‘natural law’ is based on it. the prawns the fisherman brings to shore rightfully belong to him although he has no written title deed from the ocean!

actually, you have a good point abt letting the maoists control their area as a competing nation. i will certainly not have any problem with that. it all depends on the ground realities, which both of us know nothing about!

abt ravikiran: you cannot call it ‘jurocracy’ because what rules is the law - and not some man. it is rule of law; not rule of man.
if mobs turn violent and commit arson then they have destroyed property that does not belong to them and should be punished. actually, i prefer that they should be forced to pay for the restitution of these properties rather than locking them up at public expense!

I also know that a few people, not most, but a few have an equally “natural” tendency to rob the fisherwoman at the point of a gun. This tendency gets greatly exacerbated when they are in a situation that will not punish them for doing so. This behaviour gets even worse if these few people are charged with the responsibility of making or finding law. I am quite certain that they will find the law which suits them. Worse still, once a few start behaving that way without incurring punishment, everyone will behave that way. That too is only “natural”

The simplest critique of typical common law definitions is the socialist anarchist distinction between posessions and property. Posessions are what you use. Property is what you earn rent on. The abovesaid anarchists would hold that the human beings instincts of ‘mine’ and ‘yours’ end with posession because it is very much possible to distinguish what we possess. But property on the other hand is a much more complex animal. By what right does anyone keep property? What property is legitimate? the simplest question is - does the land belong to the person who has tilled on it or does it belong to the one whose has a little bit of paper called a title issued to him from a faraway authority?

I am not a socialist anarchist, but i am just trying to illustrate that matters are not as simple as you make them out to be.

And about the last post, don’t you see the contradiction between your solutions for Nepal andIndia? You think that there is hope if India breaks up, but suggest that nepal should remain single and under authoritarian rule. Why not suggest that the king make peace with the maoists by giving legitimacy to the part under maoist control as a separate nation, which can have free trade and immigration with the royally ruled nepal? Let them compete and may the best administration win.

it must be noted that most people go through life without requiring recourse to the courts or police. in my post i had mentioned how the maharawal of dungarpur recruited a good judge. the monarch of nepal can do the same thing. if we are speaking of india, then it is another matter altogether. i shudder to even contemplate how this vast country teeming with people now under complete misgovernance because of democracy can be fixed. perhaps breakaway portions - if kashmir or the northeast break free - will set up a good courts system.

natural justice, based on natural law, holds that the law existed long before the king and will hold long after the king has gone. royal judges like BRACTON and others were steeped in natural law, ecclesiastical law as well as roman law. they believed that property existed before the law; indeed that the law existed because there was property. in those early years, 11th to 14th century, under feudalism, there were various categories of property ownership, many based on customary use (and there were no paper title deeds) in each and every case, the judges had to FIND LAW: thus their use of a sworn jury of neighbours to testify to ownership. law was not made; the king did not LEGISLATE, nor did any parliament. but the people had remedies in the law, in the form of WRITS, by which they could INITIATE legal action and seek the royal courts (with royal force behind them) for JUSTICE.

second, there is no constitution in the world that outlaws murder and theft. that is not the purpose of a constitution. britain still does not have any constitution, and the original us constitution had just 7 articles. the purpose of a constitution is to list why and how a government will act, and to limit its powers. the indian constitution is the longest in the world and lists each and every OFFICE OF THE HIGH AND MIGHTY who rule over us: from the president down to ias and ips officers (yes, they too figure in the constitution). it is thus a constitution of slavery guaranteeing none of the liberties of the people, nor their properties. in india, theft and murder are dealt with in the indian penal code, which was given to us by the brits, and the longest chapters therein deal with offences against the body of a person or his property. in britain of old, even without such a criminal code, offences against the body or property were dealt with under various writs ranging from PRECIPAE to TRESPASS.

My ire doesn’t get stoked when someone criticizes Democracy. I am as much a believer in the rule of law as Sauvik is. I view Democracy purely as one of the instruments to achieve that goal - an instrument which is ineffective on its own, but is useful when used in tandem with others.

as we have discussed, regarding the long, long history of england, the brits were in possession of a rule of law society long before democracy came into the law and order machinery and usurped our freedoms under the guise that the purpose of democracy is the achievement of the rule of law.

democracy is a voting rule, pure and simple, and there are as many different voting rules in the world as there are democratic nations. the entire effort of these voting rules is geared towards securing the legitimacy of a bunch of jokers who can thereby claim to the ‘will of the people’, or a colletive called the state.

a rule of law society is based on individual self-ownership, and hence the ownership of all that this individual “mixes his labour with”, including originally unowned resources. the common law is based on these premises, hence offences against the body or property were easily dealt with by writs such as HABEUS CORPUS, DEBT, TRESPASS and the like. As I said, at one stage there were over 400 writs available to the common englishman. in the modern world these subjects are dealt with by a penal code, contract law and torts. the operation of such a system should NOT have anything to do with democracy. according to montesquieu and blackstone, the ’separation of powers’ would allow democracy indirect control over judicial matters. It is this that has been a disaster.

so, my dear ravikiran, do see democracy for what iT is and DO NOT hold that for a rule of law society we need democracy. we just need property rights, laws of contract and remedies in torts (from the PWD!!) - and these can and should come from an independent courts system or even competing systems.

the achievement of such a rule of law society SHOULD NOT have anything to with any democratically elected person or body, claiming whatever ‘majority’. thus, NO LEGISLATION. but very definitely rule of law.

If the natural law is so “natural” and derives from basic human interactions, why is it that it has not developed in umpteen societies that inevitably had kings, royal families and/or oligarchies?