In an appalling act of bias, Judge Cherie Blair suspended the sentence of a man convicted of assaulting another and breaking his jaw because the assailant was a "religious man". Apparently just being a member of a particular cult is sufficient to get your criminal penalties reduced by a few years in her court; the scales of justice aren't quite fairly balanced for the godless.
At least we have AC Grayling on the case, who sharply points out the ethical bankruptcy of Blair's position, and then turns around and also slaps around the people who defended Blair. I wouldn't want to be Hugo Rifkind, who tried to make the tired argument that we need an objective source of morality, i.e. that vicious thug God, and gets dismissed with an excellent lesson in history and philosophy.
This is an awful advertisement for wherever Mr Rifkind studied philosophy. Either that or he was not paying attention in 'week one' when it appears (from what he says) his ethics course took place. And he certainly seems to have stopped thinking since then. Let me direct his attention to Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, Hume, Kant, and a few dozen others among the thinkers he ought to have come across in his studies, whose ethics are not premised on divine command or the existence of supernatural agencies, but proceed from consideration of what human beings, in this life in this world, owe each other in the way of respect, concern, trust, fairness and honesty. The rich deep tradition of humanistic ethics stemming from classical antiquity has a tendency to make much of what passes for morality in religion ('give away all your possessions', 'take no thought for the morrow', 'women must cover their heads in church') look merely silly or trivial - at least in regard to what is distinctive to the religion, and not part of wider ethics whether religious or non-religious. Indeed Mr Rifkind is somewhat overexposed in philosophical ignorance here, for he ought to know that what is of practical value in Christian ethics is an import from the late Hellenic and Roman schools, mainly Stoicism, in the fourth century CE and later, to supply the want of a livable ethics in a religion that, to begin with, imminently expected the end of the world and had no use for money, marriage, and other aspects of ordinary life. So as the centuries passed it had to look about for something more sensible, and of course found it in the classical pre-Christian tradition. And to put matters in summary terms: the Roman Stoic conception of good character knocks Mrs. Blair's (and Mr Rifkind's) into a cocked hat, where they belong.
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Judges here in the UK have a history of this kind of thing. A few years ago a man got a reduced sentence for child sexual abuse as he was a devout Jehovah's Witness!
Jesus wept.
I'm sure we can look forward to an enlightened sentence she issues along the lines of "You are a despicable nonbeliever who obviously cannot comprehend the basics of morality. Max sentence for you." Might as well issue anti=blasphemy laws.
This brain addled judge should be disbarred... or have her license revoked... or whatever you do to a judge.
Ok, it's not Mrs Blair's fault she is married to a war criminal (who will most likely get off because his country hasn't been invaded), but the fact that she is/was an associate of one of Australia's most notorious fraudsters, Peter Foster, showing VERY poor judgement of characters, makes one wonder how the hell it is possible for her to be a judge.
It's indeed a mad, mad world!
I'm appalled, but hardly surprised.
If I'm ever before the Court I may have a sudden attack of religiosity.
I am not sure whether I despise Cherie more than her husband.
Strange, I always thought smiting your enemies, or perceived enemies, was religious behavior found throughout the Old Testament. But America should still be grateful they don’t have a legal system like Pakistan has where a bunch of lawyers defending the murderer threatened to burn alive anyone who defended the victim.
I heard Grayling on radio 4 last week, dismantling some hapless apologist on this issue. He was polite but implacable.
Strange, I always thought smiting your enemies, or perceived enemies, was< /I> religious behavior found throughout the Old Testament. But America should still be grateful they don’t have a legal system like Pakistan does where a bunch of lawyers defending the murderer threatened to burn alive anyone who defended the victim.
Well that was frighteningly stupid. Even if that was her reason, she ought to be smart enough to not say so, and couch it in different words. Apparently she isn't.
Out of curiosity how do folks around here feel when Opinions in the US reference, to varying degrees of vagueness, God?
The learned Judge showed mercy,
For she knew the man devout;
One cannot be religious, and
A brutal, lowly lout--
Religion shows the brighter light,
Not worldly, but sublime;
You'd never break a fellow's jaw...
Except, of course, this time.
The learned judge, she reasoned
That forgiveness was the path;
She'd demonstrate God's mercy
When she could have picked God's wrath.
A judge who follows faithfully
Could never be a dunce;
She'd choose the wise and sober course...
Except, of course, this once.
The learned judge is hearing
From the slighted and the wronged
For speaking through her prejudice
As if such views belonged.
Some arguments belong in court,
But then again, some don't;
The judge should learn from this mistake...
Except, of course, she won't.
http://digitalcuttlefish.blogspot.com/2010/02/learned-judge-blair.html
While not liking her reasoning - and I agree with the Shreiking Harpy (#10) that her wording was moronic, I suppose the objective question is whether this person got a similar sentence to an equivalent non-theist charged in the same manner. Judges are supposed to weigh all manner of considerations in sentencing - so on the basis of a single case it's a little difficult to come to a conclusion on her objectivity.
By the way this is old news, all that traveling must catch up some time.
Gov Huckabee pardoned a man for similar reasons, that fellow went on a killing spree.
Maybe I can hope for "You awe not a weligious man, and so you have no concept of wight and wong. Welease Wodewick!"
Wait. . .. shouldn't the fact that he's a religious man and knew this was wrong be an argument for a harsher sentence? He knew and did it anyway . . .
This doesn't even make sense in fundieland.
The biggest virtue of the religious remains oblivious arrogance, a lethal combination.
I think this is one of Cuttlefish's best ever!
Her argument is that he punished himself enough as he is a religious man and knows he done wrong so he has to deal with his consciousness.
Poor man. The guilt, the shame, he, a religious man, he punched another man for no good reason, it must be unbearable.
Good thing he doesn't have to agonize even more while sitting in a cell.
All can be rest assured he has learned his lesson.
/Brain Rot
You choose this case because of the religious overtones...And clearly it is ridiculous. But it is not isolated and religion is not the only bias or reason used to disguise outside influence.
While Western Justice systems seem to work better than say Pakistani justice, they are inherently human and full of all of the various human flaws.
My point is - broaden the horizon of your concern. Its larger than religious bias. There is political bias, influence by power brokers, greed, oh the list goes on....l
They are all of them disgusting and should be combated with equal disgust.
I'm sure the guy whose jaw he broke appreciated her "You caused a mild fracture" minimization, too.
You choose this case because of the religious overtones...And clearly it is ridiculous. But it is not isolated and religion is not the only bias or reason used to disguise outside influence.
While Western Justice systems seem to work better than say Pakistani justice, they are inherently human and full of all of the various human flaws.
My point is - broaden the horizon of your concern. Its larger than religious bias. There is political bias, influence by power brokers, greed, oh the list goes on....l
They are all of them disgusting and should be combated with equal disgust.
I believe we are supposed to call her "Booth" when it's in relation to judgery. She is only Blair when she is standing next her ridiculous husband supporting him in his global absurdity. Also I don't think she she has "Judge" as a title (I don't think any English judge does and recorders don't get any special title).
Like poorly coded software, many religious people are burdened with a cognitive 'trojan' in the form of instant gullibility in the face of religious claims.
The crack for activating this viral brainware and gaining access to the victim's trust response is religious statements and or behavior.
Having identified such a person, it's a fairly straightforward process to route around their skeptical firewall.
The assailant and/or his lawyer, in this case, have proved themselves to be "1337 h4x0r$" through their remote control of the judge.
Sara (@19 and @21):
Forgive me, but I just hate it when people dismiss someone's concern by pointing out that there's a world full of other things to be concerned about. Of course "[i]ts[sic] larger than religious bias"... but not everybody can be concerned about everything all the time. We all pick our fights; the fact that PZ has picked a fight that doesn't precisely match yours doesn't mean he's wrong, and it doesn't justify your paternalistic directions about how he should refocus his concerns.
IOW, your concern about PZ's concern is noted.
And if I'm overreacting, let me apologize in advance: Possibly the fact that you've phrased the key point of your comment in the grammatical form of a command has gotten my back up unnecessarily... but then again, possibly seeing how what you said got my back up will be useful to you?
Not when she flat out says it, it's not. Her words:
Since the accused also lied to the court, claiming the other guy started the trouble only to be proven wrong by a video recording it is difficult to understand why Cherie Booth though he was anything other than a lying b*****d even if he was on his way home from Friday prayers.
"...defending the murderer threatened to burn alive anyone who defended the victim."
Am I missing something here? In a murder case, the victim is dead and thus a bit beyond defending.
"My point is - broaden the horizon of your concern."
Ah, the old "there are bigger things to worry about" fallacy. Atheists, progressives and feminists hear this load all the time.
Focusing on one issue, or one aspect of an issue, does not mean there is no care or attention paid to any or everything else.
Had I been on the bench I would have thrown the book at the man, for the same reason.
"you claim to live by a code of morality whereby loving thy neighbor and befriending thy enemy are the norm, and yet you sought out not peace but violent attack on the victim. "
DLC (@29):
Yah, I wondered about this, too: Isn't a person who pretends to observe a higher moral standard than that of the unwashed masses therefore more culpable, rather than less, when that person violates both the common secular standard and his/her allegedly higher divinely dictated morality?
That said, quibbling over whether Judge Cherie¹ applied religious principles correctly is potentially a distraction from the more important point that she should never have applied religious principles at all.
¹ Prior corrections about nomenclature noted, but I persist in this apellation, mostly because it pleases me to imagine Cheri Oteri caricaturing her in a skit.
In addition, it is precisely by focusing on the details that the overall problem is fixed.
@#14
"He wanks with the highest in wome!" :).
Judge Blair (from the linked article; tip o' the hat to tsg):
The judge identifies these reasons for imposing a suspended sentence: (1) the defendant is a religious person and (2) the defendant had not been in trouble before.
The second reason is entirely valid. Lack of a criminal history is a mitigating factor in discretionary sentencing in all U.S. states (i.e., sentencing that doesn't involve mandatory dispositions or terms).
The first reason is bullshit, of course.
Indeed, one could interpret what the judge said as an indication that she thought that the reason why the defendant knew that what he did was not acceptable behavior was because he was a religious person.
If that's what the judge thought, that's even worse.
Here is a quote from a show I used yo watch, Law and Order (paraphrasing):
If we link the enforcement of penal laws to the criminal's purported religiosity we are back to the Inquisition.
Ambushed and killed 4 cops in Tacoma.
Xian morality is a myth. Stats show the fundie xians fare higher than the general population in social problems.
Child sex abuse is higher in the homes of fundies according to some studies.
Xian terrorism and assassins are a serious problem in the USA. Scott Roeder got M1 and said he was glad he did it.
@30:
Ah, but you're expecting the Christian Forgiveness Foxtrot to make any kind of sense whatsoever. You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!
Justice Booth did what she thought was right.
That seems to be a failing in the Blair family. Tony "did what I thought was right" when taking the UK into an illegal war.
Never mind National or International Law, people who believe in god just have to do what they think is right.
And "standing by their convictions" even when they've been shown to be wrong.
1827: British Parliament abolishes benefit of clergy.
2010: Cherie Blair resurrects it.
Stogoe (@36):
Not really; just reiterating by example that it doesn't. Also, see my second paragraph.
Wonder what would happen if this had been an honor killing?
@41:
Well, in that case, we wouldn't be talking about a religious person, would we? We'd be talking about a Primitive Moooooooslim Terrorist®, wouldn't we?
You don't really expect a religious presondog-fearing True Christian™ to give the so-called "morality" of people of other faithsheretics any credence, do you?
"Anything not mandatory solely because of religion should not be mandatory at all"
Bill Dauphin,OM
Point of information: the convicted man was a Muslim. To the likes of Booth, what load of religious hooey you believe is less important than believing some load of religious hooey - though it would be interesting to see if a Scientologist would have got the same treatment.
KG:
Hrmmph... teach me to comment based just on what I've read here! <shame>
I guess so. That said, I was responding to a hypothetical about honor killing, and I bet any such departure from generically shared religious "morality" would've activated the No True ScotsmanReligious Person™ meme in Judge Cherie's god-softened head.
All the interfaith happytalk usually seems to evaporate when dogma come into direct conflict. The Irish blasphemy law, for instance, can be portrayed as a generic good for "people of faith"... until those people start to cogitate on the fact that each of their faiths is inherently a blasphemy against all the others. Likewise, Judge Cherie might celebrate this particular miscreant as a "religious man" in the abstract, but I bet she wouldn't do so if the matter before her were an act related specifically to Islamic dogma that offended her specifically Christian sensibilities.
Another case of a religious guy without a clue.
This may shed an interesting light on another religious delusion.
Logically, the statement
"You are religious, therefore you have a good character"
is equivalent to
"You have a bad character, therefore you are not religious"
(the contrapositive). So someone who firmly believes the first of these should regard anyone commiting obviuosly heinous acts as No True Christian (or whatever). Because their bad acts have demonstrated that they are not religious. Exactly how heinous the acts needs to be before their "average behaviour" drops below whatever threshold they've set is another question. Clearly punching people in the street is not sufficiently bad, for Cherie Blair at least.
@Joffan #47
I'll bet a dollar that the statements "You are religious, therefore you have a good character, and this bad act was simply a lapse in judgment", and "You are not religious, therefore you have a bad character, and this bad act proves it" more accurately describe her beliefs.
@ Peter H #27 - "Am I missing something here? In a murder case, the victim is dead and thus a bit beyond defending."
You are indeed missing something. Victims can be subjected to character assassination even if they are dead. I'm not familiar with the exact case this refers to, but given that it's Pakistan it was probably something along the lines of, "She wasn't wearing a burka and therefore she absolutely deserved to be gang raped and stoned to death. What? You don't agree? We'll happily light you on fire for that disagreement!"
The judge is an abject imbecile for making the statement:
"You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."
When did the defendant ever indicate that he knows his behavior is not acceptable? Lets say the defendant did know - so what, the defendant obviously doesn't care. So what does the idiot judge's statement have to do with anything?
@tsg #48 - that sounds very likely, and perfectly in accord wiuth Deuteronomy and other such black-and-white interpretations of the world (like "If you're not for us, you're against us" etc.)
@ BoxNDox
I see your point; I was thinking of defense only in the context of a court proceeding - or as close as Pakistan might come to having a court.
Two things.
Firstly, it was great to see AC Grayling rip apart someone using the "authority" of philosophy to push their nonsense. The Euthyphro Dilemma is something every theist must answer - is murder wrong because God says its wrong or does God say its wrong because it is wrong? The first points morality as an arbitrary enterprise from an amoral deity because God can't simultaneously create the standard and judge himself by the standard he set. The latter means that if we judge God to be good, then there must be something external to God by which we judge morality. In other words, religion although it claims that God and morality are tightly coupled, can't be the source of morality.
Secondly, it seems that such philosophical musings must be ignored by the believer because if you take away morality from their beliefs, then there really isn't much left. Once it is acknowledged that morality is external to the concept of God, then all that's left is the diffuse concept that belief in God makes someone moral - they are arguing for belief in belief! It's not that they need morality and God to be tightly coupled, just the perception of it.
Which incidentally is why I don't like those "I'm an atheist but I'm still a good person" type message. All it does is feed into the perception that there's something tightly coupled between religious beliefs and goodness.
I guess you call this "Cheria Law".
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yl3UMO-TkE
I wonder what y'all think of this post:
http://mtpt.wordpress.com/2010/02/04/cherie-booth-is-right-or-calm-down…
#56.
He may be correct re the sentence but it was the religious comments that were out of order.
"Cheria Law" FTW!
#57:
First, at least some commentators above seem to think it matters whether she would have given the same sentence to a non-religious person. The post I linked to suggests this is indeed the case.
Second, I think it is possible to interpret the judge as speaking to the defendant, trying to get him to understand that he should know better by appealing to what is *for him* a significant fact -- "you are a religious person" -- in other words appealing to *his* moral sense by appealing to his religion -- without implying that only religious people can be moral.
Suppose she had just said "I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you have not been in trouble before. You caused a mild fracture to the jaw of a member of the public standing in a queue at Lloyds Bank. You are a religious man and you know this is not acceptable behaviour." Would there still be all this brou-ha-ha?
It may be that this is what she intended. In which case I think a mountain is being made out of a molehill.
I think there's probably a quick dollar (or Euro) to be made selling necklaces with overly large crosses, religious iconography and 'Jesus is my Homeboy' t-shirts in British prisons.
Because I suspect every person appearing before Judge Booth in the near future is going to have 'seen the light' and undergone a conversion.
I agree with Michael #59, first offense, previous good character etc, etc, it was always likely it was only going to be a suspended sentence anyway. What I wonder is if there is any record of how many times there are repeat offenses after suspended sentences given with religious overtones to the case. If the thug in question takes heed of Cherie Booth's words and decides to spend more time in prayer and less time beating people up then the judgement was successful. After the fuss made of the case I'm sure we will hear of it if he does re-offend, but how does this compare with the re-offending rates of atheists?
You are closer than you think, Wowbagger! When, twenty-odd years ago, the local imams started taking an interest in prisons the authorities all went, "Awwww! How lovely! They are finding god and all will be well."
How wrong can you be? One of those in my then nearest prison was shoe-bomber Richard Reid. As you know, he was not the only one.
PZ
Sorry, you are wrong on this. Left-footer Cherie is only Mrs Blair when flogging dodgy books about her political life, as all you customers on that side of the pond recognise the name.
When acting in a legal capacity (usually to profit professionally from laws introduced by her husband, who got the Big Fella to advise him on the legality of invading Iraq, rather than bothering with the sovereign will of the elected chamber), she is Cherie Booth...under which they are threatening to elevate her to the House Of Lords.
Either way, she is a dangerous lunatic.
Best
Would someone be kind enough to get this incident back on wikipedia? There are some "notability" issues that need taken care of.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherie_Blair#Controversies
Anyone remember Maurice Clemmons?
Look, I wish people would stop rushing off and virtually snapping their knees because they jerk them so hard.
This is based on an incomplete and unreliable newspaper report from a local rag which would like to tar and feather both Blairs.
Short lesson on legal principles follows.
Sentencing in England and Wales is subject to aggravating and mitigating factors. There is a tariff, setting out maximum (and sometimes minimum) sentences. There may be an aggravating factor: for example, theft is aggravated by the thief being in a position of trust - say a nurse were to steal something from a patient's handbag. There may be a mitigating factor: for example, a simple assault may be mitigated by provocation, say a customer in a pub being provocative and aggressive immediately before the defendant throws a punch.
There may be none at all, or they may be a combination of aggravating and mitigating factors.
One mitigating factor is being of previous good character. If a first offender is convicted of a crime, I think most people would agree, he should probably not receive such a stiff sentence as someone who's already been convicted twice of the same offence.
Someone may well advance mitigation (through the barriser) of previous good character, and *as proof of that previous good character*, state that he was a devoutly religious person and that the current offence, being very much frowned on by that religion, therefore being very much out of character.
That would be perfectly reasonable; no atheist would be prevented from arguing that he followed a highly moral lifestyle based on firm principles; admittedly the proof would be slightly harder to adduce.
In those circumstances, it would be HIGHLY IMPROPER for the judge not to refer to the pleading which had been made in the decision that is given, because reasons have to be provided in a court of record. (This is because if there is an appeal, the parties will need to be able to say, for example 'The judge failed to address the defendant's plea of mitigation...' and the counter argument 'No, the judge did not so fail, because...')
So to suggest that there is something improper in the way this particular judge addressed this particular issue is UNFAIR. What is needed is information about the plea in mitigation which would have immediately preceded the sentencing decision, and unless that information comes to light, all of you who have joined in the hue and cry against the judge should hang your heads in shame. You have thought: "Blair's religious, she's religious, she's mentioned religion in a judgment - it must be because she personally is religious that she has suspended his sentence". This is called 'jumping to conclusions'.
Although I am quite happy to support the public and written character assassination of the half-wits who have defended the judge on the mistaken basis that she is entitled to an opinion which she almost certainly did not express - that religious character is in itself a reason for reducing a sentence.
Full disclosure: I attended a talk given by Cherie Booth QC some years ago, before her judicial appointment, and chatted with her afterwards. She struck me as a very intelligent lawyer and one who is not likely to make the mistake of allowing her personal views to cloud her sentencing decisions.
I am willing to be shown that I am wrong and everyone else is right, but that will require more than the innuendo that is being slung around the blogosphere like paint in Jackson Pollock's studio...
defides:
Maybe so, maybe not. I'm no lawyer.
The point is that the purported mitigating factor here was based on being religious, not on being of good character, unless you claim this is a misquote: "I am going to suspend this sentence for the period of two years based on the fact you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before."
Being religious is proof of good character?
I guess Osama bin Laden must be a really good character, on that basis¹.
(Actually, I venture to say that the fact that the assailant knew it was the wrong thing to do should be an aggravating, rather than a mitigating factor!)
Ah, yes. It seems that her personal charisma weighs heavier on your judgement than the facts of the matter.
--
¹ Blogosphere being what it is, I note this is sarcasm.
Tony Blair struck a lot of people as a very intelligent politician who wouldn't make the mistake of allowing his personal views to cloud his invading-Iraq decisions. How'd that work out?
@defides 66: Your initial defence seems to rest on the idea that Booth either didn't say what she said, or didn't really mean it. Regarding the first point, this has not simply been reported by one newspaper, but picked up by various other sources (Times, Guardian, BBC) - surely if there was any question about the veracity of the quote these sources wouldn't have all ran with it? On the second point, are we to assume, then, that Booth is dishonest, and simply comes out with random statements during her judgement that don't bear any relation to what she's actually thinking? This isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of her intelligence, is it?
You also raise the point that if she didn't address the mitigation put forward by the defence then she would be somehow derelicting her duty. The whole bloody point is that religiosity is NOT a mitigating factor - there is NOTHING to suggest that religious people are inherently more moral than those who don't have a religion, and if she has swallowed this mitigation put forward and regurgitated it wholesale then, again, this isn't a ringing endorsement of her intelligence.
Imagine if I believed in a race of benevolent mermaids who live in Lake Superior, and that it is they who keep me off the path of violence. Imagine then that somehow I forget about the mermaids one day when listening to someone talk loudly on a cellphone on the bus, and go and smack him in the jaw. When I'm hauled up before the courts, if my lawyer puts forward my Mermaidianity as a mitigating factor, do you REALLY think the judge would be at all remiss to disregard it entirely? If not, why not - and why not extend the same to this fellow's religion?
THAT is the objection - REGARDLESS of whether or not the actual sentencing was harsh or not harsh, she has explicitly said that she's taken religiosity into account when sentencing. So congratulations on defending her honour based on a chat years ago that no doubt she's forgotten about but you are completely and utterly wrong.
My bad; I intended to write that religious convictions might be tendered as 'evidence' of good character, not as 'proof'. I'm sorry about that.
Of course being of previous good character is mitigating. Mitigation and aggravation are a question of sentencing only; the guilt phase of the trial is over by this time. So, surely everyone accepts that the punishment for someone who's never been convicted before should be lighter than someone with 12 convictions including 8 for violent crimes, and that someone with 5 convictions, 0 for violent crimes, should be somewhere in between?
Cherie Blair's personal charisma weighs hardly at all with me, and I don't expect it to carry any at all with anybody else. I simply offered that as a personal observation. There are things about both Mr and Mrs Blair that I find almost intolerable - in particular his thoroughgoing dissembling over a long period of time that he was a rationalist - but this criticism of Cherie Booth QC isn't one of them.
(What's your evidence, by the way, that Osama bin Laden has true religious convictions? Or even believes that he does? I know he claims such convictions, but I'm not at all convinced he's telling the truth.)
defides:
Well, previous good behaviour is also evidence, not proof; but that's actually apposite and justifiable.
Being religious, not so much.
Is the evidence any lesser, in aggregate, for that person than for Mr Shamso Miah?
You know he claims such convictions, but are you convinced he's telling the truth?
--
Sigh, first you apologise for mistakenly using 'proof' rather than 'evidence', now you equivocate between the two as a rhetorical point, and hardly a relevant one.
@defides 70: You have made it perfectly clear that you don't think announcing an alteration of sentencing based on a man's religioisity is to be criticised. You have, however, produced only the most mealy-mouthed and careless defence for this position. Can you address my mermaid example and explain what weight, if any, a judge should give to it in their remarks?
"You have heard the mermaids singing, each to each, and you know this is not acceptable behaviour."
"So you'll let me off?"
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.”
What's your evidence, by the way, that Osama bin Laden has true religious convictions? defides
Just how stupid are you? The guy gave up a privileged and indeed luxurious lifestyle, is isolated from much of his family, and in constant danger of violent death or capture and torture. How much more evidence do you need?
defides (@66, et seq.):
I'm not a lawyer and, being an American, not particularly familiar with British law, so I'm in no position to argue your points directly; however, I don't believe your points actually directly address the concerns of commenters here in this matter.
Most of us broadly advocate complete separation of church and state, and in that context, any insertion of religion into a state judicial proceeding is obnoxious to us. Even stipulating your assertion that what Judge Cherie did is correct under current British law, that doesn't address our sense of outrage; it only demonstrates that "the law is an ass": If what she did is truly correct under current law, it only means that current law is an outrage to those of us who believe that the state and all its instrumentalities should be entirely secular.
But even with my self-confessed disadvantage in talking about this, I still wonder about the correctness of her actions: While I can easily see that evidence of good personal character is a legitimate grounds for a sentence reduction, and that the judge is obligated to address any claim of mitigation made by the defense, it does not logically follow that she is obligated to agree that religious conviction, per se, is in fact evidence of good personal character¹. At best, his religious faith is evidence that the defendant ought to be of good character, according to his own standards... but only actual behavior that's consistent with good character is truly evidence of good character.
Speaking as a layman, it seems to me that a judge could (and speaking as a secularist, I demand that she should) take judicial notice of the claim of religious faith as evidence good character, but then categorically deny that faith by itself is evidence of good character, or that faith by itself should have any bearing on the outcome of a state proceeding.
At the end of the day, even if this sentence was the correct outcome based solely on the (secular) facts of the case, a legal opinion that declares from the bench that religious faith is de facto evidence of good character — which risks implying in many people's minds its converse: that lack of faith is de facto evidence of bad character — is sufficiently outrageous to merit a little blog kvetching from a group of committed godless liberals.
¹ Unless, of course, religious faith is specifically spelled out in law as a mitigating factor, in which case the law is an enormous ass, at least from a typical Pharyngulan point of view.
MikiZ (@73) wins the internets!
But I do not think the mermaids will sing to me.
As a purely oblique aside, your allusion reminded me that the world really is full of strange bedfellows!
@Bill Dauphin, OM #75 ... to be pedantic, there is not really such a thing as British law. Scots Law and the law of Northern Ireland are separate from the legal system of England and Wales.
Very well said otherwise!
Rokkaku (@77):
You caught me! I can't speak for my fellow Yanks, but for myself, I've always found the political/legal relationship(s) between England and the rest of the UK¹ baffling: Typically, when I say "British," I'm really just confessing that I don't know whether what I'm talking about relates to England, the United Kingdom, or the whole frackin' British Empire (of which I gather at least a few colonial shards remain). Scotland is particularly confounding: Is it a nation, part of a nation, or just a region of people with funny accents who wish they were a nation? Enquiring minds want to know!
Otherwise, thanks for the kind words!
¹ A bit of arcane trivia: Some of you may have noticed that I habitually abbreviate United States with periods (U.S.) but United Kingdom without (UK). This is not just wanton inconsistency; rather, it's because the rule in the style guide I work to in my "day job" says that periods are used in abbreviations only when said abbreviations could conceiveably be read as an unrelated word. Since U.S. could (in some bizarre fever dream) be mistaken for us, it gets periods; AFAIK, there's no such English word as uk. Hey, I said it would be arcane, didn't I?
Oh, Bill, that letter (and site) is delightful; thanks for the link. I had not seen it before.
Clarification of me @78:
By this...
...I meant no offense to Scotland, nor to its glorious history, nor to any of the True Scotsmenpersons™ who frequent this place; I only meant that I, personally, am confused about Scotland's current nationhood (or lack thereof).
MikiZ:
Thank teh Googlez: I knew (from having been a rabid Groucho fan as a kid) that Groucho and Eliot had been penpals, but I had to search for a linkable example. Based on your comment, I think I'll go back and take a longer look at that site!
I took massively grave offence!
Essentially Scotland is a 'constituent country' of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Many within it self-identify as Scots. So it's a nation that's part of a Union in that sense.
Support for independence is around the 30-35% mark in most polls, although the pro-independence SNP (*not* to be confused with the neo-fascist BNP) are currently the largest party in the Scottish Government in Edinburgh. (The Scottish Government is analogous to a state leg in the USA or a Land government in Germany, although with fewer powers than in both of these... it's more than a district but less than a state.)
The funny accents vary across the country. The Doric accent in the north-east is the funniest of all.
Rokkaku:
See, you've given me information (for which I thank you) that simply compounds my confusion. You say...
...and yet, Alabama (for example) does not send its own team to the World Cup! (Leave it to an American to identify nationhood by sports, eh?) And, of course, the last time a "pro-independence" movement had any significant power in Alabama (and its neighbor states), we had a bit of a tiff over it.
I think the plain fact is that the relationships between European countries (whatever that means in each local context) have a much longer and more convoluted history than the relationship between U.S. states, which was consciously and deliberately designed (must. reist. evolution-vs-design. analogy!). I suspect many Americans also subconsciously analogize the EU as the "United States of Europe," and I'm sure it's really nothing like a straightforward Amercian-style federalism.
Yes, we suck at geography and geopolitics... but at least I'm curious. ;^)
I should've added that I luuuuuuuv "funny" accents, and Scottish accents are among my very favorite. Even when the Scottish accent is coming out of an ostensibly Irish cop in an American movie!
Scotland is particularly confounding: Is it a nation, part of a nation, or just a region of people with funny accents who wish they were a nation? - Bill Dauphin,OM
Most Scots will tell you it's a nation, but the majority don't want independence, and in some areas that vote for the Scottish Parliament (Orkney and even more, Shetland), most of the residents don't regard themselves as Scots. Scotland's kept its own legal and educational systems, but these have a lot in common with the English one (the English legal system also covers Wales but not Northern Ireland, the educational systems are different in each of the four components of the UK). Since 1999 Scotland has had its own Parliament, with more powers than the Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies, but still sends MPs to the UK Parliament too. The important cultural frontier used to be the "Highland line", roughly along Loch Ness, north-west of which - outwith the aforementioned Orkney and Shetland - most people spoke Gaelic (which despite what its speakers may say, is not really distinct from the Irish version), while south-east of it most spoke Scots, otherwise known as Lallans, which merged into (standard) English near the Anglo-Scottish border - so culturally, Scotland is a 19th century invention. Now, almost everyone can speak standard English, but as I've noted, even after more than a decade Doric is near-unintelligible to me, as are working-class Glaswegian and some Highland accents.
As for the Empire, it now consists of:
Crown Dependencies. These are self-governing tax-havens, not part of the UK although the acts of their legislatures have to be OK'd by the Privy Council, and not in the EU, but some parts of EU law apply to them. Their citizens count as British Nationals, and have rights of residence in the UK, but I can't go and live there:
Isle of Man
Channel Islands: Baliwick of Jersey, Baliwick of Guernsey (includes Guernsey and its dependencies)
Overseas Territories (these are governed from London, but are not part of the UK or EU):
Anguilla
Bermuda
British Antarctic Territory
British Indian Ocean Territory
British Virgin Islands
Cayman Islands
Falkland Islands
Gibraltar
Montserrat
Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands
St Helena and St Helena Dependencies (Ascension and Tristan da Cunha)
South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands
Sovereign Base Areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia
The Turks & Caicos Islands
Then of course there's all the independent states Liz Windsor is Queen of: Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Fiji (where she is "traditional Queen", but not head of state). Some of these independent states (Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Belize, Grenada, Jamaica, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Tuvalu) have the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as their highest court, as do the New Zealand associated states of Cook Islands and Niue (though not New Zealand itself). Finally, Liz is Head of the Commonwealth - not a hereditary title, but it's probable the title would disappear if not held by the British monarch.
All clear now :-p? I'm sure Walton will correct me if I've made any errors!
AFAIK, there's no such English word as uk
It's been suggested that if Scotland does ever break away, but keeps the monarchy (it probably would), it plus the rest of the UK would become the Formerly United Kingdom.
I suspect many Americans also subconsciously analogize the EU as the "United States of Europe," and I'm sure it's really nothing like a straightforward Amercian-style federalism. - Bill Dauphin,OM
Nothing like, despite what a few would like, and many claim. For example, the recently ratified Treaty of Lisbon includes a formally defined procedure for a state to leave (I seem to recall that an attempt by some states to leave the USA caused a bit of a brouhaha a while ago); and Germany has just told Greece to get stuffed, when asked to bail the latter out financially (they may well end up doing so out of self-interest, but they don't have to).
Thanks for the info, KG. From what you and Rokkaku have said, I grok that Scotland is not more or less sovereign than an individual U.S. state, but differently sovereign: I suspect there's not any real analogy in the U.S. to Scotland's status within the UK.
This was actually the aspect of this whole conversation that I knew the most about, having recently reread (well, re-listened-to) Simon Winchester's delightful Outposts, which details his attempt to visit all the remaining British colonies (but not the Crown Dependencies). However, that book is somewhat out of date (e.g., the book included Hong Kong, albeit not in the abridged audio version I have), so I wasn't sure which of the then-colonies might have gained independence or otherwise departed the Empire (not many, it appears, other than Hong Kong).
Yeah, the whole concept of an independent state recognizing the monarch of another state as its head of state has my head spinning. But I accept that it is what it is.
"Liz," is it? She's a good sheila, Bruce, and not a bit stuck up!
Actually, I hadn't been entirely sure there was even still any such thing as the Commonwealth. Am I incorrect in thinking the nature of the Commonwealth has changed significantly during my lifetime (i.e., since the 60s)?
Well, fuk that, eh? ;^)
She's a good sheila, Bruce, and not a bit stuck up! - Bill Dauphin,OM
Well actually, she is stuck up - and more than a bit. When Paul Keating touched her shoulder, you could see her bristling!
I'm not sure the Commonwealth has changed very much since the late '60s - that was the decade most of the African states became independent. It's not been clear what (if anything) it's for, for a long time, although states occasionally get suspended for military coups or whatever (Fiji, currently), and seem keen to get back in. Zimbabwe left in 1993 (only the second country to do so after the Irish Free State, which became the Irish Republic), South Africa rejoined after the end of apartheid, and more recently Mozambique and Rwanda, neither of which was ever part of the Empire, joined.
@Bill Dauphin, OM #83 - The World Cup example is a very peculiar one. It's because the British Isles are where football was invented and popularised first of all. (The FA Cup, the oldest continuous club competition in the world, actually included Scottish amateur club Queen's Park - who still exist today - in their earliest iterations.) England versus Scotland was the first ever international match, and the FA and Scottish FA are two of the oldest organisations there are. In the early days of the World Cup, the 'Home Nations' somewhat sniffily did not take part; after WW2 when they eventually deigned to do so they did via their own 'Home Nations championship' until relatively recently. The 'Home Nations' also have a permanent spot on the FIFA vice-president circuit due to their (by some interpretations) bailing out FIFA financially at one point, although this is under threat.
Essentially the World Cup is not a reliable guide to statehood, is what I'm saying ;)
KG (@87):
Yeah, tell it to Bruce!
Rokkaku (@88):
Well, that's hardly surprising, is it? But aside from the organizational intricacies of soccer, I had the impression from the Scotland World Cup wiki that Scotland generally competes independently in international athletics... except for the Olympics. By contrast, American territories (Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa) and British colonies often do send independent teams to the Olympics, but no state or political subunit of the U.S. itself competes in international athletics of any sort, nor do any of the Native American "nations".
What this whole conversation points out is that state, nation, and country are fairly fluid concepts, the complete understanding of which is equivalent to the nailing of jello to a wall.
Rokkaku: My posts focussed - at least, I thought they did - on the fact that, since we are missing the transcript of the plea in mitigation - we cannot know whether the focus on religion in the judgment resulted from the plea.
Did I not say that a judge must, in giving reasons for decisions (including reasons for sentencing) mention the factors which he/she has been urged by the parties to take into account, since if not the parties do not know whether the factor has been discounted, counted, or forgotten? Thus, if religion is mentioned in the plea, it is almost impossible not to mention it in the reasons.
As for religiosity, you miss the point. These (on today's interwebs) are criticisms that are being made against THIS PARTICULAR JUDGE. Make criticisms about the special place of religion in English law (indeed, in English society) and I will join you in the protests. The thing is that - like it or not - religion has that special place and even if the judge were a dyed-in-the-wool atheist it would be contrary to all precedent (and she is only a junior judge) to assert that a defendant's religious faith was irrelevant to the question of good character.
As for your post #72 - sorry I wasn't sitting waiting for you to post, I had other things to do…
John Morales: I thought it would be clear to you that my question about Osama bin Laden - being in brackets, and at the end of the post - was a playful afterthought, rather than central to the point I was making.
What would you like me to do in future to help you out?
The suggestions put forward that we have no idea whether this guy really was religious or whether he was only pretending is not relevant to the question of whether the judge was correct to accept his claims as evidence of proper mitigation. Mitigation is frequently claimed that is not true - job interview on Monday, wife pregnant, etc. If the prosecution can't challenge the plea, and there is no evidence that it is untrue, the judge has no choice but to accept it.
Bill Dauphin: you too seem to be eliding the question of whether the judge can be criticised for accepting the mitigation plea, with that of whether church and state should be separated more than they are. As I tried to explain before, because of the special place of religion in English law, there is no way that a junior judge even in a Crown Court (although I don't know whether this was a Crown Court case) can, as you put it, "categorically deny that faith is evidence of good character". Judges are, as you no doubt appreciate, bound by precedent. To do as you suggest would be no more possible than announcing that the M'Naghten test is no longer good law. (Actually, I'm not sure whether it is; the point being that the only persons who could make a declaration along the lines advocate by you would be a) our spanking new Supreme Court or b) Parliament.
Clearly you can complain (and I would) that the legal system gives an unwarranted degree of credit to religion and to the religious, but the fact that a judge goes along with that is still only grounds for criticising the system, and not the personal attacks on the judge.
@defides #90 . From what I've read elsewhere, the religion line from Blair (if reported correctly) almost certainly did *not* influence the severity of the sentence, even though she said it did.
But this isn't the objection the vast majority of people here seem to have. Nor is there widespread objection to her having to mention the mitigation brought up by the defence. The objections are that she clearly *approved* of the mitigation - i.e. this was not merely a neutral "the defence said X," but "fact X is true"; and that she said it would result in leniency.
This absolutely *does* merit a personal judgement of Booth. Why? Because she's the one who bloody well said it! Were this really an apparent bedrock of the English legal system, as you seem to imply it is in your response to Mr. Dauphin, it would be reported a lot more often, and be under greater scrutiny than it is. But that is not the case. The sober facts of the matter are that Booth learned of the accused's religion and chose to make specific reference to it when announcing her leniency, and no amount of finger-pointing on your part is going to change that.
defides (@90):
You seem to be missing the point that the latter question is the only one I care about in this case... and I suspect that's also true for the majority of Pharyngulans commenting on this. Some here have been picking at the judge personally because of her association with the broadly disrespected (in these parts, anyway) former Prime Minister, but fundamentally the only reason this case is a subject of discussion at Pharyngula is the church-state separation issue it raises. Your assertion that the judge acted correctly doesn't refute our outrage, it enhances it, by changing this from a matter of the offensively wrongheaded application of religion by an individual to a matter of the offensively wrongheaded application of religion by an entire national system of law. This is supposed to be better??
So ultimately whether or not Judge Cherie's ruling is legally correct has almost nothing to do with why it so thoroughly hacks us off.
That said, I'm curious about a couple points:
Really? It's a matter of English law (or settled precedent, which I take to be part of the law) that a mere unsubstantiated assertion of religious faith must be accepted as de facto evidence of good personal character? You'll note, if you revisit my original comment, that I made room for this possibility in a footnote, but if true this does nothing to quench the outrage: As noted above, it only means that what at first appeared to be the inappropriate opinion of an individual judge is in fact hardwired into English law, meaning (as I've already said) that the law is an enormous ass.
Again, really? The judge has no role here as a finder of fact? No capability to rule on the credibility and/or probitive value of evidence presented to the court? No ability to judge whether the evidence presented is actually relevant to the claim being made (i.e., in this case, whether the assertion of religious faith, even if true, actually supports the claim of good character)?
While I reiterate that IANAL, this strikes me as an entirely different notion of what it means to be a judge than most Americans would expect. Is an English judge just a sort of master of ceremonies, not permitted to exercise any actual, you know, judgment?
Those actually sound like alibi claims, or perhaps excuses for missing a scheduled hearing, rather than claims of good character aimed at mitigating guilt; are you sure you haven't mixed up the apples and oranges here? But in any case...
...mitigation is an affirmative claim on the part of the defense, and it seems to me that the burden of proof should logically fall on the party making the claim. Of course, English law is under no obligation to conform to my sense of what's logical, but... well, there's that "the law is an ass" thing again.
Are you seriously suggesting that if I'm found guilty of a crime in England, all I need do is claim, without any shred of substantiation, that I'm a good God-fearing boy, and the judge is automatically, unalterably obligated to reduce or suspend my sentence on that basis? Forgive me if this sounds superior, but that's some seriously fucked up law y'all have over there.
All I can think is this: Hasn't Cherie Blair ever read Luke 12:47-48?
"You're religious, so you should know better" should lead to a more severe sentence, in a sane world. I'll settle for completely ignoring religion in sentencing.
defides:
I've been cogitating on our exchange, and went back to your post @66 to see if I'd missed something the first time around.
Before I go on, let me reiterate that the whole discussion of whether Judge Cherie's action was legally correct is a total red herring, because having an agent of the state declare, in her official capacity, that religious faith is de facto evidence of good character is obnoxious on its face to those of us who care about secular government.
With that out of the way, though, I'm still baffled by the way you've presented English law. You said...
So far, so good: In most cases, U.S. law inherently provides for lower sentences for first offenses, as compared to repeated ones, and with the exception of some (controversial) mandatory minimum sentences, prosecutors, judges, and/or juries have latitude to consider mitigating or aggravating circumstances; I think all of us would agree that's as it should be.
Here's where I start to be puzzled: I initially read the word "may" in the above as indicating a possibility, but your subsequent comments seem to suggest that you actually meant "may" to indicate that what followed was an explicitly permitted method of demonstrating mitigation. You say that "as proof of ... previous good character," a criminal facing sentencing may "state that he [is] a devoutly religious person." I have two problems with this: First, since when is the uncorroborated and self-serving statement of someone who's already been convicted of a crime considered proof of anything? Absent corroborating evidence — records of attendance at services, testimony of coreligionists, documented participation in outside activities related to one's faith — the guilty party's self-justification is no more than just that. Second, by what logic does an assertion of faith establish goodness of character that's relevant to the offense of which the party has been convicted? You mention "the current offence, being very much frowned on by that religion, therefore being very much out of character," but what does that mean? If you're asserting that religiosity is a generic indicator of good character, that's one thing (a very dubious thing, IMHO, but still)... but if you're suggesting that specific aspects of religious doctrine establish the goodness of a person's character in ways directly related to their offense, wouldn't it be incumbent upon the defense to actually show that the convicted person had a specific commitment to that area of doctrine? Is professing any of the Abrahamic faiths automatically a mitigation for murder, theft, or perjury, on account of the Ten Commandments?
None of this seems "perfectly reasonable" to me, but of course, the law is the law, whether I think it's reasonable or not. Point blank: Are you or are you not saying that English law compels judges to accept uncorroborated assertions of religious faith as evidence of good character? Effectively, that all a convicted person has to do to get a reduced or suspended sentence is to say "honest, judge, I'm a good guy"? It's hard to believe that's what you mean... but it's also hard to understand how you could mean anything else, considering the position you've taken on this. But...
...why would "the proof ... be slightly harder to adduce"? If a religious person's unsubstantiated assertion of his own goodness is accepted as "evidence," why wouldn't a non-religious person's similar assertion also be?
Nobody here is denying the possibility of mitigation of guilt, nor is anybody suggesting that a judge should ignore the defense's briefs. We (well, I, but I doubt I'm alone in this) do deny that religiosity should be uncritically accepted as an index of goodness, and we're horrified to see the state taking that position. If you're correct in suggesting that English law demands precisely that, then I, for one, am horrified by English law.
I think at some level, the logic in that judge's mind was that the defendant could not possibly have committed the crime in a culpable way in the first place, regardless of the evidence.
"You know this is not acceptable behavior… therefore, you must not have done it! At least not in a blameworthy way."