Should DUI be illegal?

[nanite1018]

Perhaps your premise is that a just law must be retaliatory or retributive?

Yes, that is basically it. A just law should ban the initiation of force, including the threat of force (threat in the sense, not of risk, but rather of separating action and thought). An action which may lead to some violation of rights but is not in itself a violation of rights cannot be subject to legal restriction out of "justice", as justice, in the political realm, is about punishing violations of rights. DUI is not, in itself, a violation of other drivers rights, for as I said before, no one could know you were drunk driving unless you were driving badly (in which case you are breaking other traffic laws, which are necessary to prevent road chaos). Since I can't know you are drunk driving, and therefore can't know you are an increased risk, your actions cannot fit under the "threat of force" category, and the action itself does not involve the use of force against me, and so it isn't a violation of my (the other drivers) rights. From that standpoint, I do not see how laws against DUI serve any purpose except that of a deterrent, which is not alone sufficient cause to outlaw something.

We don't agree yet. I would favor DUI regulations on a private road, but they would be more a matter of contract law instead of criminal law. If there were no DUI laws, criminal courts would still need to decide whether a specific act of driving while under the influence of alcohol reaches any of the standards for criminal negligence; the legal question does not go away it transforms from a legislative definition to a judicial precedent. This is not an improvement in any sense, and it lacks the benefits to accident prevention a clear law would bring.

There can be no laws regulating private conduct unless there is the use of force or the threat of force. Drivers must accept the rules, whatever they are, for the private road they are driving on, and so assume whatever risk there is in driving on said road. As a result, unless someone violates one of those rules or actually hits someone, a driver on that road is not violating anyone's rights, and so no regulations on roads or driving could be just in a private road system. So they would not be a matter of law. I'm not convinced of the existence of negligence as a crime in an Objectivist system, because any given act of negligence would also have to fall under the category of "threat of force" or "force", I don't see how it could be otherwise (except for the case of DUI and other similar "under the influence" actions).

Indeed, negligence is the only possible area of the law that I could see you fitting DUI under with any legitimacy, but as I said above, I'm unconvinced as to whether negligence could ever constitute a "threat of force" all on its own.