Crimes against "humanity"

[softwareNerd]

Saddam Hussein has been sentenced to death for crimes against "humanity". He surely deserves to die for his huge list of crimes...but... these were crimes against human beings, not against "humanity", whatever that means.

Every crime is committed against specific human beings. Why is there a need for a notion of "crime against humanity"? What does it mean? Is it supposed to mean, crimes again a whole lot of individual human beings? Does it merely mean "mass murderer"? Other than the sheer number of people killed, were Saddam's crimes larger violations than the crime of the 9/11 hijackers? Other than the numbers, were they more egregious than the crimes of some sexual predators who torture and kill their victims?

The idea of "crimes against humanity" is a useless concept with no clear-cut referents. As such, it is dangerous by being ill-defined. It can easily me assumed to mean: did something we really, really find offensive. There is no need for such a legal concept, and it ought to be discarded.

[Ifat Glassman]

Other than the sheer number of people killed, were Saddam's crimes larger violations than the crime of the 9/11 hijackers? Other than the numbers, were they more egregious than the crimes of some sexual predators who torture and kill their victims?

What do you mean by "larger violations"? I have tried asking about the question how can something be more evil than something else, if morality is binary on another thread, somewhat related, but I was told that there is no explicit Objectivist literature discussing the principle of quantity ("more/less good/evil").

Also, "egregious" translates for me into "shameful". How is disgrace a measurement of a crime severity? Shameful for whom? In the eyes of whom?

[softwareNerd]

By "egregious" I meant "extremely bad" rather than "shamefully bad". Anyhow, scratch "egregious" and replace with some other word that shows degree of badness!

Which leads to the other question. There definitely are degrees of evil. Also, there definitely are degrees of crime. I figure that belongs in the other thread, though. I'll give it a read.

(Added: For now, chew on this: Rand thought Kant was one of the most evil guys in recent history.)

Edited November 7, 2006 by softwareNerd

[DavidOdden]

On the other hand, we're speaking of a country with no effective system of law or government. In a modern civilized society, such a vague thing as "crimes against humanity" would have no place, because the referents of those evil acts would be well-identified by existing law. Iraq had nothing that it could rely on, so they are in the kind of primitive common law situation that England was in before Edmund the whicheverth. One of the fundamental problems is that, I am betting, there was no existing Iraqi law that Sodom violated. In such a circumstance, justice nearly (please note the adverb) has to operate outside of the law: but the escape hatch is the "international law" concept of crimes against humanity. This is a bizarre hybridization of natural law concepts and legal positivism, where a so-called "international law" against certain acts is presumed to exist qua law (this maybe satisfies the positivist community because it refers the matter to a sovereign which weakly appears to exist), but by reference to "humanity" as the victim, it refers to a kind of fundamentality in the rights violation that just cannot be denied. (Compare various other rights violations which are not seen as being horrid crimes -- maybe Matt can say something about shoplifting as a form of legal rudeness rather than being a crime demanding retribution, though that may depend on the DA).

What it means, I think, is that there is a fundamentally evil rights-violator who fully deserves to die. There is no clean statutory means to reach that end, in current Iraq, so appeal to this neo-common law crime of "crimes against humanity" is what is available. The virtue of "crimes against humanity" is that these refer to pseudo-laws (not real statutes enforced by real governments) which enforce real moral principles, viz. massive-scale rights violations.

The corpse numbers mean something. They mean, this was not a little boo-boo on the part of a basically good person. The numbers mean that he is a thoroughly evil man, and that he deserves death. I should also point out that the concept refers not just to multiple murders, but to systematic rights violations when no other legal recourse exists -- e.g. violations under color of law. It is tragic that the crime could not be prosecuted under more morally righteous principles, but better that a bit of bad rhetoric be spewed out in order to secure justice, than that a man comparable to Stalin, Pol Pot, Bokassa, Amin or the various North Korean Kims be set free.

[Shinokamen]

Personally, I think that his crimes are deserving of much more than death. Death is far to good for a man as utterly evil as he is. I think that he should be chained to a tree stump in Louisiana where he would then be left until he died.

Objective, no. Just, maybe.

[LaszloWalrus]

What do you mean by "larger violations"? I have tried asking about the question how can something be more evil than something else, if morality is binary on another thread, somewhat related, but I was told that there is no explicit Objectivist literature discussing the principle of quantity ("more/less good/evil").

Also, "egregious" translates for me into "shameful". How is disgrace a measurement of a crime severity? Shameful for whom? In the eyes of whom?

Craig Biddle said something addressing this point in his 2004 OCON class: "There are no degrees of upholding principles; there are only degrees of violating them."