The first lesson in law

What do the law books tell us about the ouroboros of criminal law?

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ONCE upon a time there will be a low country known as Lawland. Most of its land will be a plain. The river Law will flow from west to east almost through the centre of the country, thus dividing it into two more or less equal parts. The river will embrace the sea at the eastern edge of the country and the southern part of its delta will consist of a swampy region called Quagmire. To the south and southwest, Lawland will be bounded by the Invincibles, a mountain range with blue ridges and white peaks. Lawland could be beautiful, but it will not be. A conflict will drain all life from it.

The cause of the conflict will be the same old one. For years there will be a debate over the issue of capital punishment. Neither retentionists nor abolitionists will be ready to budge even an inch. The retentionists, ruling party under the excellent leadership of Damon, will think that taking life for life is just and any other punishment for the more heinous and serious crimes would be unjust. They will argue that imprisonment as a punishment for murder, for example, meant that the right to life was being substituted with the right to liberty. This will be unacceptable to them.

The abolitionists, who will be in the opposition, and whose leader will be charismatic Pythias, will maintain that the right to life is a basic unalienable right that could not be taken away. Capital punishment, they will say, not only intended to take it away but also brutalised society and dehumanised and desensitised the participants.

Both parties will try their best to convince each other and the hoi polloi. Damon will assert in an address to the nation that not only did capital punishment prevent recidivism, through an obvious mechanism, but it also acted as a deterrent to would-be criminals.

A few days later, Pythias, in a televised interview, will produce copies of several surveys and reports proving that the deterrent effect of capital punishment is a myth. Both leaders, as a matter of fact, will be warming up for the forthcoming elections.

With the formal inauguration of the election campaigning, the controversy will only intensify. Draco, a senior retentionist leader, will claim during an election rally that not having capital punishment will amount to secondary victimisation of the family and friends of the victim. Cesare Beccaria, a young and brilliant abolitionist, will dispute the veracity of this claim and counter-argue that it was in fact capital punishment that resulted in secondary victimisation of the criminal's family and friends, who had no direct role in the crime. He will insist that the death penalty extinguishes the possibility of redemption and rehabilitation.

In reply, Draco will aver that in many cases of life imprisonment for heinous crimes, the convicts had committed further murders in the high-security jails in which they were kept. He will question the wisdom of the policy of spending precious taxpayer money on such dangerous and hopeless criminals. Cesare Beccaria will retort that since the retentionist government had hardly found any other positive use for taxpayers' money, it might as well use it for the welfare of these convicts who, he will assert, were not as hopeless as Draco said they were. He will go on to explain how capital punishment was more expensive in the long run because it involved the substantial costs of appeals and legal counselling.

The voting will be scheduled to be held in three phases. The first two phases will by and large be peaceful, with only a few minor incidents of malpractice and violence here and there. Opinion polls will suggest that the abolitionists were headed towards a simple majority. Most analysts will attribute this result to the anti-incumbency factor.

On the eve of the third phase, the cavalcade in which Cesare Beccaria would be returning from the capital to his hometown will be attacked by unidentified gunmen with rockets, grenades and gunfire. Twelve people will die on the spot. Beccaria will be seriously injured and admitted to the nearest hospital. All prominent leaders of both parties will condemn the attack. Pythias will term it as a deep and saddening shock and a personal tragedy. Maimonides, another important abolitionist leader, will say that the attack not only showed the callous attitude of the government towards the opposition, which was heading towards a landslide victory in the elections, but was also proof of the failure of the retentionist government in maintaining peace and security in the country.

A leading retentionist, Kant, will rant in front of the media that the government did not consist of omniscient and omnipresent gods and goddesses. Antisocial and antinational elements could carry out such acts of terror whenever they wanted. The government could not foresee and prevent all such incidents but it could take steps to ensure that the culprits responsible for the ghastly act were nabbed and punished. He will assure the media that the government was taking all such steps.

Damon will reveal that the case had been handed over to the Bureau of Investigation with strict instructions to submit a report within fifteen days. He will promise that all necessary measures would be taken to find out who was responsible for the attack. He will further disclose that the government was not ruling out the possibility of the involvement of a foreign power in the attack. The two countries to the north of Lawland will have abolitionist governments and this comment would be seen as an oblique strike against them.

Next evening, after the voting is over, Cesare Beccaria will succumb to his injuries. That very evening, opinion polls will suggest that the retentionists had managed to make a comeback. The final result of the elections will be expected to be neck to neck. A couple of days later, counting being in full swing, a sniper will shoot Kant in the head. He will lapse into a coma.

Speaking before media-persons, Damon will wonder if the assault had not been an act of revenge. Pythias will term the timing of Damon's statement unfortunate. Emotions will run high on both sides. The situation will be tense and it will soon degenerate into open street fights between the rival factions.

The first day itself will leave thirty-two dead and about three hundred injured. Curfew will be imposed but it will be rather ineffective. Hundreds will be killed and thousands injured in group clashes over the next fortnight. The abolitionists will allege that the police and the troops were openly supporting the retentionist hooligans. Draco, spokesman of the government, will deny these allegations as false and baseless. He will state that all necessary measures were being taken to stop the violence. During the next few days, these 'necessary measures' will be found to consist of the arrest of all prominent abolitionist leaders. Pythias, however, will manage to escape to one of the countries to the north.

The government will pass a special ordinance empowering the police to arrest anybody without a warrant. Hundreds will be jailed without a trial. Anybody suspected of having sympathy for the abolitionists will be questioned and harassed. The disappearance of abolitionist sympathisers will become the order of the day. This will force many people into exile. The southern parts of the two countries to the north will be flooded with refugees from Lawland.

Damon will defend the actions of his government and blame the abolitionists for taking an unbending and intolerable stance. He will emphasise that if a person was awarded the death penalty, he might own up to the crime and feel sincere remorse. This, he will argue, was one of the countless reasons why capital punishment had to be continued.

Draco will remember that Kant, his dear friend who was struggling between life and death because of the actions of some terrorists deserving death penalty, was fond of saying that since every person is valuable and worthy of respect because of their ability to make free and rational choices, the murderer, too, must be respected by treating them in the same way in which they have treated other people, i.e., by executing them.

Against this, Maimonides, who would have been arrested by then, will issue a statement from jail that Kant's justification required an ideal, rational killer who, in reality, was a rarity. Maimonides will deride capital punishment and declare that it was better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death.

The debate will soon acquire the prominence of an international dispute after the President of the lawless country to the south will openly express his support for the policies of the retentionist government of Lawland. The President will observe that since criminals deserve punishment and the punishment must be in proportion to the crime committed, therefore heinous crimes such as murder and rape must be punished with death penalty.

In response, the President of one of the countries to the north will point out that in certain situations it was practically impossible to do so because no proportionate punishment was available; for example, if a terrorist killed a hundred people, he could not be punished by killing him a hundred times. The Prime Minister of the other country to the north will remark that this 'eye for an eye' attitude led to absurd choices for punishment. As an example, he will cite Hammurabi's Code, in which it is laid down that if a builder builds a house for someone and does not construct it properly, and the house he built falls in and kills the son of the owner, then the son of that builder shall be put to death.

The debate will rage on. Abolitionist rebels, under Pythias, will form the National Abolitionist Party (NAP) with the aim of overthrowing the retentionist Damon government. These rebels will receive financial and military aid as well as ideological support from the governments of the two countries to the north.

By that time, the refugees will be thoroughly disenchanted with the retentionist government, and therefore their camps will be a fertile nursery of cadets for the uprising. In addition, Pythias will have a large support base in the region north of the river Law, because he will have been born and bred in this region, unlike Damon, who will be a native of the south.

It will, therefore, be quite easy to instigate an insurgency. The rebel abolitionists will build up their base around Pythias's hometown. The insurgency will spread to other provinces and soon all the territory north of the river Law will become an abolitionist stronghold. The rebels will suspend capital punishment within the areas they will control although, ironically, there will be no need for it because all adversaries who could possibly be sentenced to death will be killed in the battlefields.

The retentionist government will be worried. It will take all steps towards curbing the rebellion. A state of emergency will be declared in the Northern provinces. The army will be sent in. Misusing the special powers granted to them, the military forces will start a ruthless campaign of ethnic cleansing. Hundreds of suspected abolitionists will be killed. Many more will be tortured. Entire villages suspected of being abolitionist hide-outs will be razed to the ground. There will be widespread reports of gang rapes and massacres. Helicopter gunships and bomber planes will be used against innocent, unarmed country folk. The entire north will be terrorised.

This cruel and inhuman treatment meted out to the common people will only serve to fuel the insurgency. For every abolitionist killed by the army, ten more will join their ranks. The mass base of the abolitionists among the people of the Northern provinces as well as the teeming refugees will only deepen and widen. With the balance of power tilting in favour of the NAP, the writing will be on the wall for the retentionist government.

The result will naturally be a growing sense of frustration and helplessness in the Damon government. A high-level meeting of its top brass will be convened in which it will be decided that to stop the NAP in its tracks, its ideological bases had to be destroyed. It will also be decided that even harsher measures should be imposed to curb the growing discontent against the government. A systematic seek-and-destroy operation will be initiated against abolitionist ideologues. This will result in the soon-to-be-infamous Central University Trials.

The Central University will be located in the capital city of Lawland and will be the epicentre of intellectual debate and discourse in the country. It will boast of the best national and many eminent international academicians. The institute will have a tradition of open discussions and the practice of a liberal set of values. The retentionist government will be deeply wary of the Central University, its staff and its students.

However, such will be the standing of the university that the government will not dare to get involved in its internal matters without a reasonable justification. It will be waiting for an excuse to interfere. The government will be granted the pretext it will have waited for when Professor G, a world-renowned authority on religious philosophy, and an abolitionist sympathiser, will publish a paper in which he will propound that since the Universe was infinite in all directions, therefore it could be stated that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe.

Damon will have Professor G arrested on charges of promoting superstition and irrational thought in a progressive scientific society. Professor G will be accused of being a spy and booked not only under the Science Inquisitions Act, but also for sedition, waging war against the country and criminal conspiracy to overthrow the government. All these charged crimes would be capital offences in Lawland.

Professor G will be a national of one of the countries to the north. The government of his native country will manage to create enough international pressure to force the Damon government to reconsider its position on the issue. It will agree to release him but on certain conditions. The first condition will be that Professor G apologise for his claim that the Earth was at the centre of the Universe. The second condition will be that he leave Lawland immediately. The third condition will be that he provide a written bond to the effect that he would never return to Lawland.

After much deliberation with his lawyers and his conscience, Professor G will agree to all three conditions. He will apologise and be allowed to return to his homeland. Tension will be defused but only for the time being. The retentionist government will have tasted first blood. Its determination to destroy any opposition to its policies in the Central University, working under its very nose, quite literally, will be stronger than ever.

A couple of months later it will detain Professor S, perhaps the greatest contemporary philosopher, Head of the Department of Post-Modernism at the Central University and a person widely believed to have abolitionist leanings, on charges of sedition, waging war against the country and indulging in subversive and disruptive activities.

The authorities will, to tell the truth, be angry with him for criticising the philosophers of Lawland for holding the view that since a person walking on a tightrope of truth may fall onto the ground of lies, and since his final target at the end of the tightrope is again the ground, therefore truth is the same as falsehood. Professor S will have pointed out that these philosophers choose to ignore the explanation that truth is not the destination at the end of the tightrope, it is the walking.

Professor S will be a citizen of the other country to the north. Like Professor G, he will be accused of being a foreign spy. For the abolitionist countries to the north, this will be too much. They will demand the immediate release of Professor S. But this time the Lawland government will be adamant. Professor S will be tried, found guilty on all three counts and sentenced to death. His appeal will be rejected by the Supreme Court of Lawland which will uphold the death penalty awarded by the trial court.

Surprisingly, however, President Damon will agree to be lenient on a petition for clemency if only Professor S agreed to accept that truth and falsehood were indistinguishable ab initio and ad infinitum. Not so surprisingly, Professor S will refuse to do so and audaciously propose that he be rewarded, not punished. He will say that his postmodern views that truth was only a matter of perspective need not necessarily be accepted, all he wanted was that they be shown the respect they deserved. If the retentionist government was not capable of doing so, they might as well give him a cup of hemlock to drink.

This will enrage Damon, who will reject the mercy petition. It will be widely rumoured that he tore apart the petition in a fit of rage, thus closing the doors of life on Professor S. This will result in a major crisis as the governments of the two countries to the north will proclaim the trial staged and mala fide and demand the immediate release and handing over of the incarcerated philosopher. They will serve an ultimatum to the Damon government. The Damon government, paying no heed to the ultimatum, will go ahead and give Professor S the lethal injection he will have wished and challenged for.

The two countries to the north will declare war on Lawland. Pythias will vow to stop at nothing short of complete cleansing of his beloved motherland of retentionist jackals. The president of one of the countries to the north will say that Professor S had died on the cross of truth at the altar of evil and his sacrifice would not go to waste. His ascension to heaven was as sure as the victory of the abolitionists.

NAP cadres and the armies of the two countries to the north will sweep through the abolitionist-dominated north of the country. A siege will be laid on the capital which will last for almost three weeks. Finally, after heavy fighting and thousands of civil and military causalities, the abolitionists' alliance will manage to seize the capital. Thus, power will essentially pass into the hands of Pythias and his party.

Damon will flee to the lawless country to the south. Maimonides and other important abolitionist leaders will be set free. Capital punishment will be banned with immediate effect. The retentionists will be pushed to the south of the river Law. The war will have devastated the infrastructure and crippled the economy. The social fabric will resemble the broken highways to the north rather than the silken threads of the south.

The retentionists of Lawland, although out of power, will have the open support of the lawless country to the south. Besides, the southern provinces of Lawland will continue to have a retentionist majority. So, all will not be a bed of roses for the new Pythias government and it will meet with stiff resistance south of the river Law. However, slowly but surely, and after much bloodshed, the abolitionists will manage to gain a foot-hold south of the river Law. Afterwards, the opposition will begin to withdraw to the southernmost parts of the country. Consequently, almost three-fourths of the country will come under the abolitionist rule.

But the remaining one-fourth will be a serious headache for Pythias. Retentionist rebels will form the Standard Law and Ethics Emblem Party (SLEEP) which will have the declared aim of overthrowing the abolitionist government and re-establishing retentionist control over the country. SLEEP cadres will entrench themselves in the valleys and forests of the Invincibles as well as the swampy jungles of the Quagmire. They will be quite familiar with the terrain and will use this knowledge to their advantage.

The abolitionist government will launch a number of major operations against them, but on all such occasions, the rebels will hide in the jungles only to reemerge at a strategic time, thereby inflicting heavy losses on the abolitionist army. The status quo will be maintained, with the retentionists dominating over the mountain regions of the Invincibles as well as the Quagmire delta and the abolitionists controlling the rest of the country. Nevertheless, the rebels will keep launching their own guerrilla strikes every now and then and so the government will be forced to be on guard constantly.

The civil war will be a huge burden on society. It will also take a heavy toll on the economy. Not the least strain will be due to the jailed retentionists who, after the abolition of capital punishment, will be overcrowding the jails. It will become clear that the government could not afford to ignore these problems for long. The abolitionist cabinet will hold a high-level meeting to find a way out of this quagmire.

The unanimous opinion will be that to establish lasting peace and security in the country, the rebels will have to be wiped out once and for all. This will give birth to the largest offensive ever against the rebels in the Quagmire, which will be headed by Maimonides himself. The result will be the soon-to-be infamous Battle of Quagmire. It will be the bloodiest battle in the history of Lawland. Legend will have it that the death toll was so high that blood filled the swamps as if it were seawater at high tide.

After many days of gruesome fighting, abolitionist troops will be about to capture the provincial capital when the SLEEP, true to its nature, will set off a surprise counter-strike. The strategy will work and abolitionist troops will be routed. Maimonides will go missing in action. A couple of days later, his body, badly mutilated, will be discovered in a hunter's hut.

The defeat will be the biggest blow ever to the abolitionist government. It will prove to be the proverbial last straw. In an emergency meeting of the legislature, the abolitionist government of Lawland will pass a law stating that anybody supporting capital punishment shall be awarded the death sentence.