Recently HSBC, the British bank, was found by the Department of Homeland Security to have laundered vast amounts of money for drug cartels, terrorist organisations, and rogue states. One would expect a steep penalty for aiding and abetting such malevolent organisations. Consider Salim Hamdan, a man whose sole crime was to drive Osama bin Laden around for $200 a month, yet nonetheless ended up in prison from 2001 to 2009 and was subjected to “coercive interrogation” and “sexual humiliation”, whatever that means. Given the billions of dollars HSBC laundered for these kinds of groups, what Hamdan got should be a picnic in comparison, right? Well it turns out, not so right, as the Justice Department decided not to prosecute.
Tag: Law
Judges and Juries
One of the popular arguments for democracy as opposed to expert-driven, sophiarchist government is the notion that democracy is good for the same reasons that juries are good as opposed to judges. David Estlund makes just such an argument in Democratic Authority on the basis that all reasonable people can accept the jury model but not a system of judges due to uncertainty regarding the knowledge of the judges and that, by extension, all reasonable people can accept democracy but not government by experts. Today I aim to challenge this line of argument with a more critical examination of judges and juries and how we use them.
Benjamin Studebaker 