When Justice goes wrong in “false arrest”
Edward Heppenstall use to teach in his
lectures in the 1980’s and earlier, since he was already a white-head
grandfather at that time, that truth cannot be determined by the voice of the majority
or the decision of a committee, because truth honors itself and establishes
itself through the Word of God. It is not the exact words but my paraphrase of
it and he got it from the earlier work of Ellen White in Great Controversy 595. So truth cannot be established by populism. Populism is a movement that is trendy
today and everywhere. It is an agitation crowd that takes to the streets to
demand, like a huge mob, that a certain aspect should be taken care of. They
normally add a long list of do’s and don’t’s in their posters that they carry
and in their verbalizations and narratives of their songs that go with it. They
try to succeed in pulling someone down whom they “judged” is failing their
demands or “justice”. The problem with this kind of “justice”
is the sources of evidence. Is the evidence build on “fake news’ which in turn
is created by the second floor of every news outlet, who use detective like
journalists to spy or steal or copy people’s data which, by connecting the dots
bring a situation of guessing the truth to the fore. But is that truth? How far
should the dots be to be no longer truth? What if the dots are far but all
media for some reason or another, maybe on ideological grounds, either
democratic or conservative or communism or secular or any other, do not want to
be informed beyond the lines they drew with the scanty evidence that they
found? This becomes then a populism that is
skew. But, if judges in the court of that country, their jurisdiction norm, is
determined by the voice of the majority or size of the crowds and mobs of
populism, then where is truth? Is it theoretically possible for truth to be
kicked under the carpet by this kind of justice and jurisprudence? A lawyer lost his license in my hometown
and he was known to be a very successful lawyer. I do not know what went wrong.
Advocate N. B. Albertyn. I saw his books been chucked out of his office on the
street and I stopped with my car and asked if I can get it. I got it. So one of
them is the fifth edition of 1968 of the Principles of South African Law. On the issue of populism there is a
section with the header: “In accordance with public opinion”. It says that “Laws
must have the approval of the general public”. This is the Apartheid years laws
in South Africa. “If a law is so disliked by a substantial portion of the
community that they break it habitually, it is no law at all.” OK. Like and
dislike. If Holliwood movies and manga and manghwa and cartoon books, novels
and television dramas and programs, spin out gay lifestyles as acceptable long
enough, the majority opinion will be swayed in the direction of LGBTQH
promiscuity and by permissiveness, what is black will be just as right for them
as what is white. Furthermore, if normativism, and we speak of the Bible as
anchor to that normativsm, the Torah of Law of God given to Moses, if that is
dropped as it was in the paradigm shift that came after World War II in 1950 to
be replaced by Modernism that really started in 1918 but died in 1960 to be
taken over by Post-modernism until 1989, then this shift from
norm-directiveness in life to “norm-less” directiveness in life, then obviously
the populism will make this shift as well. That is why the terms “progressiveness”
is developed. It is viewing things in comparison with an earlier reluctancy and
rejection of ideas and taboos, as opposed to a later and more recent acceptance
of those standards once cried foul. So populism can go skew. Why? Because
human nature is not clean, spotless, untainted, untarnished, romantically all
beautiful people. Humanity is sinful, says the Bible, and if you deny the Bible
it will take time for you to realize that to play with snakes has the
disadvantage that the snake bites its owner. Charles Bradford tells the story
of a queen of a tribe who saw a mirror for sale as a merchant came to her
village. She said that she wanted the mirror. She went into her room and saw
herself for the first time. She saw the wrinkles. She was shocked. She threw it
down on the ground and stepped on it saying: “Now I am still the most beautiful
woman in this village”. The standard denied cannot solve your problem and
neither can the standard itself. A rescuer is needed to bring one in line with
the standard and removing it will not help at all. Grace cannot exist unless
there is a Law demanding what Grace must accomplish. Grace brings into line
with the Law and not against it. This is God’s law and principle in the Bible.
It does not nullify the law, it keeps it. That include the Sabbath is Saturday
issue as opposed to the change not by Christ or the Apostles in the Bible but
by the Roman Catholic Church of Saturday to Sunday worship contra the Law of
God. Populism by quantity is not going to establish the truth of this matter.
The same with the smoking argument. Millions of people are smoking so it cannot
be wrong, so the delusion goes. Quantity of supporters cannot underline the
veracity of the truth agitated. “Prohibitory Laws,” says the Report of
the South African Sunday Observance Commision in 1913, “require the support of
a strong enduring public sentiment” (G. Wille, Principles of South African Law 1968, 8). For example: prohibiting
people from drinking intoxicating liquor; from gambling; “from participating in
certain games or activities on Sundays. They should be readily enforceable, and
the penalty should be adequate. Failing these conditions the laws are bound to
fall in desuetude”. Populism and public opinion is defined
as “the views, beliefs, and prejudices of the most influential or predominant portion
of the community as to the justness or propriety of a particular act or course
of conduct”. It goes on to say “the public approves of what it has found to be
useful or beneficial to itself, that is, what experience has shown to be in the
best interests of mankind in their dealings and intercourse with one another”. Just as I have said about a swaying
sense of perception of populism from generation to generation above, so the author
said: “Public opinion on many points naturally varies from time to time”. There
it is. Stability in populism truth is absent. What is considered black in one
generation may become white in another and vice versa. That is what he said.
And he is right. He gave the example that in Roman-Dutch
law in the olden days, adultery was a criminal offence and that it became “unsuited
to modern conditions. This rule fell into disuse in South Africa owing to the
fact that public opinion had for long recognized the advisability of leaving
the offence to be dealt with by the sanctions of morality and of religion
rather than those of the criminal law…the rule had become obsolete”. This is
very important. What is wrong in one generation may be right in another. From the above it is clear: Jurisdiction
is not stable and anyone crying that the Law should be obeyed at all times is
doing right since it is the biblical principle, but with this reservation: laws
can grow foul against the principles of the Bible on many matters of proper
lifestyle. LGBTQH is one of these jurisdiction skew situations that have, just
alike adultery, divorce and other matters become “obsolete to be punished or condemned
or considered wrong”. Daniel and his friends principle is
needed in every generation. Is that clear? The choice to stand though the
heavens fall is required every day regardless of the voice of the majority or
the quantity supporting the biblically wrong. Skew populism, skew jurisprudence and
skew jurisprudence, skew justice. Skew justice and the judge made a skew
decision in court. It has all the legality in shining appearance, but in
essence the judge is against the Word of God and that cannot be truth any
longer. “Well,” the judge will say, “you are living in the time of normativism
when the Bible had to be a standard in society. We are now living in the age of
relativism where a-normativism is the name of the game. ‘Everyone is right in
his own way and eyes’. No one is wrong as long as it does not harm anyone”. Wow. This is a wake-up call is it not?
The problem with the statement is that humanity is not sinless. As long as
people are going against God’s word a Law is needed to say that and a Bible to
spell out what this law is and how it worked in past generations over a period
of nearly four thousand years. In this way, the trends and progressiveness of
generations were investigated and displayed in the Bible. The core value of God
did not change with the tides of public opinion. If Christianity is to be keeping its
biblical orientated values and ethics, it will have to become against the
jurisprudence of the day and the way to deal with this no-no, is to not
participate in society’s demands but to shun away from it. To fight it, to
rebel against it, is not the biblical way. Civil right movements are just as
evil and the wrongs they are fighting against. Why must Christians just abide by
society status quo good or evil without trying to “overthrow” it for the
better? Because Isaiah says that nations are but a “speck of dust in a bucket”
from God’s perspective. There is obviously a historic reason why a nation is
left to do what it is doing, but when God changes His mind, change comes
swiftly. As it came with the election of Donald Trump much to the shocking
surprise of the whole world. As politics are rolling in a new paradigm in South
Korea, at the same time, much to the surprise of everyone here. On the subject of “false arrest” the
Book goes on to say that Justinian said in his Digesta 50.17.106 that “Libertas
inaestimabilis est” which means that “freedom cannot be estimated” or as Lord
de Villiers said: “The value of a man’s personal liberty is far beyond any
estimate in mere money” (Wille, 1968, 531). It says that “the intentional and
illegal seizure of a person is called ‘false arrest’; the intentional and
illegal detention of a person is called ‘false imprisonment’”. The intentional act of one person in
seizing or imprisoning the person of another, unless by virtue of some right,
is an injuria, and consequently the former person is liable in damages. The
false arrest is illegal if it is “without judicial or official authority”. Since
populism or public opinion determines for justice what it should or should not
do, as we showed above, what of the case if society is divided 50% to 50% on a
issue and populism produces two mobs one for and one against the arrest of a
president of the country. What then? The judge has to be very wise. Not
young. Forty years old or in the forties is a no-no. Three judges are necessary
for such a serious situation where the public opinion is divided so clearly.
Otherwise one sits with incompetency in justice application. Legal IQ is not
all that is necessary here. Graduating from University with a summa cum laude
will be an asset but not a help. Years of deliberations in court, namely
judicial experience is necessary. As my students use to say to me at Andrews
University when I taught one class there on semester: “justice must be salted
with mercy”. They were talking about me allocating points to their seminars
that they handed in. But they were right. Only an experienced judge can make a
proper decision and allocate the right verdict in a society’s public opinion
that is so divided. The previous president jumped from the mountain and public
opinion stopped the prosecution of that family for corruption. If this arrested
president drink poison and die, will they also release all the people they
arrested to make their point in line with the wish of 50% of the public
opinion, in line with the second floor wheeling and dealing of the news outlet
of this society tainted with their own agendas, politics, networks, financial
bribes, ideology, skew status quo of lifestyle values? On the case of “Malicious Legal
Proceedings” it is pointed out that if someone has caused another to be
imprisoned unlawfully, “the person who set the law in motion is not liable for
the resulting loss if he acted bona fide”. However, “if he sets the law in
motion, whether in civil or criminal proceedings, without justification in
fact, maliciously, and without reasonable and probably cause, he commits an
injuria for which he is liable in damages”. It is an old law and one can find
it in the Roman-Dutch Law of Voet, 47.10.7. Here is the list of malicious legal
proceedings: 1. malicious arrest of a person’ 2. malicious prosecution of a person 3.malicious institution of civil
proceedings against a person 4.malicious execution against the
property of a person Malice is when the prosecution “misleading
the Court by a willful omission of material facts” (Wille 1968, 534). Also by “any
improper or indirect motive or grossly negligent and reckless interference with
the rights of another person” (Wille, 1968, 534). If the society is sick, as our society is
in this year 2017 here in South Korea, divided in public opinion, they only way
out is a) a longer trial; b) decision for arrest or no arrest by a competent
court of salted experienced “elders” jurists, men or women with many years in
the saddle of the law and court, who can weigh the data and their presentations
with care, consideration, wisdom, equity, balance, harmony. The essentials of a good jurisdiction is
it must be: 1. Reasonable; 2. Impartial; 3. In accordance with public opinion
[??, sorry we have put a red card on this one above but the red card remains,
in our current society the public opinion is 50% against 50% pro, thus not a
help] 4. Applicable in practice; 5. Certain; 6. Comprehensive and finally 7. Publically
promulgated (Wille 1968, 5 dealing with the essentials of national law). The Christian and Adventist will do
themselves a favor by distancing themselves from politics, jurisprudence at
present since the next evil that will jump forward is civil right movements and
agitation groups screaming or agitating for the equity that was severely upset
in the affairs. It is a matter of time for them to realize this and the velocity
of reaction may be severe so that Christians and Adventists safeguard themselves
to abstain from involvement. Since jurisprudence was impaired on
matters mentioned above, one can probably say that this election is a “stolen
election”. Daylight robbery. But, behind and above and over this
array of strange events, is God’s view of nations as a speck of dust in a bucket.
He controls history for His own Time Charts of prophecy and a “Time of Trouble
like there never was” is still ahead of us before the Second Coming.