Eric PuryearPlease don’t confuse what is legal with what is right. There is some overlap, of course, but not as much as one might think. Laws are generally written by the rich and powerful to protect their interests, often at the expense of the poor and weak. Many atrocities are lawful, and many acts of mercy are unlawful. I say this as an attorney.
Goobermunch@eric And fundamentally, in a common law system, decisional law is typically a court’s balancing of the parties’ competing interests and rights. Given that for the vast majority of the common law system’s existence, certain kinds of folks had more rights than others, it’s not surprising that those biases are baked in. Stare decisis has, as a virtue, that the law is predictable. It’s worse vice is that it makes the law predictably regressive.