[FRIAM] Trumps motives not judiciable because they are "in his head"

[Gillian Densmore]

Or he's a complete lunatic that's tried several times to break the rules?
 It's not that deep.

On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 2:47 PM David Eric Smith <desmith at santafe.edu>
wrote:

> I’m glad to have these resources, particularly the lawfare breakdowns.
>
> However, in this conversation I would like to see us separate the things
> we credit with reflecting on real ideas from patent political nonsense and
> bad faith.  Dershowitz exists to prove the maxim that there isn’t really
> any democratic robustness in the US legal system, and that in fact any
> outcome can be achieved through a parade of nonsense by whoever has the
> most money and power.  That is why he takes case after case that have no
> legal merits, to preen by showing that it is the singer — particularly the
> singer Dershowitz — entirely, and not at al the song.
>
> The right wing of the senate is also a case study in how corruption works
> at the institutional level, and how systems like Venezuela develop in the
> stages before the society is in riots and the outside world starts to
> notice that they exist.  So what Dershowitz does in the senate is even more
> extravagant nonsense than what he would do in an actual court, to emphasize
> the fact that not only he, but they, achieve ends through manipulation of
> power without any role for principal.
>
> In contrast, when there is real law, and a good-faith effort to use law to
> create a fair playing field, there can be a good discussion of how legal
> precedent is the applied domain of psychology.  Then we can discuss the
> difference between German interpretations of the relative merits of
> punishment versus rehabilitation, and American positions on similar
> questions (perhaps more historically than in this particular distorted
> present).
>
> Anyway, one more thing to feel sick about with an understanding that one
> has very little and limited agency in this big broken world,
>
> Eric
>
>
>
>
>
> On Jan 31, 2020, at 4:36 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
>
> Hi everybody,
>
> I am often been hard pressed by members of the “home church” to supply
> examples of how locating motives “in the head” is not only a misdirection
> but actually a dangerous illusion.  I give you
> https://shows.acast.com/the-report/episodes/the-impeachment-day-7 which,
> at minute 7:40, contains an argument that Trump’s motives cannot be
> inferred from his behavior because motives are inherently subjective, “in
> the head” of the motivated person.   This, of course, contradicts long
> standing legal practice, where demonstrating motive from higher-order
> patterns in behavior (i.e., patterns distributed more broadly in time and
> space than in the moments surrounding the motivated act) is a necessary
> element in most criminal cases.  It is, for instance, the main element that
> distinguishes manslaughter from murder.   In fact, the whole range of
> offences resulting in death are distinguished by the degree to which the
> jury thinks the lethal act was “voluntary”.
>
> By the way, that link will serve to introduce you to the lawfare “reports
> <https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-report/id1472798169>” which
> attempt to provide a neutral precis of the proceedings, day by day.
>
> Nick
>
> PS:  I just did a dive into the legal dictionary.  Interesting.
> Apparently, the law makes a big distinction between motive
> <https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/motivation>and intent
> <https://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/motivation>, the former
> being more like having a reason to commit a crime, the latter being more
> like setting about to commit the crime.  Interesting stuff, this law
> business  No wonder Oliver Wendell Holmes was a pragmatist.!
>
> N
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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