You have just read about what can happen when there is no effective authority. Life in the Old West, as Twain described it, was sometimes violent and dangerous. Authority can be used to protect our rights to life, liberty and property. Governments must put in place good laws, institutions and processes to ensure accountability, stability, equality and access to justice for all. This ultimately leads to respect for human rights and the environment. It also helps to reduce the level of corruption and cases of violent conflict. Court judgments: In this case, reasonable suspicion should have been required to search the defendant`s Blackberry device found during a border search. Although a Blackberry device is an „electronic storage device,“ similar to Arnold`s laptop, for which no reasonable suspicion was required during a border search, Arnold, 523 F.3d to 946, political reasons require a statement that reasonable suspicion is required for border searches. In particular, failure to require reasonable suspicion leads to increased racial profiling at the border.
Instead, requiring reasonable suspicion during border searches would align immigration enforcement with overall law enforcement objectives. Therefore, requiring a higher standard of border searches, similar to general law enforcement searches, would reduce racial profiling even in the absence of more specific legislation or regulations. In contrast, Dworkin believes that we generally have „a duty to fulfill our responsibilities under social practices that define groups and assign special responsibilities to members“ (Dworkin 1986, 198), provided that group members believe that their obligations are special and personal, and result from a proper interpretation of the same concern for the well-being of all its members. In truth, however, these conditions are not a matter of the members` actual feelings and thoughts—they are interpretive qualities that we should attribute to them (201). Why do they nevertheless establish a duty of obedience rather than a duty of respectful care or apology for instances of non-compliance? To be sure, obedience is not part of Dworkin`s paradigmal virtue of „brotherhood“—helping and supporting are normal duties. In fact, the classic associative model of political authority was not brotherhood, but fatherhood, against which Locke argued so decisively. This is not to deny that we owe something to these decent associations to which we do not voluntarily belong – but we need more arguments to determine exactly what this represents. It is interesting to note that this presentation assumes that one can say what the authority requires, whether or not the requirement is justified on the merits. Richard Friedman argues that „if there is no way of knowing whether a statement is authoritative other than by evaluating its content to see whether it merits acceptance as such, then the distinction between an authoritative statement and a rational advice or belief will have collapsed“ (Friedman 1973, 132). Such an idea is developed by Raz in one of the main arguments in favor of the „source thesis“, the idea that an adequate test of the existence and content of law must be based solely on social facts and not on moral arguments.
(See the entry on legal positivism.) The subjects of authority „can benefit from its decisions only if they can verify their existence and content in a way that does not depend on raising the same issues that the authority must regulate“ (Raz 1994, 219). If the law aims to settle disputes on moral issues, then the law must be identifiable without resolving the same disputes. The law is thus exhausted by its sources (such as legislative decrees, court decisions and customs, as well as local conventions of interpretation). This type of reasoning has been generalized (cf. Shapiro 1998), but also criticized. It is unclear what kind of limitation the idea that it should not include „the same subjects“ represents – perhaps if morality is a necessary condition, there could be moral tests of authority that leave the relevant dependent reasons intact (Coleman 2001, 126-7). And while law does serve as a blueprint for controlling and evaluating behavior, it can also have other functions, such as educating its subjects about right and wrong, and this may serve poorly the attitude that rules must in part be followed because they are rules (Walukhov 1994). The correlational view of authority commitment is not generally accepted. Some argue that legal authority does not imply a right of reclamation, but only a set of freedoms: to decide certain matters for a society and enforce its decisions. (Soper 2002, 85 ff; cf. Ladenson, 1980; Greenawalt, 1987; 47–61; and Edmundson, 1998, pp. 7-70).
The concept of freedom must answer two questions. First, is it not a characteristic of a right of decision that it obliges subjects not to react to competing decisions? If the law says that abortion is permitted, and the Church says it is not, what does it mean to deny the Church`s right to decide, if not that public order should be structured by the first decision and not by the second, even if the second is correct? Second, does the right to enforcement imply an obligation for subjects to pay the penalty if necessary? If so, then it is only an abbreviated version of the correlative theory of obligations – a theory that states that punitive and restorative obligations, but not primary obligations, are binding. If not, it stands in stark contrast to the actual views of judicial officials, who do not believe subjects are free to avoid punishment if they can. Regardless of your audience or the type of legal document you write, remember that the use of authority only supports your analysis and arguments. McGregor and Adams, op. cit. cit., p. 88; Sorkin, op. cit. cit., p. 488.
When you use and quote authority, you are telling the reader that the ideas in your paper are not only your own ideas and conclusions, but also that your analysis and arguments are in fact supported by statutes such as court opinions, statutes, regulations, or other sources (e.g., legislative history). See Sorkin, op. cit. cit., p. 488. If you use a secondary source and cite that source in your paper, let the reader know that a lawyer supports your analysis. Therefore, the use of authority helps to make your analysis stronger, more credible and more persuasive. Take full advantage of this tool. Kinsella: It is important to talk about the rule of law and impartial justice and what it means when the president or other members of the government put their thumbs in the balance, order prosecutions or order people in the Department of Justice not to take certain actions in law enforcement and investigations. We`ve seen a lot of political interference in high-profile Justice Department cases under the Trump administration — the case of Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, not to mention the White House`s attempts to shut down the Mueller investigation. Efforts like these have undermined the Justice Department`s independence from political interference. A theory of political obligation is not voluntary if its principles justifying legal authority do not affirm the choice or will of the subjects among their grounds for supposing that they are obliged to obey.
Three of these arguments are of some relevance. This section provides examples of the different types of plagiarism listed above. First, read excerpts from two original sources, a law article and a case, both of which address the issue of whether searching the contents of a laptop transported across a border into the United States without reasonably suspecting that the computer contains evidence of a crime constitutes an illegal search that violates an individual`s right to privacy under the Fourth Amendment.