Scotland could become one of the first countries to establish a specific crime for mass environmental destruction as championed by late Scots barrister Polly Higgins.
It needs to change then, at least for stuff like this. It’s too serious to let off on a technicality.
Letting criminals off on technicalities is one of the things that put us down this dark road in the first place. Justice is far more important and letting them off is not justice, I don’t care how the original U.S. system was set up.
Well the general principle is that you can’t be punished for behavior that was legal when you did it. Otherwise you open the door to “doing X is illegal now” and then locking everyone who was documented doing X in the last several years.
Which maybe sounds nice when it’s destroying the climate… but it’s less nice when it’s gay marriage, alcohol consumption, owning X book, etc.
This is how the legal system typically works when a new law is introduced.
It needs to change then, at least for stuff like this. It’s too serious to let off on a technicality.
Letting criminals off on technicalities is one of the things that put us down this dark road in the first place. Justice is far more important and letting them off is not justice, I don’t care how the original U.S. system was set up.
It needs to go.
Well the general principle is that you can’t be punished for behavior that was legal when you did it. Otherwise you open the door to “doing X is illegal now” and then locking everyone who was documented doing X in the last several years.
Which maybe sounds nice when it’s destroying the climate… but it’s less nice when it’s gay marriage, alcohol consumption, owning X book, etc.
Funny how quickly people forget that they’re supporting authoritarianism just because it happens to line up with their belief system in one instance.