This is a feature not a bug in the system. But for a lot of idealistic young law students learning that will make them deeply uncomfortable
This is a feature not a bug in the system. But for a lot of idealistic young law students learning that will make them deeply uncomfortable
Ask a cop pulling you over if it's a feature as he writes you a ticket lmao.
It certainly is to the cop. How else could they do a pretext stop?
That was precisely my point. “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” is the fact of how western legal systems work, the rule of law is a tale that they tell to impressionable schoolchildren.
It's certainly not unique to western legal systems, and I'd even say not generally(!) a characteristic of them. That quote comes from the Soviet Union and is more associated with totalitarian regimes where nebulous thought crimes are on the books and laws spun out of whole cloth. Think China.
Sure, when the state wants you, they'll get you. Read Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent. I'm not one to say otherwise (quite the opposite), but for most people, most of the time, in most of their lives, western legal systems are pretty top notch in protecting people from arbitrary and corrupt application of the law.
In systems that truly embrace arbitrary and corrupt enforcement, it's quite a bit different system than largely objective traffic laws which society has agreed upon but which are rarely enforced (e.g. turn signals, lane merging in intersections, etc.) which turn into selective enforcement. I say this as someone who firmly believes that selective enforcement is ripe for abuse and has inherent problems, but on the balance I prefer the latitude I have as a driver in today's system than one where all traffic regs are enforced through automation at scale (which may be where we're headed in the next few decades, honestly). The reality is that as drivers, we probably curse the fact that these laws aren't enforced more often until we're the ones cited.