Lecture 3 Minimal State

well welcome everyone and uh welcome to our second lecture i hope you have enjoyed the first one i hope you enjoyed the interview that discussion we had and here we are on the second one just as a reminder in the last lecture place police within a liberal democracy society we talked about police a lot about how the legitimacy of police is dependent on a limit of democracy now here's the thing about police that you have to keep in mind police is the arm of the state police enforces rules and regulations passed by the state in

other words the way for a state to intervene is through police it doesn't have to be enough uh armed police officer it could be that um health care worker could be the child services worker it could be anybody right it could be the home inspector the boyle officer the parking officer nonetheless the only way for a law to work is for the government to be able to say do this or else and police is the or else part of that sentence you know pay your taxes or else don't park in here or else don't drop

don't steal don't murder don't do this don't do that or else police is that or else part so it'll be impossible to talk about the police without talking about the state it would be impossible to talk about the relationship between police and society without talk about the state because at the end of the day it is the police that simply enforces the rules of the state forces the laws of the state please don't come up with these rules themselves so then we have to think about the state in an academic way and you know sure

one could devote a lifetime to studying this but we're going to devote a lecture fair enough okay let's start from the beginning why is it that we live together why is it that you and i choose to lift well because we depend on each other don't we i need you to survive we talk about this in alaska and you need me to survive so we have you know in order to have doctors and fire departments and uh you know bank accounts and mcdonald's and hero burgers and beer and marijuana and dogs and groomers and all

of these things in order for me to enjoy all of these things i need to first live in a society okay seems good but here's a problem to live in a society you have to make a lot of sacrifices freud sigmund freud of the sort of psychoanalysis firm fame suggested in a book called civilization's discontent that really all of our unhappiness this very source of our unhappiness a society because it's a society that forces us to suppress our most instinctual desires and needs in other words society forces us to suppress our id remember ego and

the superego or it is our most instinctual part it is our most animalistic part and uh he suggests that it is the suppression of it as a result of living in a society that prevents our happiness what do i mean by that well maybe you know when was the last summer you're walking down the street and you had a strong desire to use a washroom took half an hour 45 minutes maybe to find a place to go wasn't that painful was it uncomfortable didn't that make you unhappy you did it because we live in a

type of society that says you can't just pull to the side and do your business that's it simple example there are many more why do i have to go to work why do you have to go to university why do we have to make money why do we have to put on clothes when we are outside why can't i sit down wherever i want eat whatever i want open up a restaurant have a drink or arrival the answer to all of those is because the society prohibits it the society requires me to control my aid

and to suppress it as much as i can a civilized person is one who can suppress your instinctual desires our side depends on a large extent on this right the entire social glue that keeps us together is this agreement this sort of bond that we have that we all agreed that for us to be able to live together we need to follow certain rules and codes of conduct certain laws first of all lift again but you know there are many different theories that's how we can go about doing that there is sort of a communal

theory that maybe we can just be very communal there is a participatory democracy there is a parliamentary democracy that we have a sort of presidential democracy that the united states has there is kingdoms there is this is that many different forms but since in canada we live in a liberal democrat democratic society i would like to talk about the article societies i don't this class is not about you know uh political science but you want to talk about it in the context of our class in the context of our name in a liberal democratic society

we are not seeking absolute conformity in fact encourage individuality to encourage being unique being different that's a good thing being an individual is a good thing you know in other words they have certain tolerances for deviance this is what these sociologists call tolerable deviances in other words what came with certain amount of non-conformity now there are three types of tolerable deviances that exist tolerable differences legitimate talk about differences are those things that are cool to talk about around you know in good companies civilized company we can differ based on our religion we can differ based

on our ethnicity our race our political status we can differ based on taste what kind of food do we like these are all legitimate differences no one ever says to you like oh my god you do not like pizza you cannot be part of our society although i have always worried about people who like pineapple on their pizza i don't know if we should let them into our society but here we are so legitimate differences you know you and i can differ based on what kind of show we like that's very legitimate that doesn't mean

we can't be friends anymore and we can talk about it in a civilized company if grandma's over and we're sitting at a dinner table we can talk the next set of uh differences are non-criminal differences non-criminal deviances or tolerable non-criminal tolerable deviances these uh sort of uh non-criminal tolerable evidences are things that are not gonna say illegal but you wouldn't really tell grandma about it maybe certain kind of sexual practices maybe if you're a member of uh the bdsm community oh maybe a dinner table with grandma on a sunday night you wouldn't tell her about

your adventures in dungeon on friday afternoon these are things like uh maybe even certain uh sort of behavioral attitudes certain things that you do they're not gonna say criminal don't talk much about them maybe you're in a particular type of group that people will look at you as deviant not so be it is legit meant to be deviant it's legitimate to practice different sexual practices maybe you belong to a quote you know difference really between a culture and religion is that a cult maybe you won't tell anyone that you're part of this cult last but

not least our criminal uh sort of tolerable deviances we do tolerate certain amount of crime in our society if you remember from the discussion that you i'm sure had in your theory class about the sort of on functionalism really that sort of functionalists argue that even crime itself is functional to society must be tolerant you know crime is functional for it allows us to explore new things it allows us to move forward in our society you know people like martin luther kings and malcolm x says they were deviant in their society salvador dali up there

there were deviants in their societies but they pushed society forward even crime is good you know crime is useful for it allows us to make a distinction between good people and bad people so there's a functionality there's a usefulness to it and we do tolerate certain amounts of crime for example we tolerate speeding in our society it's criminal it's against the law it's not criminal it's against the law will be tolerated we tolerate certain amount of drug use very recently for example the government announced that they're no longer going to be prosecuting simple drug possessions

they're going to be diverting it so we're taller you're going listen like small-town drug possession we're very tolerant of that we're okay with it we're not going to put you into jail we're not going gonna try to change your mind still illegal still a criminal offense to have drugs on you but god is trying to do their best not to prosecute in other words they're saying we're tolerating we tolerate certain amounts of for example piracy in our society of either material good or of intellectual property we're not gonna catch everybody so how do we sort

of bring this down to a greater discussion on laws well maybe we can make a distinction between those because not those certain laws there are there are certain criminal behaviors that we will never be tolerant of murder is one of them murder is a big one right no society in the history of humanity has been tolerant of murder has been tolerant of theft these are what we call mala in say laws mala in say laws or laws that are bad in and of themselves no one needs to tell you they're bad no one needs to

make them illegal you know they're bad well vast majority of our laws are now prohibited laws these are laws that we say you cannot do them because i have prohibited them because i told you not to do it speeding don't do this drug don't do that drug when you can drink when you can smoke when you can do this when you can do that tax laws these are things that are not intuitive to us you know these are things that are hardwired into us they differ from place to place there are things that are changeable

this is what we call moral laws moral regulation mostly sort of they include what typically is called sort of victimless crimes things like prostitution drug dealing things like no one's really hurt everyone's got to participating in it in a voluntary manner so maybe that's the distinction that we can make well let's put mala in saylor's uh aside for a second i about motherboard i like to say a lot of part where they are but there's a small number of laws in our books it's mostly not prohibited now there are some problems with more regular and

more regulation is good in a way right like i don't want to pretend like my regulation isn't good it keeps us together it keeps the social glow together it keeps the society together it forms a coherent whole okay so it's good in a sense of course it is everything in society is both good and bad right another thing is well there are very little many ideas to say that are just bad most sort of typical ways of doing things we have to figure out what's good about them and what's bad about them so of course

morality in society is wonderful it keeps together it gives a sense of identity a sense of belonging it reduces anamiya reduces you know what i mean by anime right anime so this state of unorganized society so it reduces anime in society it reduces helplessness and reduces hopelessness it brings us together it has all these benefits but it could have some negative implications as well number one you could be too strict some of you might have lived in countries well moral laws are too strict you can't hang out with a boyfriend you can't hang out with

a girlfriend you can't be in a same-sex marriage you cannot look at someone before you're married you cannot drink alcohol so on and so forth you cannot watch porn you cannot read this book might be too strict it may be dependent on outdated values the values of grandparents not the values of the everyday people for example why you know when they kind of say like well senior citizens are voting in a much greater averages than you guys are people above 65 are voting more than you guys are assuming you guys are a typical age of

university students but why is that why do they get to decide alcohol laws in ontario you're the one who's drinking more than they are good question to us last but not least it might be based on conservative values might be based on religious values but what's most important what's the key here is whose morality are we going to enforce in a multicultural society whose morality are we going to enforce and that is the crux of the problem in other words the crux of the problem is okay we're all gonna live in society we have to

have a center and rules of conduct there are certain one of them that we all agree let's put those aside the vast majority of these rules of conduct you might not all agree on it so what should we do what is good governance what is good law and that is the question i want to answer in this lecture today well there are two ways first if you want to say what is good well you know let's define something that is good as something that creates happiness it makes people happy okay so that's what we mean

when we say a law is good generally people in australia are not happy with that okay so there you go here's our first definition but here's a question how do we define that happiness well there are two trains of thinking there is one that is that we call it the ontological argument the only logical argument is is that a judgment should actions should be judged based on its the intentions of the actor in other words it doesn't matter what the consequence of the action was if you had good intentions there it was a good thing

to do okay but those who say there is a big problem with that there are two big problems there number one how am i to judge your intention i'm not in your head i have no objective way of judging your intention okay and in a liberal democracy we are very much interested in objectivity in measurement we are very much interested in agenda setting okay so that's that's one problem that's one way of looking with on the ontological line the other problem is other than i have no idea what's going on in your head a big

argument the other big problem is so what they had a good intention if the government if government has good intentions to help its people but the actions that they do leads to famine and kills millions of people should we just say hey that law was a good law who cares if it killed a lot of people the intention was good so when mao came and said i want to establish you know independent china and brought in sort of people from the city and put them in farms and established farming practices that led to massive amounts

of famine when communist russia established practices that led to a huge amount of and called it for the good of the proletariat should we just say oh well you know it meant well it's an old saying uh the road to hell is paved with good intentions so i mean there's not a way to look at it maybe there's what's what we call a consequentialist argument and the consequentialist argument seems to have won the day at least into our liberal democracies the consequential services i don't care what your intentions are so long as the consequence of

your action is good it's a good action i don't really care about your intention well it has its flaws right because let's say for example bill gate comes and donates 20 million dollars to the charity down the street maybe i'll go what is your intention why did you do that what did you get in return you know there is that old saying that says do not trust greeks even when bearing gifts there was an old romans say okay but it does have a certain ring to it doesn't it it does sort of get rid of

some of the bigger problems that we had with the deontological argument let's use an example let's say you know omar owed you twenty five dollars let's say two thousand dollars makes it makes it a little bit more interesting okay so omar owes you two thousand dollars and he comes to you and he says hey you know sarah here's my two thousand did he do a good action well if the ontological argument would say we don't know why he would think it doesn't matter that he returned the money the point is why did he do it

did he do it because he thought that's the right thing to do then yes omar committed moral action but if omar did it because he was worried that sarah's going to break her leg or sarah's going to send you know police or dogs after him then the action is not a moral action because your intention wasn't good a consequential sergeant said who cares why he returned the money to you you got your money back there you go the consequence of the action was a moral action who cares if he did it out of fear or

if he did it for any other reason because the consequential argument says okay let's take it their way right let's say omar was going to come and give your you know two thousand dollars back on the way to your house he sees a homeless person and gives a 200 to a homeless person comes back and says listen i had every intention to give it to you and on my way here i saw this guy on my way here i lost it it fell out of my pocket and i lost are you happy you might be

understanding by saying okay well you know bring it back next week i won't break your leg or anything well you're not happy you don't go oh well you know you owe me a thousand dollar but you and you meant to bring it back but you lost it on the way or you gave it to some homeless guy in the way okay well you don't owe me a thousand not two thousand dollars we're good i'm happy now see the consequentiality says you wouldn't be as much as you want to sit here and says no intention of

omar is important it's not really is it you want your two granddad if you don't send me an email let me know well here comes sort of jeremy beth jeremy bentham is a very important figure in uh british philosophy of law and criminality you might have heard of him before in discussion of the canal if you haven't heard of an obstacle don't worry about it we'll come back to it well before me what is what became known as sort of a utilitarian argument utilitarianism is a very simple idea talent terrorism says greatest good for the

greatest number of people so bentham said laws should be hidden a signature make us happy so all we have to do to figure out if the law isn't good or bad is to see if that law makes most people happy for a long time bentham said all happinesses are equal there is no sort of qualitative difference between one happiness or another so as long as the law is making you most people happy it's a real as long as making most people unhappy it's a bad one and it came up with sort of what they called

the hedonistic calculus i had you know seven points to it and seven points to it and then you would go through it and be like yes no yes no to each of them or you know measure it based on numbers and then add up the numbers and then like you know this is a good part i don't want to get into that if you want to know more about it you can look up jeremy bentham's utilitarian from anywhere really or look at your readings because you see there is a problem here bentham had a student

john stewart milner jones trump came he is the son his father is the sort of pioneer of public education in united kingdom and by definition canada uh he is sort of a father a liberalist thought and he was a student of jeremy bentham and he was very interested in this utilitarian principle and he said well you know what i'm a utilitarian but i disagree with bentham on two very important points said number one not all happinesses are equal for example the reason why you're sitting here right now in front of your computer listening to me

talk as opposed to playing video games or watching youtube videos or you know the latest uh episodes on netflix or whatever the case might be i'm sure for example you know you might be seeing it going out wonderful what's happening with indian matchmaker me too but nonetheless here we are why because we have realized that we have to sometimes sacrifice certain immediate happinesses for better happinesses in the future in other words certain things are more qualitatively better certain happinesses are qualitatively better than certain other happiness for example yeah it makes me happy to go have

a beer with a friend but then again it will make me happier the happiness that i would gain from getting a degree is qualitatively different than the happiness that i gained from having a beer with a friend and we'll talk more about sort of how do we where does this idea come from how do we measure these things in uh two classes from today and next class we're going to talk about history of policing then we're going to talk about like how do we measure these things in our head why is that the way it

is but nonetheless it is a good observation that we do find certain happiness is more important under happinesses those who have had children or those of you who have had younger brothers or sisters or nieces and nephews or cousins know that holding for example a small child in your hand who's your family gives you that feeling you feel like this happens better than anything else for example you know i would much rather sleep in in the mornings and wake up and take zoey out for walks but then again when she cuddles with me when we

come back from the walk that's a much greater happiness and it's a qualitatively different type for you it happens i mean greater than type of happiness i would get out of you know an extra 20 minutes of sleep so that's number one joshua number two he said okay but democracy jonathan well said is not two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch in other words democracy is not the turning of the majority that the minority has certain rights so here's what jonathan mills said he said yes society can make any laws

they want to govern itself to establish social cohesion to establish social boundaries our society can do all of those things but there is a limit to government intervention there are a limit to laws because you see if you really think about it laws do not give you freedoms they take freedoms away from you for example when a law says you have freedom of speech it's not really giving you freedom of speech what the law says is that the government doesn't have the right to interfere with your speech why because while you have freedom of speech

go in the middle of the woods outside of society and save whatever you want you don't know what stops you what we mean by you can say whatever you want it's not like you're if you don't have fraudulent speech your mouth won't move you can say anything you want a freedom of speech means is that after saying it the government can come and take you up with you in jail for sake that's for freedom of speech that's right so laws really are there to restrict us as we talked about earlier too they're there to and

therefore laws make us unhappy so jonathan said okay so if it's all about happiness what we need to do is first of all we need to increase those happinesses that are equality better than other happiness and secondly we need to have as since the source of our unhappiness is government intervention since oppression will make us very unhappy therefore what we need to do is reduce oppression as much as we can and we can do that by limiting the power of the government to interfere in the rights of the minority joshua pointed out three freedoms that

he said are so important to us that they supersede all other happiness if we don't speak so say whatever you want freedom of thought think whatever you want a freedom of association hang out with whomever you want except these three are the most important of all they're the controller of all other happiness if you pay attention there are the bedrock of american constitution canadian charter of rights and freedom uh sort of the uh french shot in their constitution the declaration of human rights they all have these three embedded within them let's take freedom of speech

foreign said there are three types of a speech right either in saying something someone is completely wrong percent wrong or they're partially right and partially wrong or they're completely right well let's say someone is what they say is completely right well obviously we should never stop someone from telling the truth from saying what is right to say that's beside the point let's say someone is partially right but we should still allow them to speak because yeah maybe we won't get there 100 of the time maybe they won't give us 100 percent of the answer but

hey if you give me 50 of the answer you give me 10 percent of that's a one percent of the answer that's good enough now i'm one percent closer to the answer now i just don't know 99 of it as opposed to before i didn't know 100 so that's a good thing what if someone is completely wrong should we allow them to speak well that's a tough one isn't it many of us have dealt with that before in our lives for example let's say a neo-nazi wants to come and give a speech at take you

what should we do wow that's a tough one isn't it because you and i disagree with that person you and i don't like him then again should we say no even if he agreed at his hundred percent wrong well maybe not maybe we should let it happen because it would allow us to discuss racism maybe we should let it happen because it brings out racism from underground to above ground so we can actually deal with maybe we should let it happen because then we can establish sort of speakers that will come back that new nazi

ideology maybe we should let it happen because and this is a key point who is going to be the orbiter of what is good and bad speech who is going to be the orbiter of what is right and wrong speech yes there is a limit to freedom of speech that ends up like you that shall not harm me they'll talk about that in a second but for example when martin luther king spoke well malcolm x spoke they spoke under the freedom of speech even if everybody disagrees with them they have to have the right to

say it because this is the problem right if you say that i'm going to be the orbiter of deciding this speech is good and that speech is bad even if i agree with you if i go like yeah i'm 100 on board with you my worry is what if the next arbiter of deciding what's freedom of speech and what is not says my speech should not be said my speech should be censored we should always worry about that right we should always worry about that so if it's someone who's 100 wrong can not only raise

questions but we should be always cautious about censoring what is wrong because how do we know it's wrong till it's said you have to wait till they say it and then we can disagree with them have you ever been so frustrated in a discussion that you've been trying to get something out and the person keeps interrupting you and telling you you're wrong and like wait till at least i finished then interrupt me maybe that's the point here well we alluded to something important earlier though because well there still should be a limitation on speech and

verse should this limitation lay well she wants to know forward the principle that he called the harmony he said thou shall never do anything in society that harms someone else or their property that's the only restriction that society shall place upon us do not harm other people or their possessions that's an interesting approach because now we can say listen you can say anything you want as long as you're not harming other people now joshua made some very clear observation here first of all he said that there is a distinction between harm and offense if you're

offended by something we shouldn't make it illegal only we should make it illegal if you're harmed by it what do we mean by that he said well there is a very easy solution to not being offended remove yourself from that situation if you're offended by my lifestyle don't hang out with me if you're offended by my marriage don't show up to my wedding if you're offended by my religion don't come to my temple or mosque or church or synagogue or whatever so you made it he said you have no right to be offended to be

protected against offense because there's a very easy remedy to being offended just leave go somewhere where the offensive action is not happening nonetheless you have no right to be offended with us being offended even mean you have a right not to be harmed secondly he pointed out that you don't have any positive duty towards society you don't have a duty to be a productive member of society you don't have a duty to be a good member of society to contribute to charity you don't have any of these zoos you can decide that you just want

to sit in the corner of your room playing video games for the rest of your life that's your right to decide that who am i to judge you so society should never enforce the law that gives you a positive duty and if you pay attention most of our law says don't do something thou shalt not do these things most of our laws prohibit us from doing something they don't force us to do something you know fair enough they force us to pay taxes that's pretty much the only thing once you get your university degree you

are obligated by law to report child abuse certain people for example obligated by law to report certain things but those are results of oftentimes things that you have possessed you know education job things like that if you just have a hap home and you're just sitting in it and you know your parents are doing everything else and you just want to sit in your mom's and dad's basement and play video games and you know eat pizza that's your right he says i have no the government shouldn't force you to go get a job and productive

he warns us against the coercion the harm of coercion he says listen if we coerce people it's harmful to our society because if we force everyone to conform then we have no progress in society we have no people who think outside the box and we know we need those people who think outside the box in order for our society so well in fact the very survival of capitalism depends upon people inventing new things doing things in new ways the survival of humanity depends upon people thinking in new and innovative way that's the whole point of

the industrial revolution as a whole of enlightenment that's the whole point of scientific revolution is for us to be able to think about new things but jonathan says there's one thing that government should do and that's education joshua mill says that there are certain things that government should provide and at the top of that list is education government has a duty to educate you and most of these in fact all of these things that he says apply to adults right that children have a special right to be protected we have a right to talk to

them what to do not to do we're talking about dogs but education is key so right now jonathan says if a bridge is out put a big sign saying bridges out corner off the place don't let anyone on it don't put a policeman there to beat you up if you're about to cross the bridge hey we're going to say the bridge is out we're going to make him very clear the bridge is up but if you want to cross it and fall down and die that's your business we do it with cigarettes for example the

garment goes out of its way to put this disgusting photos on it and educate you about the downfall of cigarette smoking but hey if you want to do it it's your business it's not of ours that's what he's saying saint gomer has a right to educate you to try to convince you to do things in a certain way but doesn't have a right to force you in fact government has a duty to educate you god has a duty to say that for example you know maybe it's not a good idea to drink sugary drinks that

come in things that you know could also work as canteen for an army but hey if you want to drink seven liters of sugary drinks a day that's your business after the actual liberal other levels have added things like security i mean john cena talks about security a little bit uh so education security healthcare those are things that government should provide without restrictions so here it is in short john simon says government should be as minimally intrusive as possible and he should only be involved in protecting me and mine against harm by others army doesn't

have a right to according to us or not to protect me against myself he finds that offensive he says i'm an adult government shouldn't act towards me like they're my parents jt is not my dad you know i don't need you to act like my parents i'm an adult i can make my own decision job government is to just provide some services protect me that's one of the provisional services right protect me against harm to educate me against huh to make sure that for example the labels of the food labels are there joshua says listen

in fact it's a job requirement to make sure all the food labels are there so you can read it and educate you so you can read it and then if you read it and you still want to eat it go for it that's your business on the other side of the argument is l.a heart and devlin they argue that no in fact the job of the government is the government has a duty to act as if they are your parents to protect you from harming yourself to force you not to harm yourself for example when

joy zuma says hey legalize cigarette smoking tell people you definitely gotta get a lung cancer here it's gonna be horrible well definitely is a big word but i guess if you live long enough it's gonna be horrible and it's gonna be disgusting and here are some pictures and here's some evidence but if you want to do it go for it definitely a heart said well no let's just make cigarette smoking illegal we should act like the parents who say no like it's not up to you to decide i'll i know what's best for you well

in canadian law we seem to be more on the side of john sumail right than anyone else here and this is probably most well represented in what the supreme court court calls the ux the aux test is a test by which we test out the limitation clause put into the charter of rights and freedom basically the limitation clause says that the government shouldn't infringe upon your rights unless if it's absolutely necessary in a free and democratic society okay that's pretty much what it's not not work for work but that's pretty much so in uh 1981

there was a law in the books that said if you get caught with drug possession you have a duty to prove to the government that you didn't mean to distribute these drugs okay so the duty was on the defendant to prove that he or she was not intending to distribute the job a man by the last name oops gets caught with possession of seven or eight vials of hashish in his pocket and about a few hundred pucks in the other pocket in london ontario he argues that these vials of hishee she has bought to use

as sakura shish oil liver as a kind of medicine for the pain that he has as a result of work injury and the couple hundred bucks i had in the other pocket was because he had just cashed his unemployment check his disability check and he had that in his pocket oak's lawyers argued that the law infringes upon oaks rights most importantly that the government has infringed upon the limitation clause bloc the case goes in front of the supreme court and the supreme court agrees with oaks that the government has overstepped its boundaries hence why now

it's a job the government to prove that you're very intending to distribute it rather than you proving that you've earned in doing so though the supreme court establishes what's become known as the oops test oak stress has two steps okay the first step is that government must show there is a pressing and substantial objective so two words are important there is a pressing and substantial object let's here's something that you know just passes the oaks test and those are uh right checks that we do in the streets to see if you've been drinking well is

there a pressing issue when it comes to drug driving well there sure is a pressing issue uh it's rather prevalent in our society it used to be much more prevalent before to our right checks began in the 70s and 80s and um is it a substantial issue reducing drug driving well drunk driving leads to a lot of injuries a lot of debts it can lead to a lot of car accidents it can lead to a lot of problems in society so okay there is a pressing and objective issue here okay so it passes the first

step of those steps the second step is that it has to meet three other requirements in a holistic way the law has to be rational it has to be minimally intrusive and it has to be proportional okay so let's take a look at what each one of these things mean well first of all it has to be rational in other words it has to directly connect what it is trying to prevent from what's happening in other words the law can't say that we're going to breathalyze anyone any time we've won sort of just willy-nilly and

randomly and we're going to set up right checks anywhere that we want there has to be a rationality to it like for example maybe it's a friday night maybe there are a lot of bars in this neighborhood maybe you have gone on some reports of drunk driving in the neighborhood maybe it's uh you know big through fair between two cities that people usually have a drink when they go through maybe you're in the cottage country and you're gonna set it up right before the lcbo so people have had a few drinks and now they ran

out of drinks now they're gonna you know drive down tell us if you like have some more you catch them there that's your rationality to it okay well we can see that if someone came up set up right checks in front of a mosque for every time the mosque got out it wouldn't be very rational you would say well it seems irrational it might not pass the oaks test because oh there's no drinking in mosques and this crowd is not very likely to be drunk it might be more like harassment but it's rational to set

it up you know at the bar district it has to be minimally intrusive well the courts have gone out of their way to make sure that right checks are minimally intrusive the police doesn't have the right to ask you to pull your window all the way down they don't have a right to ask you where you're going where you're coming from any of these things the only question i can ask you is have you had a drink so it has to be absolutely minimally intrusive in your life it goes by pretty quickly for example if

right checks were taking half an hour to get through 45 minutes to get through the course wouldn't allow them they of course said listen as long as you can make it go really quickly as long as it's not really that big of a bother to yeah it might delay you by five minutes but okay that's one we're willing to take you know it's minimally imp interest lastly has to be proportional you can't say that for example um we have a problem with drunk driving so we're going to make drinking illegal we're going to make driving

illegal that's improportional to the problem at hand you have to demonstrate that the law that you have are proportional what really comes down to is that the court is saying the government has to be as minimally intrusive as is necessary to protect people from being harmed that's what really the government is saying the government is saying that the issue has to be present and it has to be substantial so you know you can't be like oh i'm gonna do this but not because the problem exists right now but it could potentially exist the courts will

wait till the problem exists then you can or you can you can't say that well we're gonna have this whole right check and if you know the drunk driving rates where you know one in every 10 million people by and every 20 million people the court would go okay we have two or two drunk drivers in canada we're not going to set up right checks for two people that's not very that's not a pressing issue so what are policy implications well devlin and heart would take a criminalized approach to more regulations like drugs and prostitution

for example we say we should make them illegal because they are against the moral codes of society john suma would take a different approach john simon would say well who is the society to establish these moral codes of conduct who are prostitutes harmon are they harming anyone are they just providing a service what about the guy who's you know shooting up some heroin in the corner of his own house who is he harming or the girl who's doing some extra seattle rain brave who is she harming maybe herself or who else now you might say

well amir after she's done doing ecstasy she might go and drive and kill someone of course adjustment offset absolutely make intoxicated driving illegal doing ecstasy in and of itself is not harmful you might say yeah but if she does ecstasy a lot or if he does heroin a lot they will not be producing too much in society just someone says okay fair enough but they don't have to produce so then the question becomes what should the government do well there are two approaches that one can take there's one that's very milsion it's sort of like

the you know opposite side of that land heart that you kind of take a um legalization approach you know that you kind of go we're going to legalize something we're going to decriminalize something and we're just going to allow it to happen we're not going to enforce any kind of morality a middle of the road approach that has some problems but it is middle of the road is uh what we call sort of a harm reduction what we say is okay listen we're not with drugs we say okay we're not going to make heroin legal

because keeping it illegal sends a moral message that we're against so it keeps still a social bond together sort of does that parental think of it's really really bad you shouldn't do heroin but we're not going to charge people with simple heroin possessions we're going to provide them with free needles we're going to provide them with free healthcare we're going to provide them an ability to get off if they want to we're going to establish safe injection size these are called harm reduction approaches so we're going to reduce the harm that is associated with that

vice that you have chosen as much as we can we're going to teach people for example maybe eat weed rather than smoking maybe use a vaporizer maybe do it that way maybe do it down this way to make it at least safer yeah fair enough there is some harm associated with it but let's reduce the harm as much as we can for example most harm associated with prostitution has to do with the fact that prostitution is illegal if we legalize prostitution and we regulate it we get rid of a lot of abuses that happen we

got rid of a lot of sort of bad pimping incidents that happen we can control who's a prostitute who's not if you legalize heroin we can uh unregulate it we can build it ourselves so you know for example a lot of people who die about drug overdose they don't say die of the drug itself but a bad drug so at least you know if you're going to do heroin let's make sure that your heroin is made by chemists rather than you know jimmy the drug dealer who failed grade 9 chemistry so here we are so

okay so we have established what we mean by a liberal democracy a society in canada police is enforcing those laws that are passed in a democratic way and these laws are understood to be to have to be as minimally intrusive the laws are there to serve us the laws are there to protect us from being harmed by others that's the purpose of the government that exists so therefore we should understand the police as one of us we should understand that police as an institution that protects us against harm protects us against being harmed by others

us and our things from being harmed by others you see it that's why it's so important for us to kind of look at police as a legitimate institution because if police becomes illegitimate it stands in a position the very foundation of the liberal democratic state that we have and that is the key point well that's enough for this lecture i hope you enjoyed it in the next lecture we're going to talk about history of policing so we're going to sort of uh take a step back a little bit take a step forward i guess a

little bit and move away from some more sort of theoretical approaches and talk about sort of history of policing where policing came from as a result of sort of within this liberal democratic state as part of that discussion we're going to talk about birth of policing as a result of a capitalistic development and liberal democracy is a result of this capitalistic development as well and since we're going to talk about policing in that context in the lecture after we're going to talk about capitalism and policing capitalist society before we move on again by all means

if you have any questions or concerns send me an email and we can set up a time to check talk to you guys soon