A piece on why it needs to go:

The divine right of kings carried with it the notion that whatever the king did was OK, because the king was the law. Another way of saying the same thing is the king was considered to be above the law.

Today we have renamed this very mistaken view as the doctrine of sovereign immunity. The sovereign is immune from suffering any consequences of his acts. Sometimes the sovereign (government) graciously allows himself to be sued in specific, limited cases. But for the most part, there is no accountability for government officials who lie, cheat and steal – even on occasion who commit murder (think Ruby Ridge where an FBI sniper shot in cold blood a woman holding a baby).

Bob Arwady runs the Ammo Dump, a gun store in Houston, Texas. His first exposure to the abuses of sovereign immunity came from a knock on the door from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. After operating his new shooting range for police and public shooters for four months, the Commission shut him down with the threat of fining shooters $5,000 for each bullet they put in the dirt berms used as bullet traps. They claimed that they had a water sample that proved that those bullets were leaching lead in dangerous quantities into the stream behind his range and polluting water downstream.

It turns out that the signed affidavit by the Environmental Quality officer stating that he had taken the water sample was a lie. Arwady never got to use his expert toxicology witness that metallic bullet never, ever leaches. It is not soluble. Only lead salts (such as found in lead paints) are dangerous.

I don’t think it needs to go. But it definitely needs to be reformed. I think it is still applicable when an agent of the state is acting in a manner that a reasonable person could conclude is in the best interest of society. Otherwise, every time someone was arrested, they’d sue. That said, any negligience, dishonesty, incompetence, or criminal behavior on the part of any agent of the state should lead to forfeiture of said immunity. Now, said agents can lie, cheat, or half-ass their way into making someone’s life hard with impunity. And they’re motivated to do that because performance is often measured by arrests, fines, community contacts, quotas, or other euphimism for increasing number of arrests/meddling to prove they’re actually doing something.

Short of reform of Sovereign Immunity, the only thing that will bring attention to this type of stuff is when people start shooting the bastards, unfortunately.

Update: In comments, beerslurpy says regarding the best interest rule:

No need for such a rule. A jury would decide cases that way whenever appropriate. Juries would be loath the support a verdict against a police officer that was being harassed by a criminal. Adding such a rule only allows judges (who were usually prosecutors before they became judges) to dispose of cases of abuse before they even get to juries.

Good point.

Posted in uncategorized on December 6th, 2006 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |