As my co-blogger pointed out, there is an argument for private law enforcement by Edward Stringham.
Imagine if Duke University controlled law enforcement in the area around the university, rather than the city, county and local court system. It is hard to imagine any private organization behaving as unjustly as the government did in this case. The university would have been guided in its behavior not only by the pursuit of justice and truth, certainly the top considerations, but by the impact of the allegations on all of its constituencies — students, alumni, faculty, the athletic community, donors and its neighbors in Durham.
But how would Duke treat a University of Maryland student who happened to be visiting the campus? And would the Terp accept Blue-Devil jurisdiction?
I continue to believe that The Arbiter with the Golden Scepter is a natural evolution.
READER COMMENTS
John Thacker
May 23 2007 at 7:34am
But how would Duke treat a University of Maryland student who happened to be visiting the campus?
Presumably fairly. Who cares about Maryland? They’re not a rival of ours.
The bigger problem is the proximity of Carolina.
John Goes
May 23 2007 at 8:06am
Because when someone from Canada comes to the US and gets accused of rape, there is no justice.
spencer
May 23 2007 at 1:39pm
Don’t most Universities actually have private police forces.
Moreover, the problem with the Duke case was not the police, rather it was the court system through the prosecutor.
It is funny, the evidence is overwhelming that the legal system regularly railroads innocent people.
But in regularly reading conservative, libertarian
blogs one would never have had any idea that there was any problems with the legal system until it tried to railroad a group of prosperous, well educated white boys.
James
May 23 2007 at 5:07pm
“But in regularly reading conservative, libertarian blogs one would never have had any idea that there was any problems with the legal system until it tried to railroad a group of prosperous, well educated white boys.”
Liar.
Did you really not catch any libertarian mentioning Martha Stewart, “War on Terror” detainees, Suzette Kelo, countless brown skinned immigrants, Cory Maye, other dark skinned poorly educated victims of the drug war and so on?
Hint: If you were correct in your views, you wouldn’t have to be so dishonest or deliberately obtuse in your claims.
R. Richard Schweitzer
May 23 2007 at 7:54pm
Does anyone remember how the faculty, trustees, and activists reacted at Duke?
Alex
May 24 2007 at 3:00pm
I would hate to think what a University judicial system would have done to those kids. If you disagree consider what happens to violators of speech codes on campuses over the last 15 years. Each time, the institution’s interest come before the students interest, or some lofty goal of fairness.
Any judicial system is going to have false negatives and false positives. The question is how you set the rules and the influence on the rules on the ratio of these false outcomes on each side to the correct result, whatever that is.
John Thacker
May 24 2007 at 10:49pm
Duke does have a private police force. It’s not deputized by the city, so all they can do is impound cars on private property or ask people to leave. (Well, they can withhold grades and garnish paychecks if you’re a student or employee.)
Comments are closed.