On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, fabio guillermo rojas wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, 5 Dec 2000, Yann Le Du wrote:
> > Doesn't the _existence_ of the rule participate in changing the way the
> > people "think the chances are that the government would actually try to
> > stop them" ? I think there's a retroaction process there.
>
> You might think so, but for the longest time in American history
> the 1st amendment was not taken so seriously. Why? People just
> dodn't believe it!!
>
> > Ok, but can't a constitutional rule somehow encourage the existence of an
> > educational system that fosters tolerance, and thus lead to a more
> > tolerant society ? I agree that the rule is then useless, but is it wrong
> > to say that a good rule is one that aims at becoming useless ?
> >
> >
> > Yann
>
> You can't rule it out a prioi,but could you provide some examples??
For example, in France, there was a rule that French was the sole
language to be studied in the country, all local languages were forbidden.
Since then, people evolved, and now everyone speaks French, can
communicate, and the rule was abandonned. Now I agree that this kind of
law had some very bad side effects, like destruction of interesting forms
of the French language, local dialects, Celtic language, etc., but I just
state that as an example of a rule that became obsolete. Now, people learn
local dialects on top of French, and there's a law to protect these local
dialects so that teachers get appointed for that task. Once the dialects
will be back, there'll be no need for a rule to protect the dialects.
Same thing for mixing up girls and boys. There was a law that said schools
should now mix up both sexes, and now both sexes know each other better,
and no school would seriously think about separating them again. Some
schools do that, but they're a minority whereas there were a majority
of these before. Now that rule is obsolete. And it has enabled both sexes
to be more tolerant of the other one.
I don't know if these examples are interesting for you, or if they provide
good illustrations of my question, what do you think ?
Also, I'd say that a rule that has no chance of becoming useless has to
be avoided. Of course, that means some rules could be enforced in horrible
ways to make sure it becomes useless.
I guess we could measure the progress and status of a state society by
studying the evolution of the interaction between rules and the society.
How many rules have become useless globally ? How many have existed and
never changed anything ? How many exist today and should have been avoided
just because it ain't possible to enforce it ? etc.
N.B. Personally, I'm against enforcing anything, and I don't like
external rules (authority), but I'm just talking theoretically here.
Also, when you say people just don't believe it ( 1st amendment) then I'd
like to point out the opposite situation in France for some laws. It is
linked to the existence of rules that should have been avoided : when some
lobby aks for something, rules are often edicted just to reassure them,
but nothing changes in reality. "Now that these birds are protected, I can
go to sleep", but they're not in reality, just in the virtual world of
law.
I wonder if there is any law that is performative, like it exists in
language (the works of Austin)...
Yann
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Yann Le Du E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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