A right to kill in self-defence?

The American networks are currently running the tragic story of the death of Treyvon Martin, a young boy who was shot dead by a neighbourhood watch guard on 26th February this year. The teen was walking home after buying some skittles and an icetea in the local shop as he was trailed, stopped and eventually shot dead by the guard. The guard claimed self-defense. The teen was unarmed. 

Yet the local police department says it cannot arrest the guard since under the Florida Law it is sufficient for somebody to claim that he or she feels threatened in order to use their gun. Apart from the odious racial undertones of the killing, it is the legal aspect that brings the British notion of common sense into sharp relief. 

The Florida Law is clear that the threshold for the use of a weapon in self-defence is 'the perception of being threatened'. This effectively privileges the perspective of the person who claims to act in self-defence, regardless whether or not any reasonable grounds of self-defence actually existed. As the original proposer for the law in the Florida Senate has made clear, he thinks that the law does not permit people to pursue, confront and kill. In other words, the local police department had sufficient grounds to investigate the killing and possibly to charge the guard with murder. 

However the intricacies of the law, this isn't the first time that the Florida law has highlighted the difficulty with self-defence legislation in the US. Last year a father was shot dead in a playground after being being confronted by a passer-by who started an argument. The passer-by claimed that he felt threatened by the father. The mistake of the father: having talked back. Needless to say that the father was black, while the killer was white. Americans are rarely far from racial controversies. 

Yet, although the racial dimension makes this law of 'standing our ground' controversial, it is the privileging in the law of 'perceptions' of one party that strikes one as odd. The police said that they had no reason not to believe that the killer felt threatened by his victim. This represents a fundamental legal change from centuries of juridical tradition: it dispenses with the duty of courts to deliberate on the correct version of events. 

In effect, if there are no eye witnesses, the Florida Law would stipulate in this interpretation that claiming self-defence is sufficient to have immunity for action. It seems fair to say that, whatever the merits of the latest development in the case, the Florida Law represents a strange over-emphasis of the rights of people versus their obligations not to aggravate situations. The sole stress on rights at the expense of personal responsibilities in any given situation must surely run counter to the need for mutual understanding and respect. 

The current campaign to bring the killer of Treyvon Martin to justice stresses that Treyvon was denied the right to live. That may be correct. But if we construe social encounters of strangers as a recognition of rights only, we fail to realise that living together with others in communities is about responsibilities just as much as it is about rights. One of those responsibilities may be to avoid harm to others and social confrontation. There is no fast rule about this, and no law will enshrine this; it is one of those resources of social life that are hard to codify: we conventionally call it civility. 

On class

The concept I have struggled most in my academic life is class. Not that I have felt I should join demonstrators on the streets tomorrow. Rather, I have never quite understood the concept itself. Definitions are plenty if you only look for them. Marx himself had a complex notion of class, extending the concept beyond income and societal positions to his idea of group consciousness. Given this diversity of approaches, class may not be a suitable topic for a blog but since it has reared its (ugly) head again in recent debates on equality I might just give it a try. 

Let us start with the most common definition of class: a social division determined by income or resources. There can be no doubt that class in this sense is still very much with us. Equality of opportunity was supposed to reduce class divisions, and some progress has undoubtedly been made in this respect. Young people growing up today can become doctors or university professors with salaries in the top 5% income group. In other words, there is no professional area that is categorically barred to anyone because of ethic origin, religious affiliation or anything else that used to hold people back in life. 

This does not mean however that all is well. Equality of opportunity itself is still limited in the sense that if you go to a school with poor teaching and few resources you have to work much harder than somebody attending a school which has the best teachers in the land. The principle itself, however, that people have to make their own way in the world must be the correct one. This idea of course should also apply to those who are born into rich and resourceful families. This is the flipside of equality of opportunity which often receives less attention. In essence it may justify higher inheritance tax than we currently have; something that is fiercely resisted by all who ever built up a little something to pass it on to their children. 

So does this mean that class divisions will always be with us? I grew up in a society where some signs of class, such as ostentatious riches, were not on display. That did not mean however that classes did not exist. On the contrary, access to education, careers and opportunities were severely restricted to those ‘worthy’ in a socialist society. So, the mechanisms that created class divisions were out of your hands, and in the control of a small political elite. Far from making everybody equal, it achieved a breathtaking degree of inequality and injustice. So much for Marx’s notion of overcoming class divisions in the brave new world of socialism. 

Yet, although socialism failed to eliminate class divisions, liberal societies do not much better on this. Social mobility, the extent to which people born into lower income groups of society can rise in the ranks, is in decline across the Western World. Moreover, it is far from clear what the best vehicle for social mobility is. Some commentators favour selective education, others talk about more general access to social, political and economic resources. 

I guess there is no simple answer since success in life is an individual project; in which some will fail, others will succeed. And I doubt that we can eradicate all inequalities that we encounter in our quest for a more just society. At the end of the day, all we can do is to support each other to provide a more level playing field. That may not be enough for all, but perhaps it works for an ever increasing number of people to achieve their dreams. This way, class may still be with us, but become more a reminder of our aspirations rather than a barrier to our dreams. 

Individual versus collective responsibilities in health

The British Medical Association has recently proposed to ban smoking in cars. The reasoning behind this proposal is that toxic fumes reach a higher concentration in cars than anywhere else because of the confined space. This may harm children who might travel in the same car.

There has been plenty of debate on this subject since and I will add another sound of outrage or anger. Instead I would like to mention a curious anomaly that often seems to be overlooked in public health debates.

Our health system is tax funded and it is often argued that this injects an element of mutual solidarity or social responsibility into society. In effect, we fund the outcomes of other people's actions that may lead to situations where they either harm themselves or others. Still, there is widespread consensus that this is part of a minimal reciprocal commitment to strangers with whom we live together in this country.

What is interesting to note however is that the main thrust of harm prevention programmes targets activities that are rooted not in social responsibility, but individual responsibility. Public health prevention aims to reduce risky behaviour of individuals, not of societies as a whole. In other words, the impetus of prevention is rooted in an acknowledgement that conduct emerges from individual decisions, which in turn may only be curbed through individual behavioural change.

Where does this lead the reciprocal commitment that is manifested in the foundations of our health system? Does this mean there is a clash of moral principles that animate preventive programmes and those that lie at the heart of our health care system?