Category Archives: Doing

The First Amendment has a penumbra…

But I think, as Mr. Jus­tice Bran­deis says, that apart from the Con­sti­tu­tion the gov­ern­ment ought not to use [277 U.S. 438, 470] evi­dence obtained and only obtain­able by a crim­i­nal act. There is no body of prece­dents by which we are bound, and which con­fines us to log­i­cal deduc­tion from estab­lished rules. There­fore we must con­sid­er the two objects of desire both of which we can­not have and make up our minds which to choose. It is desir­able that crim­i­nals should be detect­ed, and to that end that all avail­able evi­dence should be used. It also is desir­able that the gov­ern­ment should not itself fos­ter and pay for oth­er crimes, when they are the means by which the evi­dence is to be obtained. If it pays its offi­cers for hav­ing got evi­dence by crime I do not see why it may not as well pay them for get­ting it in the same way, and I can attach no impor­tance to protes­ta­tions of dis­ap­proval if it know­ing­ly accepts and pays and announces that in future it will pay for the fruits. We have to choose, and for my part I think it a less evil that some crim­i­nals should escape than that the gov­ern­ment should play an igno­ble part.

Jus­tice Oliv­er Wen­dell Holmes, Jr., OLMSTEAD v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438 (1928), dissenting

Napalm Death — “You Suffer”

Napalm Death — “From Enslave­ment to Obliteration”

An Empty Glass on the Nightstand

Pun­ish­ment, then, will tend to become the most hid­den part of the penal process. This has sev­er­al con­se­quences: it leaves the domain of more or less every­day per­cep­tion and enters that of abstract con­scious­ness; its effec­tive­ness is seen as result­ing from its inevitabil­i­ty, not from its vis­i­ble inten­si­ty; it is the cer­tain­ty of being pun­ished and not the hor­ri­fy­ing spec­ta­cle of pub­lic pun­ish­ment that must dis­cour­age crime; the exem­plary mechan­ics of pun­ish­ment changes its mech­a­nisms. As a result, jus­tice no longer takes pub­lic respon­si­bil­i­ty for the vio­lence that is bound up with its practice.

- Michel Fou­cault, Dis­ci­pline & Punish

Mar­i­on Brown — “27 Coop­er Square”