Spangler Blog Post 6

    In her paper “Bright Lines in Juvenile Justice,” Professor Berg highlights how bright lines can be a useful tool for ensuring that justice can be distributed consistently and efficiently. Throughout the paper, she distinguishes between bright lines being applied in non-ideal theory and in ideal theory. The goal of ideal theory is to see what principles should be adopted under the perfect conditions of a fully compliant ideal society. Non-ideal theory should be taken up when one is attempting to apply an ideal theory of justice to imperfect circumstances when non-compliance and even resistance are possible. One interesting point she makes on ideal theory is that it should take “people as they are and laws as they might be,” (8). This point resonated with me because it ensures that the inherent imperfection of humanity is left intact, because without the acknowledgement of humanities flaws, no principle of justice can have any standing.

    Applying this reasoning to juvenile justice, Berg claims that it is unreasonable to expect “people as they are” to be able to “tailor culpability judgements perfectly to particular individuals,” (10). She lists voting rights, affirmative action, and driving under the influence as examples of how bright lines allow us to better distribute justice as opposed to the case-by-case basis. They remove the need for individuals to deal with the epistemic hurdles that the case-by-case approach presents making the process of dealing justice more efficient.

    Near the start of her paper, she speaks of how the Court takes a retributivist approach to justice and throughout she attempts to “follow its lead,” (2). However, she makes a moral claim that it is better to have a system that errs on the side of under-punishment for juveniles simply because the cost of over-punishing a juvenile is simply too great, especially when we consider that the ground for over-punishing are often found on the same culpability assessments she argues that humans are incapable of.

    When I consider the view of punishment presented in Dark Ghettos, I cannot help but think about how bright lines could applied in dealing with crime in the ghetto. As I spoke about in my tutorial, the government could attempt to remove its condemnation from the sentencing of the ghetto poor by actively admitting its responsibility in creating the current ghetto conditions. However, applying bright lines to this scenario once again becomes a question of culpability. Under-punishment is less dangerous in juvenile justice because children are more likely to be able to grow and learn from their experience. However, when placing bright lines on adults, oppressed or not, that err on the side of under-punishment, does it not simply open an avenue through which the justice system can be abused? Following Berg’s reasoning, this leniency is better than the alternative. By acknowledging its own culpability, the gives up its right to condemn but not to punish, and thus must ensure that all punishments are lacking the condemnation by assisting the punished in the areas that the state is responsible through education, lesser sentencing, leaving voting rights unaffected etc. While bright lines could result in the under-punishment of the ghetto poor, it is not unreasonable to claim that the assurance of under-punishment may be more just possibility of over-punishment, especially considering the oppression that they have experienced throughout history.