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French police indicted in hoodlums’ accidental electrocution
When I took a year of law school many years ago (I was fascinated by some aspects of the law, but came to feel it was not for me), we learned, I think in Criminal Law, of a very interesting difference between Anglo-American law and Continental law. In Anglo-American law, where the emphasis is on liberty, no one has a positive duty to come to the aid of anyone. Thus if a person were drowning in two inches of water and could easily be saved, and another person walks by and doesn’t bother to save him, the person who walks by has not violated any law. In Continental law, by contrast, there is a positive duty to come to the aid of people, and criminal penalties for those who fail to do so. At the time, I felt (and probably still feel now), that European law is better in this respect. All that was preface to a disturbing and ominous development in France. Two police officers have been criminally charged for failing to come to the aid of two rioting teenagers in the banlieue riots a year ago whom they had chased and who hid themselves in a power station, where they were electrocuted. The crime of ‘’non-assistance to people in danger’’ carries up to five years in prison and a maximum $97,400 fine.
To show such tender solicitude to the enemies of society, and such harshness to its defenders, is the mark of a society that does not intend to survive. Email entry |