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Posted by Felicity at 2:28 PM
I was reading a detailed article by V.R.Ramaswamy about the framing of criminal laws. The link between criminal laws and jural acts is that they are mandatory in nature (i.e. sine qua non) and that they require the intervention of an actor or an agent of the law. Only an agent can enforce an obligation. Hence, criminal laws are basically meant to be enforced by the police and not by individual citizens. Obviously, criminals cannot be expected to help in the enforcement of laws against them. This is the basic logic of criminal law. Now, it is not a question of how well-written or well-analyzed the criminal law is. I do not expect any citizen to understand the legal theory of any written law. If a criminal law is well-written and analyzed, then the police will be able to enforce it. However, if the law is not well-written and analyzed, it will be difficult to enforce. It has been found in the world that ‘the best criminal laws are those which are not enforced and the worst criminal laws are those which are enforced.’ The kind of a criminal law which is enforced will be more appreciated by the people than the kind which is not enforced. This is the basic logic of moral sanctions. Now, the question of how the police can be made to enforce criminal laws is a different question and this has to be answered by the concerned government. Whether we like it or not, a criminal law has to be enforced. For instance, we can debate whether ‘honour killing’ should be criminalised. We can debate whether ‘honour killing’ should be punished. However, we cannot debate whether ‘honour killing’ should be enforced. The police should be empowered to enforce ‘honour killing’ as a criminal offence in this world. Although the West is much better than the rest of the world in this matter, I have no doubt that, in the long run, all countries, including the US, will eventually adopt the type of criminal law which is widely accepted in the West. We are now moving to that direction. Many nations of the developing world have long accepted that the police are the agency to enforce criminal laws. Hence, any kind of criminal law has to be enforced by the police.
The police are not empowered to enforce ‘honour killings’ even if it is criminalised. If �
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