Aug 13, 2013 16:38
If this is crazier than normal, I can blame it on my fever.
There are arguments about how innocent-until-proven-guilty, freedom of speech, protection from unlawful search & seizure, and so on give disproportionate benefit to people with little influence in politics because big, connected majority groups would still have the wherewithal to protect themselves if such laws weren't on the books. It's a pretty plausible argument.
But the opposite argument is also plausible. We've known since Roman times that people tend to arrange laws to help themselves first and other people either second or never. And we've known for longer than that that some demographic groups have more political power than others. By Occam's Razor, the most plausible explanation for why things like the First and Fourth Amendments have lasted as long as they have is that they've disproportionately aided enfranchised groups, and any benefits they provide to groups like women, immigrants, and people of color are coincidental.
politics