I’m no big fan of the dichotomy myself, but I think you’re overlooking the essence of it, which is that proponents of negative rights still generally support a (criminal) justice system. I suppose you could argue it’s a “positive right” to have Justice be served, but that’s pushing it: it’s better seen as no right at all, positive or negative. In other words, it’s less that you have the “right” that those who commit crimes against you be punished, and more that they simply will be punished by virtue of how the system operates, at least sometimes: they might be pardoned, or not even prosecuted (by virtue of prosecutorial discretion), or the prosecution may be incompetent, etc. — all things that you really have no control over, which is why calling it a “right” seems like a stretch. But anyways, the expectation is that the theoretical possibility of punishment acts as a deterrent to crime, and that’s how your negative rights are protected without the need to posit any positive rights at all, at least strictly speaking.
I suppose you could argue it’s a “positive right” to have Justice be served
Yes. (Connotationally, from my perspective there is nothing wrong with having positive rights, so I don’t see this as an argument against having a criminal justice system.)
Some libertarians would argue that you should literally pay for the criminal justice system. I mean, we do that anyway, using taxes… but the (extreme?) libertarian version is that the criminal justice system is a service to be purchased on the market, just like anything else. In a perfect libertarian world, it would be a kind of insurance—you choose a company, sign the contract, pay your monthly dues, and if something wrong happens to you, the company will try to find and punish the perpetrator. And if you are not satisfied with how the justice was served, next time you may choose a different company and also tell all your friends. So the inefficient criminal justice companies will gradually go bankrupt. But only the people who pay will have the crimes against them avenged. Maybe a company would provide a discount for poor people, saying “we will make some effort to prosecute the crimes against you, but only if it is trivial”. Or maybe the companies gradually become so efficient that even the poor people will be able to afford some quality justice.
Then you have e.g. Objectivists who (I think) accept justice as one of the few legitimate functions of the government.
But anyways, the expectation is that the theoretical possibility of punishment acts as a deterrent to crime, and that’s how your negative rights are protected without the need to posit any positive rights at all, at least strictly speaking.
Why would anyone bother to punish acts done against me? We could imagine a system that would e.g. only punish crimes against the nobility, and would not care about crimes against peasants… unless those crimes are considered to be property crimes against the nobles. (If you murder a peasant, you need to pay a fine $50 to his master, so that he can buy a new peasant.) Such criminal justice system would be much cheaper. (Also, this is what I imagine the extreme libertarian version of criminal justice would ultimately converge to. There is no way a company would defend 10 customers paying $10 each against one customer paying $1000. That’s not how profit is maximized.)
So the fact that someone spends money to extends the criminal justice system so that it also covers crimes against peasants, and thus acts as a deterrent to crime against the peasants, is a service to those peasants. Rights that requires someone to provide a service are positive rights.
Why would anyone bother to punish acts done against me?
I mean, *why* people bother is really a question about human psychology — I don’t have a definitive answer to that. What matters is that they *do* bother: there really are quite a few people who volunteer as jurors, for instance, not to mention those who resort to illegal (and most often criminal) forms of punishment, often at great personal risk, when they feel the justice system has failed to deliver. I absolutely do not condone such behavior, mind you, but it does show that the system *could* in principle be run at no cost through (likely part-time) volunteer work alone. Now, I’m not saying that it *should* be: it would certainly be less thorough and render more wrong verdicts, which is part of the reason why I think having a professional system in place, like most (all?) countries do today, is well worth the money. But the libertarian claim that we absolutely can’t do without a paid criminal justice system seems to me… well, just obviously mistaken as a matter of empirical fact. As for the peasants: I’m sure other peasants would volunteer.
I’m no big fan of the dichotomy myself, but I think you’re overlooking the essence of it, which is that proponents of negative rights still generally support a (criminal) justice system. I suppose you could argue it’s a “positive right” to have Justice be served, but that’s pushing it: it’s better seen as no right at all, positive or negative. In other words, it’s less that you have the “right” that those who commit crimes against you be punished, and more that they simply will be punished by virtue of how the system operates, at least sometimes: they might be pardoned, or not even prosecuted (by virtue of prosecutorial discretion), or the prosecution may be incompetent, etc. — all things that you really have no control over, which is why calling it a “right” seems like a stretch. But anyways, the expectation is that the theoretical possibility of punishment acts as a deterrent to crime, and that’s how your negative rights are protected without the need to posit any positive rights at all, at least strictly speaking.
Yes. (Connotationally, from my perspective there is nothing wrong with having positive rights, so I don’t see this as an argument against having a criminal justice system.)
Some libertarians would argue that you should literally pay for the criminal justice system. I mean, we do that anyway, using taxes… but the (extreme?) libertarian version is that the criminal justice system is a service to be purchased on the market, just like anything else. In a perfect libertarian world, it would be a kind of insurance—you choose a company, sign the contract, pay your monthly dues, and if something wrong happens to you, the company will try to find and punish the perpetrator. And if you are not satisfied with how the justice was served, next time you may choose a different company and also tell all your friends. So the inefficient criminal justice companies will gradually go bankrupt. But only the people who pay will have the crimes against them avenged. Maybe a company would provide a discount for poor people, saying “we will make some effort to prosecute the crimes against you, but only if it is trivial”. Or maybe the companies gradually become so efficient that even the poor people will be able to afford some quality justice.
Then you have e.g. Objectivists who (I think) accept justice as one of the few legitimate functions of the government.
Why would anyone bother to punish acts done against me? We could imagine a system that would e.g. only punish crimes against the nobility, and would not care about crimes against peasants… unless those crimes are considered to be property crimes against the nobles. (If you murder a peasant, you need to pay a fine $50 to his master, so that he can buy a new peasant.) Such criminal justice system would be much cheaper. (Also, this is what I imagine the extreme libertarian version of criminal justice would ultimately converge to. There is no way a company would defend 10 customers paying $10 each against one customer paying $1000. That’s not how profit is maximized.)
So the fact that someone spends money to extends the criminal justice system so that it also covers crimes against peasants, and thus acts as a deterrent to crime against the peasants, is a service to those peasants. Rights that requires someone to provide a service are positive rights.
I mean, *why* people bother is really a question about human psychology — I don’t have a definitive answer to that. What matters is that they *do* bother: there really are quite a few people who volunteer as jurors, for instance, not to mention those who resort to illegal (and most often criminal) forms of punishment, often at great personal risk, when they feel the justice system has failed to deliver. I absolutely do not condone such behavior, mind you, but it does show that the system *could* in principle be run at no cost through (likely part-time) volunteer work alone. Now, I’m not saying that it *should* be: it would certainly be less thorough and render more wrong verdicts, which is part of the reason why I think having a professional system in place, like most (all?) countries do today, is well worth the money. But the libertarian claim that we absolutely can’t do without a paid criminal justice system seems to me… well, just obviously mistaken as a matter of empirical fact. As for the peasants: I’m sure other peasants would volunteer.