[Avodah] John Locke and Tzedaqa

[Zev Sero]

Micha Berger wrote:

> - duties based law, which can be contractual or imposed. The problem
>   here is that power corrupts, and handing someone the authority to
>   impose duties can dangerously lead to oppression E.g. The US chose
>   a rights based system because the founding fathers of this country
>   felt that King Charles III crossed that line. And so they abandoned
>   duties-based gov't altogether.

Bonnie Prince Charlie?!

Even correcting the name, this is very confused.  I don't really know
what you mean by "duties based law", but the legal system adopted by
the colonies was not at all different in principle from that which they
inherited from the UK.  The Glorious Revolution had already established
that Parliament, not the king, was sovereign; the American revolution
was against Parliament, not against George Hanover.  The principle that
people had rights which the sovereign could not legitimately infringe
goes back to Magna Carta and earlier than that, and was enshrined in
the Bill of Rights of 1689.  I thought at first that by referring to
"Charles III" you meant to hint at the Stuarts' claim to rule by Divine
Right, and their rejection of the principle that their subjects could
have rights against them; but that was not at all at issue in the US
revolution.

You do keep using this term "duties based law", and contrasting it with
"rights based law", but I don't think you've ever explained it, and I
really don't know what you mean by it.

-- 
Zev Sero                      The trouble with socialism is that you
zev at sero.name                 eventually run out of other people’s money
                                                     - Margaret Thatcher