Note:
Gunnar Myrdal died in 1987, less than 70 years ago.
Therefore, this work is protected by copyright,
restricting your legal rights to reproduce it.
However, you are welcome to view it on screen, as you do now.
Read more about copyright.
Full resolution (TIFF) - On this page / på denna sida - I. The Approach - 1. American Ideals and the American Conscience - 9. Natural Law and American Puritanism - 10. The Faltering Judicial Order
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
Below is the raw OCR text
from the above scanned image.
Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan.
Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!
This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.
Chapter i. American Ideals 17
times fanatical and dogmatic and always had a strong inclination to mind
other people^s business. So we find that this American, who is so proud to
announce that he will not obey laws other than those which are ^^good”
and ‘‘just,” as soon as the discussion turns to something which in his opinion
is bad and unjust, will emphatically pronounce that “there ought to be a
law against . . To demand and legislate all sorts of laws against this or
that is just as much part of American freedom as to disobey the laws when
they are enacted. America has become a country where exceedingly much
is permitted in practice but at the same time exceedingly much is forbidden
in law.
By instituting a national prohibition of the sale of liquor without taking
adequate steps for its enforcement, America was nearly drenched in cor-
ruption and organized crime until the statute was repealed. The laws
against gambling have, on a smaller scale, the same effect at the present
time. And many more of those unrespected laws are damaging in so far
as they, for example, prevent a rational organization of various public
activities, or when they can be used by individuals for blackmailing pur-
poses or by the state or municipal authorities’ to persecute unpopular indi-
viduals or groups. Such practices are conducive to a general disrespect for
law in America. Actually today it is a necessity in everyday living for the
common good American citizen to decide for himself which laws should
be observed and which not.
10. The Faltering Judicial Order
We shall meet this conflict as a central theme in all angles of the Negro
problem. The conflict should not, however, be formulated only in terms
of the national ideology. Or, rather, this ideology is not fully explainable
in terms of the thoughts and feelings out of which the American Creed
was composed.
A low degree of law observance already became habitual and nationally
cherished in colonial times when the British Parliament and Crown, increas-
ingly looked upon as a foreign ruler by the Americans, insisted upon
passing laws which the Americans considered unwise, impractical or simply
unjust. The free life on the frontier also strained legal bonds. There the
conflict between puritanical intolerance and untamed desire for individual
freedom clashed more severely than anywhere else. The mass immigration
and the cultural heterogeneity were other factors hampering the fixation of
a firm legal order in America. The presence of states within the nation
with different sets of laws and the high mobility between states were con-
tributing factors. The jurisdictional friction between states and the federaJ
government, the technical and political difficulties in changing the federal
Constitution, the consequent great complexity of the American legal
system, and the mass of legal fiction and plain trickery also are among the
<< prev. page << föreg. sida << >> nästa sida >> next page >>
