I’ve been teaching Hobbes, and couldn’t help my thoughts turning to the last US Presidential election when I got to the seventeenth and eighteenth laws of nature:
bq. And seeing every man is presumed to do all things in order to his own benefit, no man is a fit arbitrator in his own cause: and if he were never so fit, yet equity allowing to each party equal benefit, if one be admitted to be judge, the other is to be admitted also; and so the controversy, that is, the cause of war, remains, against the law of nature.
bq. For the same reason no man in any cause ought to be received for arbitrator to whom greater profit, or honour, or pleasure apparently ariseth out of the victory of one party than of the other: for he hath taken, though an unavoidable bribe, yet a bribe; and no man can be obliged to trust him. And thus also the controversy and the condition of war remaineth, contrary to the law of nature.
(Leviathan, ch. 15).
{ 4 comments }
Stuart 10.12.04 at 7:33 pm
Re Hobbes and bribery: interesting point, Chris, but in the 2000 election, SOMEONE had to decide whether the recount would go forward and on what terms. What was the alternative? Flipping a coin? Leaving it to the FL Supreme Court, which is subject to the same objection? Or the FL legislature (ditto)? In law school we would have said “the argument proves too much.”
jet 10.12.04 at 9:15 pm
Stuart, if the Florida Supreme Court would have decided it, I’m sure Hobbes wouldn’t be nearly so applicable ;) At least in Chris’s eyes.
Kind of reminds me of Carter decrying Florida’s electoral system, but not saying a word about other states with similiar systems. If Florida would have gone 5,000 to Gore would Carter still care?
Michael Otsuka 10.12.04 at 10:25 pm
Agreed, someone had to decide. Too bad that it was Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, whom _Newsweek_ reports as having
_visibly started when CBS anchor Dan Rather called Florida for Al Gore [on election night 2000]. “This is terrible,” she exclaimed. She explained to another partygoer that Gore’s reported victory in Florida meant that the election was “over,” since Gore had already carried two other swing states, Michigan and Illinois._
_Moments later, with an air of obvious disgust, she rose to get a plate of food, leaving it to her husband to explain her somewhat characteristic outburst. John O’Connor said his wife was upset because they wanted to retire to Arizona, and a Gore win meant they’d have to wait another four years. O’Connor, the former Republican majority leader of the Arizona State Senate and a 1981 Ronald Reagan appointee, did not want a Democrat to name her successor._
(I realize that the fact that O’Connor hasn’t yet resigned might be thought to cast doubt on the above reportage.)
Jason Kuznicki 10.13.04 at 12:27 am
Allowing the Florida Supreme Court to settle the case would at least have preserved the doctrine that states are the judge of their own elections, a central tenet of federalism that the Republicans conveniently forgot all about.
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