Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by chapill 2995 days ago
Accepting what the submission implies at face value[1]: Even if you lighten sentences on men, it doesn't change that courts favor women. When men are pitted against women in court, such as divorce proceedings, the root problem will remain.

[1]If you disagree with the notion that courts favor women, and you flag me instead of the article, you're doing it wrong. I'm pointing out flaws in submission's logic, not arguing whether or not it is correct.

3 comments

Well short of gutting the entire "common law" system and switching an entire legal system over to codified law it seems difficult to address the root issue.

Also, this is specifically talking about sentencing which therefor relates to criminal law. You want to get into a myriad of issues relating to Civil law and it's flaws, that's a whole other can of worms.

The issue can be addressed in the law schools, where pretty radicalism and misandrist forms of feminism are respectable mainstream positions for many students and faculty to hold.

The nightmarish campus rape policies aren't created in a vacuum:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/09/the-un...

They're a result of a generation of activist law school graduates. Once you give an ideology carte blanche, people will abuse it.

> Well short of gutting the entire "common law" system and switching an entire legal system over to codified law it seems difficult to address the root issue.

You could move sentencing only to a separate body from the trial judge and jury, which acts based on a record only of the offenses found by the trial court and the criminal history of the offender, without other information, including the race and gender of anyone involved.

Demanding perfection instead of progress is wasteful.
This assumes lighter sentencing achieves the desired effect of sentencing. I suspect we could not even agree on the desired effect of sentencing, much less whether lighter sentencing achieves it.

It also assumes the situation won't be recursive. Lighten sentences for men.. then suddenly women get even lighter sentences. Repeat until there is no sentence at all?

The article basically boils down to, "It's not fair to men. We should Do Something![TM]" It does not strike me as a well thought out appeal to the reader.

I’ll hold off on votes or flagging, while I wait for some evidence commensurate to your claim that courts favor women. Is that acceptable?
Here's some evidence.

It...does not support his ideas.

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-div...

Unless I'm missing something, the article you linked to conflates anecdotes from America with statistics from England and Wales. Other problems abound in the article. Incredibly sloppy job on the part of The Atlantic.