Steve Thompson wrote:
Quoting Eric Cordian (emc@artifact.psychedelic.net):
In a criminal case, the plaintiff is the state, not the wronged individual.
... which is something that I've found odd. Up here in the Great White North, it's the Queen who is the nominal victim of transgressions of the criminal code.
Same here back in Blighty - or rather the "crown" or the "throne" or the monarchy in general - which is not actually an individual person in our wonderfully fictional law but a perpetual corporation which at any one time has only one member. The king dies, the crown doesn't. Which is why (in the UK) crown copyright doesn't end, and why (in most places) monarchs call themselves "we" when on the job.
Of what philosophical benefit is the transfer of `harm' from the actual victim of a crime to another entity? Of course, it doesn't change the nature of the offence but it does provides a flesh-and-blood victim-object for offences where there would otherwise be none. Is it merely a philosophical holdover from a time when the visible head of state was considered `superhuman'?
Not really I think. If I remember correctly the historical origins of this in England were in the middle ages when the central monarchy was trying to get power from the localities. There was a general move of authority from local courts and private justice, first to the common law courts (which used one law over the whole country, and were the King's courts, even though working with law based on the traditional laws of England), then to Equity (where the crown-appointed judges were able to make er, sorry, reinterpret, law) then to statute law (where Parliament made it up as it went along). So it was more about power politics than philosophical benefit. Though I bet that if you asked a late mediaeval lawyer about the philosophy they'd tell you that it is because a crime is something that threatens society. Murder, theft, rape, arson, treason & all those things are threats to us all and should be pursued by the courts even if victims don't wish to follow them up. Some other, more private wrongs (lying, cheating, adultery, defamation, unauthorised copying) just lie between the people concerned because they aren't a danger to the solidarity of society as a whole. And I guess that if you asked an early mediaeval lawyer they'd have said that the reason we need the King's law at all is to limit revenge - that without it society would collapse into vendetta. Ken