Whilst my gut reaction would be that this is the wrong decision, this - "However, the law at the time required a prosecution and, as such, long-standing policy has been to accept that such convictions took place and, rather than trying to alter the historical context and to put right what cannot be put right, ensure instead that we never again return to those times." - is actually a rational and convincing response.
What justice requires is that unjust, unfair and inhumane laws and punishments be struck down and that the people who suffered them unjustly be exonerated and pardoned - even if it comes long after the fact.
To announce today that Turing was unjustly convicted under a ridiculous law and that he will be posthumously pardoned is not to alter the historical context but to assert that the law is a living thing and that our conception of justice evolves over time.
There is an important philosophy of law, the name of which annoyingly escapes me, that basically says if you enact a law it should not be allowed to apply to actions before it was passed.
The reason why you avoid it is because you criminalize actions that when were taking place the person had no reasonable expectation that it was illegal, you are essentially changing the rules of the game after it has been played.
As much as we want to change the past, we never can. So it's dangerous to consider changing an illegal act in the past into a legal one as you open the doors to the idea that you can change a legal act in the past into an illegal one. Today's 'justice' being used to convict yesterdays normality.
"In the United States, the federal government is prohibited from passing ex post facto laws by clause 3 of Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution and the states are prohibited from the same by clause 1 of Article I, section 10. This is one of the very few restrictions that the United States Constitution made to both the power of the federal and state governments prior to the Fourteenth Amendment. "
"In the United Kingdom, ex post facto laws are frowned upon, but are permitted by virtue of the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty."
IANAL but it seems to me that pardoning someone after the fact for being found guilty of breaking an unjust law is not the same, legally or ethically, as convicting someone after the fact for committing an act that is later determined to be a crime.
That seems to be a bit of a slippery slope argument--just because we're willing to exonerate people convicted under laws that are now deemed unfair does not imply we are willing to convict people for old transgressions of a new law.
The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Article 15 paragraph 1 states:
> If, subsequent to the commission of the offence, provision is made by law for the imposition of the lighter penalty, the offender shall benefit thereby.
So while punishing or increasing the punishment for an act in the past is illegal, making the punishment lighter does apply retroactively.
Now, I have no idea of how pertinent this particular treaty is (I know little about law), but at the very least it shows some consensus that lightening a punishment retroactively is not only allowable but also necessary.
During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was by other nations at the time, too). I'm not convinced by the whole "...but it was the law at that time!" rationale.
(That said, and before anyone unfairly cites Godwin's law, I'm of course not saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.)
I think the point that the government is making here is not "...but it was the law at that time!" but rather "we will let our mistakes of the past stand, and rather than hide from them we will learn from them". There is perhaps the danger that by 'fixing' the past you can then forget about it.
They have already issued a full apology (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/gordon-brown/617011...) which contains the following - "While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time, and we can't put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair, and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted, as he was convicted, under homophobic laws, were treated terribly."
I must say that the leading "While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time" qualification leaves a particularly unpleasant taste in my mouth. I am forced to agree with bad_user in this case.
I think that qualification is actually important: it was the law that was unjust, not just society. A government apology should acknowledge that it was the government that caused the problem there, not some random vigilantes. The full problem was not just that he was treated horribly, but that his treatment was not only legal but also actively enforced by the law.
While I concede it is possible that was the intent of that line, I think there could have certainly been a better way of conveying that rather point. Particularly, they could have plainly stated "the law itself was unjust", and dropped that weird "While...".
Agreed. There's been many atrocious things done in the past by almost every country, and it would be very simple to whitewash everything out of existence with pardons, however it doesn't change what happened or what resulted from it.
It's better to stand by your mistakes than to pretend they never happened.
It would not be, in any sense, a "whitewash", actually the reverse. A whitewash covers up mistakes. This would be an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust.
We have had an unequivocal apology, made on national television by the Prime Minister himself, saying that the conviction was "horrifying" and "utterly unfair". I think that counts as "an acknowledgement that the laws of the time were injust".
A pardon is a separate and distinct legal action, which is unwarranted.
It is a whitewash. The treatment of the homosexual community at that time was horrendous. Pardoning his act because it's non-objectional today is stupid. Why not pardon all the Jews of the pogroms for having the wrong ethnicity.
It's whitewashing because the act of doing it is more offensive than simply leaving it as is. Pardoning Turing would be pardoning him for being gay and makes no correction for the horrendous treatment he received, which was the point of the apology.
An apology is what Turing deserved. A pardon is an insult to his memory.
I'm sorry, but you simply don't understand the meaning of the word "whitewash" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/whitewash. You don't "whitewash" something by publicly apologizing for it or by pardoning someone who has been wronged. That's almost exactly the opposite of what the word "whitewash" actually means. When you "whitewash" something you DENY that it happened or try and BURY it.
During the Nazi regime in Germany, lots of people were sentenced to death under a jurisdiction that today is considered inhumane and criminal (and was by other nations at the time, too).
Same applies to many of those who have been prosecuted under Stalin's rule. Still, there was a process called "political rehabilitation", for lack of better term, which essentially means that their sentences were declared void and their rights were restored. For hundreds of thousands, of course, posthumously.
I'm of course not saying that the current British government compares in any way to the Nazi dictatorship.
Well, Godwin's law be damned, it compares in at least several ways. The Nazi dictatorship was just one of many unjust regimes in the past. No reason why we cannot compare it to others, past or present. They did kill millions of jews, communists, gypsies and gays in concentration camps, but lots of other regimes have killed millions of people too.
Now, as to how the British government compares to the Nazi dictatorship. Well, they have even worse mass surveillance program (CCTV) that the Nazi's had. And the British had invaded and enslaved more countries during their colonial era than Germany ever did. And they are responsible for lots of subsequent wars in their old colonies, since they used "divide and conquer" tactics (establishing artificial buffer states, playing parts of the population against the other, et al) to ensure continued dependance and instability after de-colonizing them (from India-Pakistan, to Israel-Palestine, to Ethiopia-Eritrea, to Cyprus-Turkey, the list goes on).
anyway, the whole concept of law today is based on that idea. law exists at a place, at a time. There are lots of cases that end up like that. "it was NOT a crime then, so even if it is a crime today, we can't do anything".
and on the other way around, by Ex post facto it would be pretty possible to aggravate some other charge based on old laws that applied at the time that today are considered crazy for some reason. It cannot be brought to prosecute gays today just because most countries limit ex post facto for 'rights' acquired later. but for anything else, it's fair game.
People misunderstand godwin's law. Godwin was right that the nazis would eventually come up- as they did.
But the people who say that "anyone who brings up the nazis is wrong" are people pushing a revisionist view of history that denies the holocaust-- because they assert that nazi germany was an aberration, that somehow, magically, has nothing to do with the rest of the world or history, and thus any reference to it is tantamount to simply calling someone a nazi.
As you showed in your post, it is quite possible to make a comparison to Nazi Germany without engaging in name calling, or being irrational.
Thus, Godwins actual law does apply -- you made the reference, and thus Godwin is satisfied (since the likelihood approaches one.)
But the fake "Godwin's law" that people cite is also disproven-- your reference is accurate and astute.
Although I'm not generally a fan of our "compensation culture" I think this may be a case where people deserve some compensation - if there are people out there who, before 1967, had their lives ruined by the imposition of a fundamentally stupid and oppressive law then maybe we do owe them all an apology and some hard cash.
Might be a deterrent to imposing new oppressive laws, although I seriously doubt it.
> maybe we do owe them all an apology and some hard cash.
I would think this is a terrible idea. For example, my government might actually take it into its head to ask (yet again) that we get the Kohinoor diamond back :)
Um, no argument either way - I just believe a lump of crystalline carbon can collect dust equally well in one museum as another.
More seriously, given that pretty much all of history is rife with examples of transfer of wealth from one place to another. it's better to (try to) not make the same mistake again, rather than fixing the past.
Then why did the British government apologise for their part in the slave trade? It was not illegal or immoral (from the Brits point of view anyway) at that time...
Nothing to do with justice. Justice is supposed to be ABOVE the law, and especially above an abolished law.
The main problem that they wanted to prevent is a backslash of complaints, arguments, lawsuits and demands for similar apologies from people that the government had done wrong in the past according to other, similar or not, abolished laws. Remember, this is the UK, an ex colonial power that has royally (pun intended) f*d whole countries and peoples up in the past century.
