Something that struck out at me from Harold Berman’s “Law and Revolution”:
“Beaumanoir’s longest chapter […] is devoted to crimes. These he divides into: (1) those punishable by death, together with confiscation of the criminals goods by the lord on whose property they were situated; [2 and 3 are those punishable only by fine and/or imprisonment]. The first group includes murder, treason, violent homicide, rape, arson, robbery, heresy, counterfeiting, escape from prison, poisoning, and attempted suicide.” Emphasis mine.
August 11, 2010
Entitled to an Opinion 
August 12, 2010 at 3:41 am
Suicide prohibitions seem odd from the libertarian standpoint of self-ownership, but they are certainly well motivated in terms of preventing social disruption and, of course, loss of revenue to the authorities who enforce laws and collect taxes. Or is it the irony of the death penalty for suicide you’re reacting to? Whoever came up with the law obviously believed the death penalty was a deterrent.
August 12, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Yes, the latter is what I find funny.
August 12, 2010 at 7:33 am
This isn’t all that uncommon, or the most extreme variant. For example, in the Ashanti Empire (modern day Ghana) suicide would be punished by posthumous decapitation as it was considered an usurpation of the Emperor’s exclusive right to carry out the death penalty.
August 12, 2010 at 10:02 am
Thomas Szasz reprints this in Fatal Freedom (though I got it here:
August 12, 2010 at 3:54 pm
Alas, this is hardly news.
Is it any stranger than hanging a pig for sorcery? (Or was it burned? I no longer recall.)
But there are even worse things, not legal mandated. For example, as everyone knows, suicide is a mortal sin – and if you die with a mortal sin on your conscience, you go to Hell. So there was a time when people who wished to kill themselves would go out and murder an innocent (usually a child) because they would be guaranteed Heaven if they were baptized, allow themselves to be captured, confess their sin of murder before their execution (thus wiping the slate clean). So they got to die without believing that they would be eternally damned, even though they had to kill someone else to do so.
August 12, 2010 at 3:57 pm
Clarification: the innocent would be guaranteed heaven if baptized. The murderer would only be so guaranteed if he/she got to confess first.
(Hydraulic despotism works best if the resource being controlled is merely a matter of credit. Cutting off water is a pain to carry out; denying salvation is a breeze.)
August 12, 2010 at 8:03 pm
We certainly can’t tolerate pigs going around bewitching things with impunity. On the whole it makes the best sense to slow-roast it, but if you have to hang it before-hand so it doesn’t have too much time to inflict more curses on the people (I don’t know if the apple stuffed in the mouth is sufficient to incapacitate their supernatural abilities) that’s all right. Burning it sounds like a waste of perfectly good pork though.
August 13, 2010 at 11:07 pm
Maybe it’s about taking control away from the unsuccessful suicide. Plus, executions in the Middle Ages were no walk in the park. Maybe it was enough of a deterrent even for atheists (medieval atheists… did they even exist?)
And Beaumanoir lived 200 years before Malleus Maleficarum was written, didn’t he? I mean, come on! People in the 13th century lacked basic knowledge, like the fact that there are two different kinds of Missing Penis Syndrome: if it’s the work of the devil, it’s really gone, but if a witch has done it, it’s only an illusion. How can you expect 13th century folk to think rationally when they are ignorant about such simple matters?
August 15, 2010 at 9:04 pm
The methods of execution were indeed quite painful, and there was additional confiscation of property. Paganism was probably more of an issue than heresy.
We can’t blame them for their ignorance. The terrible raised question of what the Devil is doing with all those penises (penii?) requires a strong mind to grapple with.
August 16, 2010 at 12:31 pm
Re: the Craiglist Killer’s suicide:
Should we be pleased or frustrated when an accused murderer commits suicide while in custody?
Justice is not a very utilitarian concept. There may be a utilitarian way to phrase the question: is there an optimal amount of suffering to inflict upon a wrongdoer?
Silliness like this – resuscitating suicide-attempting death row inmates and families of institutionalized suicides suing the institutions – happens because of our fuzzy thinking on suicide in general.
August 16, 2010 at 11:27 pm
I’ve complained about the ambiguity of the term “justice” before. I generally try to avoid it.
I think if a person did not intend to commit suicide, but the actions of the criminal justice system causes them to do so, that can be considered something of a victory (assuming they are guilty). I feel similarly about Hitler’s suicide (though I don’t approve of the Nuremberg trials, and on the third hand approve of the resulting executions).
It’s the punishing of a suicide through death that I find absurd. If their death is so bad, then wouldn’t their execution be so as well?
August 18, 2010 at 3:19 pm
Not under the state ownership theory. Producing an example to others is probably worth the loss of one person from the state’s perspective.
August 18, 2010 at 8:48 pm
It makes even less sense under the state-ownership theory. And what kind of example is set to people that want to die anyway?
August 19, 2010 at 9:58 am
The ideal remedy under state ownership would be to keep the person alive, but to control the person in humiliating, unpleasant ways to prevent his suicide in the future.
Which is exactly what happens in our society.
August 21, 2010 at 12:38 am
Agreed.
September 9, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I agree with you it is somewhat ironic. But attempting suicide has many consequences other than death, that a state may want to prevent. Many modern “suicide” attempts might be better characterized as “death-defying self-injuries”. As such, people engage in them for attention or to attempt to hurt or influence other people.
September 9, 2010 at 11:39 pm
I agree and I’ve discussed the attention aspect with Sister Y. Maybe I’ll dig up a link to the conversation tomorrow.