Keith's "Justice" is fucking dumb

[revenant]

I don't know if this topic was already beat to death here on the forums, but I wanted to chime in and add something I haven't heard anyone else say to Keith on the show. Specifically, if Keith ever happens to read this thread, I wanted to explain to him why so many people react to Keith's Law by saying "Even for littering?" And it's not because everyone has to litter so fucking bad.

I'm in my last year in law school right now, and in my 1st year I was forced to take Criminal Law, so I remember a few concepts here and there. With regard to sentencing (which is what Keith's Law is all about), one of the fundamental principles that are behind the system is proportionality. It is an absolutely essential aspect of sentencing because it is what makes the sentence just.

Most people know this by intuition, such as when they see on the news a robber get 10 years in jail and some rapist gets 3, and that rubs them the wrong way. It is because we accept that for an act of greater severity, the punishment should be more severe. Robbery is a good example of this - there are different levels of punishment depending on how it occurred (whether a weapon was involved, whether it was a gun, whether the robber pointed it at the person and threatened them, and whether they shot in the air to prove their point). It is logical and just to punish more severely acts of increasing violence. They show the seriousness and threat that the individual presents, and thus he should be punished accordingly.

And that's why people are so surprised that Keith's Law applies "even to littering". It is because this law is ridiculous, and calling it justice is laughable because it is the exact opposite. Keith's Law is fundamentally unjust because even for an offense of the most minor severity and consequence, we'd impose the harshest of punishments. This is a perversion of justice, and nobody with a straight sense of morality will stand for it. We'd have a fucked up draconian system that the public will not accept and rebel against. And it will never work unless you shove it down our throats 1984 style.

And that's why it is Keith's fucked up little Law, and not Keith's Justice. Because justice requires proportionality between crime and punishment. That is a non-negotiable fact accepted by every system of law that strives for order, fairness, and justice. To disregard it, is FUCKING DUMB!

So I hope that Keith doesn't really believe in it as much as it seems on the show. He does have a tendency to push things further on the show than he actually thinks, and it's often hard to tell if he truly believes something or is just pushing it. Otherwise it'd be pretty hard to respect anything he has to say - kinda how Keith struggles with respecting Spooky after hearing that Spooky thinks Wanted is a good movie.