fandomhigh | Concepts of Justice and The Law [Period 4, Class #7, Feb 16]

"Today," Alex said, "I have good news, and not-so-good news. The bad news out of the way first: today you'll be having a midterm exam."

"The good news is: you may use any of the notes you've taken in class so far. You may use any resource you've brought in with you, for that matter, so long as you do not ask for help from your classmates. No talking to your neighbors, no passing notes, and absolutely no collaborating on answers." She stopped there to look around the room and be sure that the students knew she was taking that point seriously. "Back on the good news side: this is not a hard exam. I'm not asking you to define terms -- any of the terms I use, I defined myself. The point of this class isn't whether or not you can correctly tell me what 'mens rea' is -- it's whether or not you understand how to apply it."

Alex tapped the stack of papers on her desk. "So these questions are largely asking you to come up with arguments on certain topics -- the ones we've covered thus far in the semester. Give a reason for it, and then, since the legal system exists in gray areas, give a reason against it. Find one example that fits, and another that doesn't. I'm not going to grade these harshly. I want to see if we're all on the same page, or if I need to back up and recover some old ground."

"When you're finished, you can stay, or you can leave, but do not talk to your classmates, even if you've both completed your exams. It might distract those who are still taking it. Any questions?"

If there weren't any, then Alex was going to start passing out their tests.

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"Miss Cabot?" Ender prompted, once his own test was done and turned in. "I'd like to apologise for my absence last week."

"That's fine," Alex said, offering him a quick smile. "I'm going to guess something came up. It wasn't a locker to Vancouver, was it?"

This island. Seriously.

"No, a-- family emergency at home," he said, apologetically. "If it helps any, in my experience, I was gone for three months."

"Three months?" Alex asked, eyes widening. "How does that even work? I don't want to know, do I?"

That was not actually important, Alex, so she was going to shake her head quickly and move on to something that was.

"Is your family okay?"

"My family is doing fine now," he said.

You know, now that Peter was no longer in threat of assassination (although that was really a shame) and Val was back where she belonged. "It took a while to clear up the debris, though."

Alex wasn't sure if he meant physically or metaphorically. Probably a little of both.

"I'm glad that you're back safely," she said, instead. "And that your family is all right. You've only missed one class, but I hope the midterm wasn't confusing as a result."

"I've tried to keep abreast of the basic theory," Ender offered. "Three months is a lot of time. I hope I've managed to muddle my way through ~~once my mun wakes up enough to actually tag in~~."

"I tried defining the terms," Alex explained, "so that it wasn't a gotcha! sort of test. I'll grant special consideration for matters such as 'dealing with a family emergency for three months,' and I promise I'm not a harsh grader."

Also, she was using the test as an elaborate sort of feedback, in a way. If they all missed the same question, for example, then clearly she hadn't taught that point very well.

"Does your system of law have a rule about double jeopardy?" she asked. "The premise that someone can't be tried twice for one singular crime. That's what we discussed, last week."

(zomg no worries, and handwavey is totally okay, too. i just amused myself writing it up :) )

"We do," Ender agreed. "Our justice system isn't very dissimilar from yours, although the state of a subset of children in my world has made mens rea a little more complicated. Double jeopardy's much the same, though--" and he glanced towards Ben, "Albeit we're lacking in the game show."

Not that he knew what Ben may or may not have gained awareness of.

[[ it's ender. i feel like a failure if i don't get him to wax on intellectually on at least two or three of these! ]]

"It's a wonderful game show for impressing your friends, if you're good with trivia," Alex said before sobering up again. "Children are complicated. A thirteen-year-old who grows up in a rough neighborhood is more likely to be treated as an adult than a thirteen-year-old who lives a sheltered life in the suburbs, even though they're both the same developmentally. So it feels like we're giving special treatment to the privileged and middle class, on an issue that has to do with the psychological ability to understand certain behaviors."

His mouth tugged into something that wasn't quite a wry smile. "Miss Cabot," he said, "Purely for the argument's sake, what would you think of crimes committed by children sent to military institutions from age 6?"

Alex sighed, shaking her head. "Child soldiers," she said. "It happens, in other parts of the world. Not as much here. Legally, there would be a lot of complicating factors. Whether the soldier was immersed into that environment, and indoctrinated into its way of thinking, as opposed to someone who was allowed enough breaks to know how the outside world worked. How free the child was to choose, and if he or she had the ability to leave. How old the soldier was, at the time he or she committed those crimes."

All of which was a cop-out, considering he had asked her personally, not the legal establishment.

"I feel pity," she said. "I would still prosecute crimes if I felt the individual was culpable, but I hate everything about the situation."

The individual was culpable.

Ender certainly considered himself culpable.

But he just nodded, like it was mainly a theoretical construct, or something outside himself. "That's the main issue we're dealing with back home," he volunteered, "A few decades of threat of war will do that to a civilisation. I think our bar is struggling with that as well."

"What's your opinion of it?" Alex asked, folding her arms on her desk. "If this is something your society is dealing with up close, you'd have a better viewpoint on it than I would. I've never been close to it. The worst I had was when a six-year-old boy brought a gun to school and shot one of his classmates, and I had to decide if I should prosecute."

Concepts of Justice and The Law [Period 4, Class #7, Feb 16]

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