Legitimate Force

Where Benign Sovereignty draws the boundary of the lawful, the Legitimacy of Force determines when that boundary may be defended with force.

All law, in the end, is a question of force: when it may be used, why, and how. A law that cannot answer that question is only an opinion. A "law" that answers it wrongly is a weapon.

The principle here works like a mirror. Look at the will that force is aimed at. If that will is legitimate, a person peacefully living their life, then force against it is illegitimate. If that will is illegitimate, a person attacking someone else, then force against it may be legitimate. The legitimacy of the force is always the reverse of the legitimacy of what it opposes.

This gives the Law of the Earth something no legislature has ever had: a single test, applicable to every use of force by anyone, from a parent to a police officer to an army. It doesn't matter who is using the force, or what uniform they are wearing. It matters only what the force is aimed at.

Force is not only violence. A locked gate is force, if it is locked to keep someone from doing something they have every right to do. Seizing someone's tools is force. A fine backed by the threat of arrest is force. So is the threat itself, even if it is never carried out, because a threat works by making someone's will bend to fear.

What all of these share is their purpose: to make a person do what they would not otherwise do, or stop doing what they otherwise would. That is the definition the Law uses, and it is broad on purpose. Anything that works by overriding another's will has to answer to this page.

As explained in Core Axiom: Benign Sovereignty, an action that is benign, that does no harm, is lawful, and so is the will behind it. No force may be used against it. Ever.

But the reverse is not automatically true. An action that causes harm is not automatically illegitimate. To live at all is, unavoidably, to harm. We eat, we build shelter, we clear a path, we step on insects without knowing it. If every harm justified force, every living person would deserve to be stopped.

So the Law asks a further question about harm: was it necessary? The Core Axiom: Benign Sovereignty defines unjustifiable harm as harm that isn't logically necessary for the goal, or that rests on the premise that the doer matters more than the person harmed. Telling the difference, case by case, is the job of Rationality.

Titles 1, 2, and 3 each elaborate on what counts as unnecessary harm in their own domain: harm to people in Title 1: Human Rights, to animals in Title 2: Animal Rights, and to the living land in Title 3: Ecology.

Defense is the only legitimate reason to use force, so it has to be defined carefully. Defense is a response. It can't exist on its own. If no one is being attacked, and no one is genuinely threatened with attack, then force can't be defensive, whatever its user calls it.

This one definition rules out most of the force used in the world today. A preemptive war against a country that hasn't attacked anyone is not defense. A raid on a peaceful home because of what its occupants grow in their garden is not defense. Punishment for something done years ago, which threatens no one now, is not defense either, and that is why Grace forbids it.

The last line is the Law's guarantee to the peaceful. If force against you is unlawful, you may resist it. No one is ever obliged to submit to an attack, whoever is carrying it out.

A harmful will forfeits some of its protection, but not all of it. If a person is stealing your bread, you may stop them from taking it, but you may not kill them for it. If someone is shouting abuse at you, you may walk away, ask others to help you, or stand your ground. You may not break their arm.

Proportionality is what keeps defense from becoming an attack of its own. The moment force exceeds what's needed to stop the harm, the excess is no longer defensive. It is new harm, and the defender becomes the one who needs to be stopped.

Harm forfeits only the precise slice of sovereignty that is doing the damage. A person who has done wrong still keeps every one of their Human Rights, except the freedom to keep doing that wrong.

Self-defense is a right. Defending others is a duty.

The difference matters. A person under attack may choose not to fight back, whether from courage, from faith, or from a judgment that resisting would make things worse. That is their choice. But when someone who can help watches a child being beaten, or an old person being robbed, and does nothing, the Law calls that a failure.

The third duty extends defense to the one victim that can never defend itself: the living Earth. The river being poisoned can't fight back. The forest being clear-cut can't run. If anyone is to defend them, it has to be us.

How to carry out these duties, gently first and with force only as a last resort, is set out in Title 4: Upholdment.

These questions are the gate every use of force has to pass through. They are simple enough to memorize, and they apply everywhere. They also work instantly. Most of what modern governments use force against fails every one of them.

A person selling vegetables without a permit: has anyone been killed, injured, or threatened? No. A person sleeping in a park, a person with an unusual plant in their garden, a person who refuses to fill in a form: all no. Under the Law of the Earth, force against any of them is unlawful, and the person using it is the one in violation.

A "Yes" opens the gate. It doesn't decide the case. It only means that force may be considered, and that the questions of necessity, legitimacy, and proportion must now be answered with full Rationality.

In almost every conflict, both sides claim to be defending themselves. The Law doesn't take either side's word for it. It traces the chain of force backward, one link at a time, until it reaches the first blow, the act of force that wasn't a response to anything.

Everything follows from finding that act. Whoever struck first, without cause, is in the wrong, and so is everyone who uses force to protect them. Whoever resists that first blow, or helps others resist it, is in the right, so long as they don't go further than resisting.

This applies to a fistfight in a tavern and to a war between nations. The scale changes nothing.

This is the safeguard that makes the whole Law trustworthy. Anyone may uphold the Law, but no one may use force simply because they believe someone is doing harm. They have to be able to show it, step by step, in reasoning the other person can examine and contest.

The burden of proof falls on the one who would use force, never on the one who would receive it. That is a deliberate reversal of how power usually works. A person living peacefully owes no one an explanation for being left alone. It is the person who wants to interfere who has to justify themselves.

This doesn't mean a person may refuse to talk. Under Title 4: Upholdment, everyone has a responsibility to discuss actions that affect others. But having to talk is not the same as having to prove your innocence. You have to listen and respond. The other person has to prove you are causing harm.

How the arbitration itself is carried out, how arguments are tested and how one is won, is set out in Rationality.

You can't hold a debate while someone is drowning a child. When harm is about to happen, and there is no time to reason it through first, a person may act immediately to stop it.

But acting first doesn't excuse anyone from reasoning afterward. Every emergency action is reviewed once the danger has passed. If the danger was real, or reasonably appeared to be, the person who acted is vindicated. If it wasn't, they are responsible for the harm they caused.

This prevents the most common abuse of emergency powers in history: declaring an emergency in order to escape accountability. Under the Law of the Earth, there is no such thing as a permanent emergency, and no emergency that excuses anyone from explaining themselves once it's over.