this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2025
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It sounds like for you the signature of legitimacy is not the soundness of legal judgments as developed within consensus and consent and principle based deliberation, but their enforceability with weapons. And so I think we probably have diametrically opposite ideas of what renders laws legitimate.
Laws do not need to be moral, logical, rational, or even reasonable. Most laws are made out of rage or political will.
International law is made out of the latter two; and enforced only by the winning agent of a state on state conflict. Anything else is political sabre rattling.
Even most national laws are all teeth no bite, and exist only for the perception of control and order.
If police can't enforce laws, and you have an immoral populace, you have chaos. If police can't enforce laws with force and violence, it degrades into tyranny as the people retake control with violence.
The world revolves around control and violence. Laws, judges, white wigs and gowns are all a perception of control in a world of savages. Anyone who thinks otherwise is sitting in a world of privilege.
Might is right. If you doubt me, ask how many war crimes the United States has been charged with, Russia, etc.. then look up the number of people killed by the Nazis vs the communists. Totally off topic, but if you doubt that, and it's your first time, Patton was right, we should have kept going.
This whole comment simply doubles down on might makes right and has nothing to do with legitimacy.
You're under the belief that legitimacy exists. No one who controls another humans nature holds legitimate authority. Period. It's all power dynamics and power is achieved by force.