Society defines operating an automobile over a certain rate of speed (“speeding”) as illegal. We’ve decided there need to be some fairly bright-line rules, and so we’ve made speeding illegal in some circumstances where it is a fairly rational, victimless thing to do. Indeed, we don’t want a ton of litigation about whether someone was driving unreasonably fast for the circumstances, so we’ve defined driving over X mph/kph as illegal (absent special circumstances like a true emergency).
Another offense like this: letting your dog out in public without a leash. It’s often a reasonable enough thing to do, but (at least where I live) the effect of the law is that the police officer gets to decide whether you should be ticketed, and the police officer’s exercise of discretion is essentially unreviewable. The law’s authors perfectly well knew that lots of people would let their dogs off leash, and the cops would generally do nothing or issue a verbal admonition.
In contrast, most people see shoplifting as inherently wrong (lawyers would say: malum in se, rather than malum prohibitium). Although there can be defenses, we do not expect people to regularly break anti-shoplifting laws, or for the police to decide which shoplifters were acting unreasonably.
Society defines operating an automobile over a certain rate of speed (“speeding”) as illegal. We’ve decided there need to be some fairly bright-line rules, and so we’ve made speeding illegal in some circumstances where it is a fairly rational, victimless thing to do. Indeed, we don’t want a ton of litigation about whether someone was driving unreasonably fast for the circumstances, so we’ve defined driving over X mph/kph as illegal (absent special circumstances like a true emergency).
Another offense like this: letting your dog out in public without a leash. It’s often a reasonable enough thing to do, but (at least where I live) the effect of the law is that the police officer gets to decide whether you should be ticketed, and the police officer’s exercise of discretion is essentially unreviewable. The law’s authors perfectly well knew that lots of people would let their dogs off leash, and the cops would generally do nothing or issue a verbal admonition.
In contrast, most people see shoplifting as inherently wrong (lawyers would say: malum in se, rather than malum prohibitium). Although there can be defenses, we do not expect people to regularly break anti-shoplifting laws, or for the police to decide which shoplifters were acting unreasonably.