Ever hear of mitigating circumstances?

It seems that Captain's Quarters is taking umbrage at a British court decision involving some people who took desperate measures to flee the Taliban regime. Would these people send a woman back to the People's Republic of China, where she would face that country's brutal forced abortion practices, just because she wants to have a second child?

This is one of the reasons that I take offense when supporting the McCain-Kennedy plea-bargain legislation is derided as amnesty or undermining the rule of law. It seems that unless the letter of the law is strictly followed, then somehow, the rule of law has been compromised. There is no allowance for mitigating circumstances, the doctrine of competing harms, or even the notion that the law has gone wrong. "The law is the law" is all the justification they require.

I don't buy that. For instance, how does one define an "unreasonable" search, which is forbidden by the 4th Amendment? It's a judgement call. What was unreasonable on 9/10/01 became very reasonable on 9/12/01 based on new facts and information - and a new way of looking at the facts that were already present.

That is why we have lawyers, juries, and judges - all of whom are human beings. If things were as simple as Captain's Quarters pretends they are, then we'd just need computers to make those calls.