Nothing is Absolute

The concept of "innocent until proven guilty" works well in a world either without a social hierarchy or where said social hierarchy is codified and universally accepted. Given that the latter scenario, in our particular world, is inherently unjust and the former does not describe our world, I contend that the concept of "innocent until proven guilty" does not work well for our world.

This does not imply that "guilty until proven innocent" works well for our world. We have a whole history of actual events and libraries of fictional scenarios that clearly demonstrate how poorly that system works for us.

The concerns I have are with the word 'proven', the dichotomy in the statement, and the logical inference that creates an adversarial justice system. The framers of our constitution and the patriarchal societies that have created our justice system did not account for, nor care about a single, sexually active woman bringing rape charges against a man she went on a date with who ignored her obvious rejections at the end of the date, then went ahead and raped her, but with lube and a condom. They didn't care about and probably couldn't comprehend many legal situations like this where our standards of proof will easily let a dangerous person walk free.

What happens here is an adversarial situation where one person has every reason to lie, twist words, and manipulate the legal system in order to continue with the status quo. Without the issue of privilege, this case would be difficult to resolve in an adversarial way. The first hurdle privilege puts in place is that our culture constantly considers women 'liars'. Not only does this woman's prosecution have to prove that the accused is guilty, they have to prove that this woman doesn't conform to this cultural stereotype.

The second hurdle is status itself. Criminals typically go for victims of lower status, which is why men rape women or men of lesser status rather than men that they respect. Rapists often try to increase the status imbalance by picking victims from even lower status circles. Frat boys who are seniors in college get freshmen girls drunk to rape them because those girls are both inexperienced and less likely to have known these boys for a long time. High School sports stars will coerce the social misfit to spend time alone with him, then use shame, superior strength, or drugs/alcohol to rape her. The prosecution in either case will have overcome the third hurdle of proving that yes, this well respected person did do something horrible to a nobody.

More research could find other hurdles to add, but as we see over and over again, these hurdles are enough in and of themselves. The adversarial justice system that presumes a verdict that one side must prove false does not work when someone of privilege commits a crime against someone without privilege. I haven't even touched the effect of money on the whole situation, but it should be obvious.

My proposed solution is to do away with an adversarial justice system and instead set up a system with the goal of ascertaining the truth. The accuser and the accused would have representation, but so too would other stakeholders. No judgement could be made by a single person or body of people, but instead must be demonstratively true based on all possible evidence and probability. Stereotypes and privilege will always be examined in every case, and the rules of logical argument will always apply to the final decision.

Nothing is perfect either, but a system with a goal of determining the truth through collaboration will probably find it more accurately than one that pits people against each other.