The cross-cultural part of this discussion reminded me of a broadcast by the late Alistair Cooke. He had just read a book by a U.S. lawyer, who asserted that the thicket of regulations in the U.S. covering every aspect of the law had begun with the Johnson administration and the War on Poverty. Cooke countered with an example of gasoline rationing in World War II. In England there were allotments of gasoline made to various local councils, which were empowered to distribute it at their discretion. In the U.S. there were very detailed regulations at the federal level governing how gasoline would be allotted to individuals. This happened to cause a particular hardwhip with an English military officer who was stationed in the U.S. for liaison with the U.S. military. His position had not been thought of when the gasoline regulations were drawn up, so he had no allocation of gasoline and had difficulty performing his important assignment. It took quite a bit of work to get his situation taken care of.
This led me to thinking about philosophical differences in U.S. and English legal systems. In England the gasoline is theoretically the king's to distribute; and he appoints agents to do the detailed work. Theoretically the king is righteous and appoints righteous agents and the gasoline is distributed fairly. If you feel unfairly treated your recourse is to complain to the king, who may replace the corrupt agent or may sustain the agent, in which case you are out of luck. In the U.S. the founding assumption is that kings and their agents will be corrupt sooner or later, so the constitution has many checks and balances to prevent any government agent from having too much power. This philosophy pervades the whole system, so that individuals are not given much discretion in applying the law; there are vast bodies of regulations spelling out precisely how the law is to be applied in every imaginable situation. The notion that a local committee could allocate a supply of gasoline to its constituents fairly is regarded as wishful thinking and absurd.
