BTS: The US Supreme Court on free will

Behind the scenes... I cut these passages for length before submitting to The Missouri Review.

The US Supreme Court writes:

“a deterministic view of human conduct… is inconsistent with the underlying precepts of our criminal justice system.”

“A universal and persistent foundation stone in our system of law, and particularly in our approach to punishment, sentencing, and incarceration, is the belief in freedom of the human will and a consequent ability and duty of the normal individual to choose between good and evil.” US v Grayson 1978.

Steward Machine Co vs Davis 1937:

“[T]he whole presupposition of the criminal law is that most people, most of the time, have free will within broad limits,” and that “the law has been guided by a robust common sense which assumes freedom of the will as a working hypothesis in the solution of its problems.”

Ronald Reagan said:

“We must reject the idea that every time a law’s broken, society is guilty rather than the lawbreaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is accountable for his actions.”

I had another section, longer than this one, about how progressive should adopt Sapolsky’s line and deny free will. Should? Well, the more interesting point, I thought, was that progressive already deny free will, as can be seen if one views various progressive goals, projects, shibboleths, and bromides through a certain lens.