{"id":40891,"date":"2017-11-19T03:00:15","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T08:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=40891"},"modified":"2017-11-18T11:22:53","modified_gmt":"2017-11-18T16:22:53","slug":"the-case-for-a-social-statute-of-limitations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/11\/19\/the-case-for-a-social-statute-of-limitations\/","title":{"rendered":"The case for a “social” statute of limitations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle<\/a> recounts a few incidents and wonders if it’s rational or fair to apply today’s social rules to interactions that happened years or decades ago:<\/p>\n

These events, after all, took place at least two decades ago. In some cases, cultural norms really have changed. I\u2019d be shocked now to hear a really dirty joke told at work, but in my early twenties, I don\u2019t recall even being mildly nonplussed. I\u2019m not saying that the norms of those workplaces were right, but I am saying that the men who told them did not have mens rea<\/em>: the knowledge that they were doing something wrong. And in general, it\u2019s a bad idea to punish people for trespassing against rules they didn\u2019t know. Or rules that didn’t exist.<\/p>\n

But even if they had known, I still wouldn\u2019t be eager to out and punish them now. I did a lot of things decades ago that I regret, and I would hate to be held accountable for them now as if they\u2019d happened last week. And since I hope to grow and change a bit in the coming decades, I\u2019d also hate to be punished in some far tomorrow for the norms — or even the folly — of today.<\/p>\n

So it seems worth asking whether we need some sort of statute of limitations on these kinds of offenses in our culture, not just in our laws. It would not be a blanket pardon for anyone who manages to go unreported through the five- or 10-year mark. It would be a mitigating factor in deciding how to respond in the present to actions from another time: autre temps, autre moeurs<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The question when confronted with reports of decades-old misdeeds is not \u201cWould this guy be a creep if he did this today?\u201d Better to ask: \u201cWas he better or worse than his environment?\u201d And also: \u201cIs there reason to believe he might have changed since then?\u201d<\/p>\n

Some cads and criminals would fail all these tests. And if the offense was last year, or if the accused attempts to intimidate the victim or explain away the transgression, then the answer to those questions is probably \u201cNo.\u201d But if a man shamefacedly confesses that he made a mistake decades ago, through bad understanding or bad judgment, just how far are we willing to go in shunning him? To the same extreme we would for a recent, remorseless, serial offender?<\/p>\n

If so, how many of us are willing to live under that standard — in which the sins of our distant past are ripe for litigation at any moment? In which the court of public opinion issues the same summary judgment immediately after every accusation? In which every defendant’s reputation and contributions are discarded into the same garbage heap, no matter what the age or nature of the offense?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Megan McArdle recounts a few incidents and wonders if it’s rational or fair to apply today’s social rules to interactions that happened years or decades ago: These events, after all, took place at least two decades ago. In some cases, cultural norms really have changed. I\u2019d be shocked now to hear a really dirty joke […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[73,13],"tags":[262,424,255,1138],"class_list":["post-40891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-randomness","category-usa","tag-culture","tag-morality","tag-sexuality","tag-thepastisaforeigncountry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-aDx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40892,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40891\/revisions\/40892"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}