Customs

"The court gave no reasons for its decision not to hear the case, which is its custom." via cbc


WTF?  "Custom"  like some "cute" little custom: "oh,  Mortals, citizens, you must be content to listen to our decrees, for they are Just.  We are diligent, and they are just.  They are true.  Question them not, for our decisions are true and just."


I think of Sparta, and the Ephors (etymology = "one who oversees")


I think of this:


Spartan boys who showed excellent promise and seemed to be future leaders participated in a tradition called Crypteia.  It was a way to prove their skills and prowess.   


The practice of  Crypteia, involved the following:  "Every autumn, according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus, 28, 3–7), the Spartan ephors (classical Greek Ἔφοροι) would pro forma declare war on the helot population so that any Spartan citizen could kill a helot without fear of blood guilt. The Cryptes were sent out into the countryside with only a knife to survive on their skills and cunning with the instructions to kill any helot they encountered at night and to take any food they needed."


"a helot" was a brutually suppressed "population group", in some form of serf-bondage to Sparta.  Apparently they had quite a miserable life: the Spartans "assign to the Helots every shameful task leading to disgrace. For they ordained that each one of them must wear a dogskin cap and wrap himself in skins and receive a stipulated number of beatings every year regardless of any wrongdoing, so that they would never forget they were slaves. Moreover, if any exceeded the vigour proper to a slave's condition, they made death the penalty; and they allotted a punishment to those controlling them if they failed."


 I imagine if the most promising graduates from Oxford or Cambridge, each year being given a shotgun, and a horse, and being told: you can kill as many Illegals as you can see.  The Prime Minister killed 23 when he was their age.


Apparently the Spartans might also have practised "population control on then", and there are records that 2,000 were killed in one ambush/event:


"The helots were invited by a proclamation to pick out those of their number who claimed to have most distinguished themselves against the enemy, in order that they might receive their freedom; the object being to test them, as it was thought that the first to claim their freedom would be the most high spirited and the most apt to rebel. As many as two thousand were selected accordingly, who crowned themselves and went round the temples, rejoicing in their new freedom. The Spartans, however, soon afterwards did away with them, and no one ever knew how each of them perished."


Why shouldn't we know the reason the Supreme Court didn't persecute Harper for breaking his own law?  


via Wikipedia Helots, Ephors,