Innocent until proven guilty

This article raises an interesting question: if you claim you can prove yourself innocent, but refuse to, how does that factor into proving your guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?

When the Washington Free Beacon published documents showing how the Harvard Law Review selects articles based on race, the law review insisted those documents had been taken out of context.

The journal claimed the Free Beacon had quoted "selectively" from "five internal memos going back more than three years," adding that the Harvard Law Review "considers several thousand submissions annually."

The underlying illegality of selecting articles based on race is no crime in Chartertopia. There is no self-control at stake. Bigots can be as bigoted as they want. Stores can post signs banning anyone they want, but unless they can provide reliable objective ways for customers to tell if they are in the banned category, they're going to inundated with people wanting to know if they are banned or not.

Consider weight or height, for instance. Put scales in the doorway, or one of those "You must be this high" signs. But race? Ethnicity? Religion? How can that be measured?

But that's all beside the point here. If the Harvard Law Review proclaims they do not base article selection on race, then they are fair game for this kind of redress. They claim the quotes were selective and taken out of context. That implies they can provide the full documents, or other documents, and prove they don't select articles based on race. That brings up the question —

Do they have to show those documents to prove their innocence?

I can think of several reasons for not showing those documents. They probably mention third parties who have nothing to do with this — names, addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, social media handles. They could redact them, but then the opposition could claim they are all fake, and how could HLR prove they were valid without disclosing the info?

But let's suppose that all those third parties give their consent and HLR still refuses to divulge the information. In the US, juries are told that refusal to testify in one's own defense is not an indication of guilt. There's nothing of the sort in Chartertopia, just the parties negotiating with each other, no third parties.

Charter redress does have some rules. Evidence must be complete. Identifying one set of fingerprints and no others is incomplete. Here the Free Beacon has presented some quotes; HLR claims they are incomplete, thus perjury, but if they don't back that up by showing the complete documents, then it is their claim which is perjury.

As for the public, I don't know what would happen. What would HLR and the Free Beacon do in their negotiations? Would it even be the Free Beacon, or would it be someone whose article was rejected and who claims the rejection was for his race in violation of their promises? If HLR is right but refuses to defend themselves by showing the complete documents, the others would probably shun them and write their own verdict. HLR might respond by doing the same. That leaves it up to the public, and a hot political issue like this would never be settled. But an unresolved case like that would leave all parties as outlaws, and the public partisans on each side would rob each other blind. Maybe that would encourage the parties to actually resolve the case.

It's one of the "features" of charter redress. I don't know that I'd call it a weakness; the US judiciary would at least render a verdict, no matter how much the losing partisans didn't believe it, but is an arbitrary and unsure decision better than leaving an unresolved dispute unresolved? Even if the parties hire an impromptu jury, or several, to deliver their opinion, the verdict is still a matter for the parties to negotiate, and if they refuse to cooperate and never do agree, there's no third party to make an arbitrary decision for them. All it really does is point up the futility of expecting a justice system to resolve political or social issues.

Having said all that ... there is a more realistic Chartertopia version of this. This dispute stems from HLR claiming they do not use race to select articles. I doubt anyone actually believes that; they claim it only because using race is illegal in the US. It's not in Chartertopia. HLR in Chartertopia would probably either brag about their woke policies or say nothing, and the issue vanishes.

Once again, it's legacy government creating a mess.