26A016 Judges and Robbers by Jim Davies, 4/21/2026

I had the good fortune to attend the same college as Sir Isaac Newton - though not in the same century - and as quite a large number of students who later became distinguished. One, I read this month from the College's annual report, is Britain's Lord Justice of Appeal, about as high as one can get in that legal system.

At its yearly feast, Justice Singh gave an amusing speech, in which he posed and tried to answer an important question: what's the difference between a bank robber and a judge?

He began by admitting the similarity. He asks rhetorically "What would distinguish the bank robber, who issues an order that the bank should hand over money, and that order is backed up by the threat of force, and (say) the tax authorities, who order the citizen to hand over money, and also have threats to back up their orders?" No doubt he had in mind that a court would punish the robber in the first case but the victim in the second.

It's an excellent question, which I could not have phrased better myself. Perhaps the Lord Justice should be a guest author of a ZGBlog... but no, he'd probably decline. His answer begins "the state has legitimate authority, but this then begs the question Where does that legitimate authority come from, if not from the mere fact that the state has force on it side?"

His speech (given in the College Chapel, even though he is Sikh) then sets out to explain the difference, and that source, as he sees it. He draws a good deal from C S Lewis, who reasons that all we humans have an ''innate sense'' of what is right and wrong, also known as a conscience - even if we do wrong, we have a nagging voice that tells us so. I agree; Lewis argues that it comes from God while I'd say it comes from evolution; we find in practice that life works better when we pay heed to that internal voice.

Conscience may trouble the bank robber, though he may well have repressed it; does it trouble the tax collector? Probably not as much, because all around him say his work is noble and necessary. But yes, it's there. This page may help arouse it.

Justice Singh then moved on to reason that there is a decent link between morality, as driven by that public's sense of right and wrong, and law, as administered by the courts. The link, he says, is partly that sentencing judges like himself take into account the degree of culpability of the convicted perp and the degree of harm he has done; and that if the courts err, Parliament can improve the law; and Parliament is answerable to the public.

All very fine. Now, I read the transcript three times and think I've summarized fairly Singh's argument above, but if so you might join me in concluding that His Lordship has miserably failed to answer his own conundrum. Yes everyone has a conscience and yes, there is a tentative link between what courts decide and what the public wants; but where precisely does their "legitimate authority" come from? How exactly does the judge differ from the robber? How does the presence of conscience and the influence on the law of what the public desires validate the use of force in the one case but not the other?

The soporific points he makes completely fail to link the two! There is a total disconnect!

My - er - judgment is that (wittingly or not) he presented some nice familiar comforting ideas to assure the minds of his audience that all is well, while leaving the key question he had posed completely unanswered. There is no difference between the robber and the judge; both use threats backed by force and anyone with a breathing conscience can see that. The result of using force in the case of sentencing a murderer may bring benefit to society, but the ends do not justify the means.

Like Ayn Rand and other minarchists I used to suppose that government needs to be retained to administer justice and defense, but have since repudiated that fully; in fact of all functions it performed, its "justice" monopoly is the first I'd like to abolish. Nothing in what Justice Singh said has changed my mind.

After government and its law monopoly have evaporated, there will still be a healthy demand for justice services, so an industry will arise to meet it. The "Justice" page at The Anarchist Alternative gives some idea of its shape; it will be based on restitution, not retribution, and human society will change for the better, Yet still, will not Lord Singh's conundrum remain; will it not use authority in its judgments, and what will be its source?

No; for all verdicts will be published openly and if the loser fails to render the restitution ordered, that fact will be known, to any who care to look; so he will find that nobody trusts him enough to offer him a job. He may starve to death, for want of a way to earn a living. But that fate will be his own doing, not that of any ruler.