My point is that now, police officers and other government officials, through sovereign immunity or non-official doctrines of looking the other way, just get away with things. A bunch of “you did me wrong” judgments will bring things into stark relief.

Does that make sense?

SPO, your comment if we have the small claims court, “it won’t be long before people start seeing that there are two forms of justice–those the people get and those that public officials get. That is an untenable state of affairs.” is curious because people have already seen that for decades. Or longer. Its very untenability, that we all already know and see (do you read reason.com?) is why the proposal is made in the first place.

What I am pointing out is that a small claims court is the camel’s nose in the tent. You will have serial judgments of violations of law by police and other government officials. That will spur lots of disruption.

As for the woman arrested for the social media post–if we have a rule that people must submit to government authority, even when it is manifestly abused, do we really have a First Amendment?

How, pray tell, would you accomplish this? The judges like authoritarian police. The powers that be who appoint the judges like authoritarian police. The people who elect the powers that be who appoint the judges like authoritarian police. The people who elect are, or are influenced by people with money. People with money to spend on politics are engaging in “speech”.

To put it simply: people with money will use it to enforce their will with the power of the state. The difference between the US and Tsarist Russia is that the powers in the US have been much more reticent (at least in recent times) to use their power.

I submit that there is very little short of revolution that can result in the accomplishment of your goal. This is no less than called for by the eminent economist Karl Marx and endorsed by the eminent politician Che Guevara.

So, you are saying “workers of the world unite?”

Let’s take a simple example–a year or so ago, a sheriff decided that a woman’s posting of a fight video on Facebook was a crime. There was no basis for that, and, in any event, the First Amendment clearly prohibits it. Likely, the arrest could constitute a criminal violation. If we are going to shunt those things into small claims courts, then it won’t be long before people start seeing that there are two forms of justice–those the people get and those that public officials get. That is an untenable state of affairs.

The other destabilizing thing—to the extent that police are found to have used excessive force or even violated rights in the course of an arrest, the idea that people don’t get to generally resist the illegal application of force by police is at risk The idea doesn’t have a lot of logic to it now anyway–if something is illegal, why do I have to submit to it? If you have numerous “small claims” decisions that are going against the cops, people are going to start wondering why we have to submit now and litlgate later with respect to a not rare issue.

My view is that the arrest described above is a serious matter that needs to be taken seriously. The sheriff who ordered the arrest needs to be personally financially ruined and put behind bars.