Recently I had a discussion with someone from the military on another site, about Bradley Manning. The soldier in question insisted that Manning had broken the law, as well as being in violation of his oath of enlistment. I thought about it for a while, and it seemed as though, on paper, that was true.
Yet after thinking about this some more, I've started to wonder why it is that the Law is apparently rigid and unyielding for the public, while being a constantly moving target for the government themselves. I remember how under Bush, Alberto Gonzalez spoke of trying to subvert the Geneva Conventions of War, or otherwise interpret them in such a way that they would not apply in Afghanistan or Iraq.
More importantly, all of this reminded me of how scrupulously Hitler and the Nazis obeyed the letter of the law, while redefining said Law in order to allow them to do unspeakable things. This has caused me to wonder whether or not written Law, by itself, is really something worth keeping.
I think even more than Law, what we really need is for people to understand themselves, on an internal basis, why certain acts are not permissible if society is to be maintained. We have laws against murder, for example; yet murder still occurs. That tells me that people who commit murder either disregard the law entirely, or do not understand why murder is an unacceptable act, if we wish for society to continue to exist at all.
I think the same thing is true about written rights; in practice, by themselves they are largely worthless as well. This is because the individuals who seek to violate said rights, have no regard for them, and do not consider them important; so it would not really matter how said rights were documented, the individuals in question would still be intent on violating them anyway.
Remember when Bush referred to the Constitution as, "just a God damned piece of paper!" As a psychopath, he didn't care about the Constitution at all.
Another good example is when I am engaging in objectionable behaviour here or on another forum. At the time, I might be entirely conscious of the fact that what I am doing is wrong, but emotionally speaking, I'm too busy focusing on my own rage and pain in order to care; so I just keep doing it anyway.
So more than anything else, we need everyone's emotional profile and internal morality and psychology to change. That is something which I have no idea how to bring about for everyone. Most of the time I'm not even consistent about doing the things which will cause emotional equilibrium within myself.
If we don't fix that though, written laws are not going to help us; because someone who is internally motivated to do the wrong thing, will not care about what the laws say.