However, there is clearly plenty of room for abuse in such a system. I think back to the olden days of letters of marque and reprisal. What Brad is proposing is basically reprisal.

Chevron and Total hire thugs to protect their pipeline in Burma. Said thugs become the government and rename the place Myanmar, bathing every day in gallons of blood shed by their victims. So, a letter of reprisal is issued which anyone may use in justifying theft of property from Chevron or Total.

Issued by whom? The common law tradition is a grand jury to investigate whether a crime has occurred. So, twelve to twenty-four persons would meet to evaluate such matters and determine whether there is evidence enough to indict.

I would argue that Condorcet’s jury theory applies. If we set the odds of each member of the grand jury making a correct choice at 50/50 and we increase the number of jurors, we are more likely to get a correct choice. One should be careful of individuals taking on this power, as the chances are they won’t be right even 50% of the time.

I wonder if the Common Economic Protocols might cover cases of this nature. Or be revised to do so.

Good post. As I’ve contended on the LeftLibertarian2 email list, I think the case against Total and Unocal (now Chevron) is even more damming than you make it out to be, given that the Burmese government was hired by the companies explicitly for the purpose of ‘protection’ and assistance in the construction of the pipeline. We are ‘lucky’ enough to have, because of the efforts of EarthRights International, an account of the horrors committed against the people of Myanmar by the military, on behalf of Total and Unocal for the Yadana pipeline project.

A lot of important factual information, culled primarily from first-hand accounts of the survivors of the military terror, is in EarthRight’s legal complaint against Unocal on behalf of several Myanmar nationals. The complaint can be accessed online at http://www.earthrights.org/files/Legal%20Docs/Unocal/statecomplaint2003.pdf

The general facts start on page 10, and after that come some of the specific stories from the survivors. Every time I read it it brings tears to my eyes and I am overcome with anger.

- John