One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy.
This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events.
What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have been done.
Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the incident with Timur
They seem to want confidence that US Chess and STLCC leadership are able to handle these complaints appropriately going forward: a change of leadership would be one way. Per the intro, they're looking for scrutiny and accountability of the handling: with that the current leadership might be able to regain confidence, I guess.
Your characterisation ignores the other case, of course, but on the one you're referring to note that there were two complaints prior to the multiple ones and the ban was a secret, partial ban.
It's very likely there would be no proof, but a competent investigation can talk to those involved and come to a conclusion. Patterns of behavior can be established over time. And there may have been say CCTV that an investigation could obtain that the woman herself couldn't immediately provide.
Both of the offenders here have multiple allegations against them -- escorting one woman doesn't protect other women (and presumably ends at the edge of the venue), and escorting all women isn't a scalable solution.
Timely, competent investigations of allegations and the removal of predators is the only way. But orgs are learning this stuff, and are staffed and run by humans. Where mistakes are made they should be owned up to.
For women to be able to enjoy chess without fear of assault, and for chess clubs to raise the bar on protecting the physical integrity of their members.
> they never really say what should have been done
It’s for the individual club to decide, but I think the answer is uncontroversial and obvious: find out if their member assaulted another member and kick them out of the club permanently.
They want each organization to publicly state (“acknowledge”) that they acted and communicated inappropriately in the past regarding these events. In their exact words from the post:
> However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.
Lichess wants women and girls to feel safe. When women and girls feel safe, Lichess can once again endorse USCF. It's not lichess/Thibault's job to fix USCF.
You absolutely can ban someone because of an allegation. It's a chess club. The worst punishment they can levy is banishment. That doesn't need the kind of "beyond reasonable doubt" certainty that a court throwing you in prison needs.
What are you talking about? There are like... a thousand things that could have done better here, and which were still being done long after the complaints.
Ban the people. Completely totally remove the people who are assaulting underage girls from any event and any association. Don't "provide an escort", wtf. Ban them.
I want to address this more generally. I'm not taking issue with any of the claims, I don't know what is true or isn't.
The thing I wonder after reading this is how many organizations struggle to deal with these types of situations. Employers, schools, universities, clubs all seem to now have to have a process to address these things. And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way...
It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things, nor do they necessarily have people qualified to do so (even Big US Universities for all their resources have demonstrated their own ability to do poorly in every way).
We all have ideas about how we think these groups should act after the fact, but how do you really get it right?
How does any organization decide "We're going to address these kinds of claims, investigate, and act appropriately?" Where do they even start?
I'd suggest lobbying congress to reform the US courts. A few things come to mind:
- ban binding arbitration and all other extrajudicial legal proceedings
- strengthen whistleblower laws so that NDAs against people with whistleblower protection are non-enforceable
- train a subset of police to properly investigate sexual assault / harassment allegations
- provide a low cost alternative to civil court similar to small claims court for situations where there is a large asymmetry in the financial resources of the two sides of the proceeding.
> And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way...
> It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things
Can there even be a good mechanism to deal with these things, when most often there isn't any evidence and it's a "he said she said" situation? That's a fundamental problem with these situations that's intrinsically hard to solve.
One reasonable course of action is to say "we'll see if evidence accumulates, and if there's multiple independent complaints then we'll assume it's true". Which is pretty much what they did here, and now they're facing flak for that, as being on the "ignoring the issue" side of the fence. Another is to say "zero tolerance, any complaint and you're out". And that has obvious problems of being weaponized, and would end up on the "too strict, knee jerk" side of things.
Men and women are both incredibly complex and varied, and organizations having to judges of characters and relationships with limited evidence is going to be inevitably fraught with peril.
One thing I'm really struggling with for all these kind of issues is do we really want to create another legal system? That's basically what every organization is being pushed into at this rate.
From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors.
If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?
It makes sense that the legal system and individuals' freedom of association would have different thresholds for deciding to act.
Suppose we say that the legal system needs to have 95% probability of guilt to render a guilty verdict, and its associated consequences such as imprisonment and/or restitution. A high threshold makes sense for such systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio).
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have a person for whom you have 80% probability of their guilt. That, then, is not enough to render a guilty verdict; 20% is clearly "reasonable doubt".
80% probability of guilt, however, is absolutely enough for reasonable people to say "I don't want this person associated with my organization", or "I don't want this person presenting at my conference".
This, among many other reasons, is a very good reason for organizations to have their own standards which are independent of those of the legal system.
I expect a "chess federation" to be good at.....federating chess.
Why do we expect a chess federation to be good at policing, investigating claims, collecting evidence, following precedent, passing judgments, and balancing collective and individual interests?
We have actual, legitimate justice systems that do this. Are they perfect? No. But why do you expect a bunch of chess nerds/experts to be any better at it?
---
You're complaining that a plumber did a crap job fixing your car. I 100% believe you that they did a crappy job, but also maybe you should have hired someone else?
I don't believe anyone wants to create a new legal system, but the reality is the vast majority of sexual assault cases aren't resolved in court due to existing social issues. These "judges, jurries and prosecutors" are just people who don't want to associate with potentially dangerous people regardless of the legal outcome. Beyond legal consequences to crime there have always been social consequences too - I think the major difference compared to the past is that these companies put out press releases instead of just blacklisting someone and moving on.
The legal system has a much higher bar to put people in prison for crimes. Organizations have a much lower bar for deciding not to associate with people. Their goal is to protect their members.
Also, there are lots of things that are problematic but not crimes. "Sexual misconduct" could mean sexual harassment, which isn't a crime but shouldn't be allowed in organization.
Generally the existing legal system is a very difficult path.
Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough.
US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.
I’m curious why you feel the actions of a private group amount to a legal system. To me they seem quite different. In one the punishment amounts to expulsion from the group and damage to reputation. The actual legal system has more consequential punishment (confinement, monetary loss, permanent record as a felon & sexual predator) but also higher standards of evidence, procedure, defendants rights etc.
To me, the “amateur legal system” you identity is closer to a more formalized version of what a friend group might do when they decide to ostracize someone due to boorish, misogynist or similar behavior. Since the chess association size exceeds the Dunbar number a lightweight process is needed to ensure proper function.
This is a little like suggesting an HN ban should require formal due process. These are private organizations, and everybody involved here is exercising their rights of free association. Lichess can ice out other organizations for all sorts of reasons, moral, legal, commercial, and aesthetic. You in turn can respond to their actions by choosing how you'll associate with Lichess.
The legal system is exorbitantly expensive. I had a neighbor sue me over a land dispute (yes, they’re that petty). My lawyers informed me that I was looking at $80-200k in legal bills to take even this little thing to trial.
It doesn’t surprise me that organizations actively try to avoid it.
> do we really want to create another legal system?
Yes, yes we do. The current legal system is inadequate to the task. It is costly, intimidating, strenuous to wield and aggressive in its penalties. Accountability and recompense can be more judiciously attained by interpersonal conflict-resolution practices at the lowest institutional level, ie at the leaf-nodes of the social hierarchy.
By asking us to rely on an unreliable legal system, you are asking us to accept victimization. If institutions return to "passing the buck" as they broadly were before, eg #MeToo, the buck will not stop. It will ricochet off the indifferent law.
I don't see any evidence of Lichess being "pushed into" this. It's owned entirely by a single person. I don't recall any PR campaign to pressure Lichess into doing this.
This feels much more like one person making a decision about who he would and would not associate with.
I don't disagree that moral panics and mass hysteria are real but this does not seem to be a case of that.
“No” certainly isn’t a viable answer, as it resulted in the evidence of inaction and blame-shifting presented by Lichess. However, your opinion as indicates hostility to “Yes”. In light of that contradiction, what action do you recommend organizations take other than refusing to govern their members with regards to sexual assault?
Our existing systems are actually just plain bad at handling "intimate crime", for a whole host of reasons. AFAIK the US legal system was designed first to handle "the state versus a person", and second "contract enforcement". It's also designed "to be blind" (to very arguable success), and "slow but inevitable" ("gears of justice").
One of the main reasons it doesn't work to well in community management - Call it the "tip of the iceberg" effect. Where there's one problem, there's usually a whole bunch more, even if they're smaller. I removed someone from my community in exactly this kind of situation; they had a couple of explosive breakups, and once people started talking more and more came out (outside of the relationships).
After we'd (myself and another leader) talked to everyone we possibly could, two things became apparent: 1) He'd end up hurting someone else again if we kept him around, and 2) none of the "evidence gathering" steps were necessary. If someone is unable or unwilling to accept any causation of another's harm, then they can do nothing to prevent that harm from recurring. Which matters when it's clear that it keeps happening, and they're always involved.
So yeah - all of that and more means the legal system is poorly suited to handling what's basically a heavy-duty form of community moderation.
> From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors.
Increasingly, many legal disputes are handled through arbitration, which is literally this. There are a lot of motivations for avoiding the courts: arbitration is usually faster, cheaper, and can be more discreet. From my understanding, big entities really only take something to court when they want to rely on legal precedent or establish a new binding precedent.
Fundamentally all businesses/entities have to decide who they want to associate with, Lichess is not required to do anything with USCF or the STL Chess Club. There's plenty of non-criminal reasons to not associate with someone which the legal system will never cover, so the fact that some action may or may not rise to the level of criminal doesn't really tell you very much in regards to what Lichess should do about it.
There's also the fact that Lichess is probably happy to associate with people who have committed other kinds of crimes - are you suggesting they should blacklist everybody who has been convicted of a crime in the past? Or should they make a list of what crimes are/aren't ok? If we're making a list of which crimes are "actually" bad, then aren't we back at the same problem of Lichess having to decide what they're ok associating with?
Additionally Lichess isn't even based in the US, so which country's criminal laws is the owner supposed to use? It's not like any of these alleged crimes could be tried in France.
There's just no other solution to what you're presenting that is reasonable at more than a surface level.
Large organizations are in a middle ground between "You are forced to participate" nation-state groups and "Leave at any time with little impact" groups like a small club or friend group. Different levels of proof are appropriate at these various levels. For a nation-state, you need to be damn sure before levying a punishment, because the impact of punishment is much greater. The trade off is a much more rigorous investigation of potential wrong-doing, and a certain level of acceptable false negatives. It's better for a nation-state to let a couple people get away with crimes versus falsely convicting someone. In a small, informal group, the greatest punishment they can issue is a relatively low-impact exile, so levels of proof can be extremely low: a vaguely plausible rumor will probably get someone kicked out.
Big organizations like universities, chess leagues, and workplaces are in a middle ground. Exile from such a group is a much bigger deal, as it can threaten someone's livelihood, future, or incur other fairly large opportunity costs. However, they can't throw someone in prison, so compared to the nation state they need less confidence to levy their punishments, and thus are expected to be less accepting of members getting away with inappropriate behavior.
All of this comes to head with the issue of sexual harassment and assault. It's a very hard category of crime to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt", because often the only witnesses are the victim/accuser and the perpetrator/accused. If an organization takes a stance of only kicking someone out when they are convicted in a court of law, they are stating that they are willing to accept some level of misconduct, which is greater than most would like.
Every organization beyond an individual has a legal system. Whether the rules are formal or informal, defacto or defined is irrelevant, there is a legal system of some sort.
Within the family, it may not be there in writing, but Mom and Dad run the show. The rules are the ones they set for the household. The neighborhood has its norms, unspoken or baked into ordinances. The congregation has its rules, the corner store has a boss that says what goes...
If you have an organization, and it has even the slightest hint of formal governance, you have rules (laws) and a legal system. In this case, yes, chess organizations must deal appropriately with problems of sexual misconduct, including following the laws of the land. In the situations cited in the article, in particular, even if there were now criminal charges leveled, the legal system of the chess federations should have ensured that one member could not gain a position to continue preying on other members. They should do this regardless of what other supervening laws exist. Those other laws will come into play, but there does need to be governance of acceptable behavior within their sphere of concern.
Disclaimer: keeping situations that are clearly criminal 'in house' is bizarre and I agree - forward to the authorities. Many situations fitting the mold of this article are not so cut and dried so I am primarily addressing that here.
Well, from a practical stand point not every instance of inappropriate behavior is illegal, and not every instance of illegal behavior is prosecutable. If you want standards for behavior in your group you probably have expectations of time to resolve and level of evidence than the legal system is not going to meet.
From a more philosophical perspective it would make sense for groups to form and enforce norms - the law sets a minimum expectation of behavior after all and has very different goals/principles. A legal system might err on the side of leniency/underspecifying in order to preserve liberty, and have requirements around process and evidence in order to put constraints on the authority to put a person into a cell for the rest of their life. Rules around who can attend a tournament don't have the same scope or impact and are probably not improved by including the assumptions of the legal system.
From a pedantic standpoint they are not at all creating another legal system because they have precisely zero authority, they are enforcing social norms through freedom of association. That you might see similarities probably isn't surprising given the need to investigate claims and take action, especially given the increased desire around transparency and hence published standards.
Side note; I feel your core observation but I personally wonder how much is something new vs a function that has broadly existed in organizations that is becoming visible due to expectations around transparency and action.
> If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system
At base, because the legal system:
- takes too long to be a useful preventative measure
- frequently involves re-traumatizing the victims, including via requiring public testimony of incredibly personal information
- often results in acquittal, frequently because victims choose not to submit themselves to trial
The goals of the legal system are essentially at odds with those of civic organizations. The legal system is designed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a solid standard to use before e.g. incarcerating a person.
However, this standard is not necessarily stringent enough to vet people who supervise minors. More to the point, no private group of people is compelled to allow any individual to associate with them.
> If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?
That's not a legal system, and the reason for it is (or, at least, includes) that the organizations themselves have duties that are enforceable through the actual legal system, and they would rather not fail those duties in a costly way. And those duties often include duties to both potential victims and accused, so determining the facts in order to take the correct actions to uphold those duties requires some method of resolving disputes.
This is literally the definition of social justice. I just wanted to emphasize because this the term has lost a lot of meaning since it’s used as a catchall (by both opponents and proponents).
USA is a free country. It also has a Federation enshrined in law, with powers reserved for the non-Federal government. That idea of self-government permeates society.
We don't wait for the government to tell us what to think. Other countries have different culture.
Such is the problem with free speech: it enables free association.
Alternative language for what you're saying: Should we force people to allow everyone access to them/their company/their spaces? If not, how do we determine what groups are and aren't protected?
Tangential: Why would banning criminals be fine for you, and what crimes warrant exclusion? Should tax cheats be excluded from chess orgs? What about someone with a DUI?
If that's the way you want to approach it, which does have some value, the starting question is "why isn't the legal system sufficient or able to address this?" Which is a many-layered question but let's go.
The needs of a small organization are different from an entire state. Transgressions can be disruptive or destructive to organization-scale relationships without rising to criminality.
And the the traditional feminist answer of "why can't the legal system address sexual assault" is "it wasn't meant to." A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. The definitions of it and the standards to be met for deciding it has taken place were decided by men, to enforce against other men. The way women feel about their interactions with men has not traditionally been a prioritized factor in the legal system.
“SJW” has become somewhat of a term that’s used pejoratively by a certain group of people. But if it aligns with wanting women to be able to exist and enjoy chess without being harassed, it’s probably a good thing.
By using it in the pejorative sense here you’re on the wrong side of history, which is your prerogative.
Lichess is in the convenient position of having a lot of negotiating power over other organizations because of its ascendancy, which means that since it apparently has a sense of ethics it can assert those ethics on the more-despicable organizations that don't. We are lucky to have them in that position.
COGlory|2 years ago
One woman complained. USCF assigned her an escort. More women complained. USCF banned the guy.
This sounds completely reasonable, unless the first woman provided proof, you can't just ban someone because of an allegation. But they took steps to ensure her safety at future events.
What does Lichess want here? They say it's insufficient, but they never really say what should have been done.
Edit: to clarify, I'm talking about the incident with Timur
notreallyauser|2 years ago
Your characterisation ignores the other case, of course, but on the one you're referring to note that there were two complaints prior to the multiple ones and the ban was a secret, partial ban.
It's very likely there would be no proof, but a competent investigation can talk to those involved and come to a conclusion. Patterns of behavior can be established over time. And there may have been say CCTV that an investigation could obtain that the woman herself couldn't immediately provide.
Both of the offenders here have multiple allegations against them -- escorting one woman doesn't protect other women (and presumably ends at the edge of the venue), and escorting all women isn't a scalable solution.
Timely, competent investigations of allegations and the removal of predators is the only way. But orgs are learning this stuff, and are staffed and run by humans. Where mistakes are made they should be owned up to.
sshine|2 years ago
For women to be able to enjoy chess without fear of assault, and for chess clubs to raise the bar on protecting the physical integrity of their members.
> they never really say what should have been done
It’s for the individual club to decide, but I think the answer is uncontroversial and obvious: find out if their member assaulted another member and kick them out of the club permanently.
altairprime|2 years ago
> However, in our opinion, both US Chess and STLCC have failed to demonstrate an important aspect of accountability – a willingness to acknowledge and address past shortcomings. We do not think that reconciliation will be possible without this acknowledgement.
hgsgm|2 years ago
OkayPhysicist|2 years ago
ajkjk|2 years ago
Ban the people. Completely totally remove the people who are assaulting underage girls from any event and any association. Don't "provide an escort", wtf. Ban them.
duxup|2 years ago
The thing I wonder after reading this is how many organizations struggle to deal with these types of situations. Employers, schools, universities, clubs all seem to now have to have a process to address these things. And yet they seem to fumble it regularly, in every direction. The results are all over the map, ignore the issue, too strict, knee jerk in about every way, sometimes every way...
It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things, nor do they necessarily have people qualified to do so (even Big US Universities for all their resources have demonstrated their own ability to do poorly in every way).
We all have ideas about how we think these groups should act after the fact, but how do you really get it right?
How does any organization decide "We're going to address these kinds of claims, investigate, and act appropriately?" Where do they even start?
hedora|2 years ago
- ban binding arbitration and all other extrajudicial legal proceedings
- strengthen whistleblower laws so that NDAs against people with whistleblower protection are non-enforceable
- train a subset of police to properly investigate sexual assault / harassment allegations
- provide a low cost alternative to civil court similar to small claims court for situations where there is a large asymmetry in the financial resources of the two sides of the proceeding.
paulddraper|2 years ago
nojonestownpls|2 years ago
> It occurs to me that none of these organization naturally have a good mechanism for dealing with these things
Can there even be a good mechanism to deal with these things, when most often there isn't any evidence and it's a "he said she said" situation? That's a fundamental problem with these situations that's intrinsically hard to solve.
One reasonable course of action is to say "we'll see if evidence accumulates, and if there's multiple independent complaints then we'll assume it's true". Which is pretty much what they did here, and now they're facing flak for that, as being on the "ignoring the issue" side of the fence. Another is to say "zero tolerance, any complaint and you're out". And that has obvious problems of being weaponized, and would end up on the "too strict, knee jerk" side of things.
Men and women are both incredibly complex and varied, and organizations having to judges of characters and relationships with limited evidence is going to be inevitably fraught with peril.
nonethewiser|2 years ago
hgsgm|2 years ago
tick_tock_tick|2 years ago
From Universities to chess Leagues they are assembling what amounts to their own judges, juries, and prosecutors.
If someone is committing sexual assault why does their seem to be this avoidance of the existing legal system and a push into these opaque and what amounts to amateur alternative legal systems?
JoshTriplett|2 years ago
Suppose we say that the legal system needs to have 95% probability of guilt to render a guilty verdict, and its associated consequences such as imprisonment and/or restitution. A high threshold makes sense for such systems (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio).
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have a person for whom you have 80% probability of their guilt. That, then, is not enough to render a guilty verdict; 20% is clearly "reasonable doubt".
80% probability of guilt, however, is absolutely enough for reasonable people to say "I don't want this person associated with my organization", or "I don't want this person presenting at my conference".
This, among many other reasons, is a very good reason for organizations to have their own standards which are independent of those of the legal system.
paulddraper|2 years ago
I expect a "chess federation" to be good at.....federating chess.
Why do we expect a chess federation to be good at policing, investigating claims, collecting evidence, following precedent, passing judgments, and balancing collective and individual interests?
We have actual, legitimate justice systems that do this. Are they perfect? No. But why do you expect a bunch of chess nerds/experts to be any better at it?
---
You're complaining that a plumber did a crap job fixing your car. I 100% believe you that they did a crappy job, but also maybe you should have hired someone else?
glenda|2 years ago
ianburrell|2 years ago
Also, there are lots of things that are problematic but not crimes. "Sexual misconduct" could mean sexual harassment, which isn't a crime but shouldn't be allowed in organization.
duxup|2 years ago
Having said that I do agree with you (and thus my other comment) that these informal efforts by people who understandably are not qualified to deal with these things, are a mess too, and I'm not at all sure how they could possibly get it right often enough.
US Universities in their effort to make the path less difficult have demonstrated that just pressing your foot down on the balance of justice is not justice.
spanktheuser|2 years ago
To me, the “amateur legal system” you identity is closer to a more formalized version of what a friend group might do when they decide to ostracize someone due to boorish, misogynist or similar behavior. Since the chess association size exceeds the Dunbar number a lightweight process is needed to ensure proper function.
tptacek|2 years ago
ipython|2 years ago
It doesn’t surprise me that organizations actively try to avoid it.
rexpop|2 years ago
Yes, yes we do. The current legal system is inadequate to the task. It is costly, intimidating, strenuous to wield and aggressive in its penalties. Accountability and recompense can be more judiciously attained by interpersonal conflict-resolution practices at the lowest institutional level, ie at the leaf-nodes of the social hierarchy.
By asking us to rely on an unreliable legal system, you are asking us to accept victimization. If institutions return to "passing the buck" as they broadly were before, eg #MeToo, the buck will not stop. It will ricochet off the indifferent law.
squokko|2 years ago
This feels much more like one person making a decision about who he would and would not associate with.
I don't disagree that moral panics and mass hysteria are real but this does not seem to be a case of that.
altairprime|2 years ago
RangerScience|2 years ago
Our existing systems are actually just plain bad at handling "intimate crime", for a whole host of reasons. AFAIK the US legal system was designed first to handle "the state versus a person", and second "contract enforcement". It's also designed "to be blind" (to very arguable success), and "slow but inevitable" ("gears of justice").
One of the main reasons it doesn't work to well in community management - Call it the "tip of the iceberg" effect. Where there's one problem, there's usually a whole bunch more, even if they're smaller. I removed someone from my community in exactly this kind of situation; they had a couple of explosive breakups, and once people started talking more and more came out (outside of the relationships).
After we'd (myself and another leader) talked to everyone we possibly could, two things became apparent: 1) He'd end up hurting someone else again if we kept him around, and 2) none of the "evidence gathering" steps were necessary. If someone is unable or unwilling to accept any causation of another's harm, then they can do nothing to prevent that harm from recurring. Which matters when it's clear that it keeps happening, and they're always involved.
So yeah - all of that and more means the legal system is poorly suited to handling what's basically a heavy-duty form of community moderation.
rrrrrrrrrrrryan|2 years ago
Increasingly, many legal disputes are handled through arbitration, which is literally this. There are a lot of motivations for avoiding the courts: arbitration is usually faster, cheaper, and can be more discreet. From my understanding, big entities really only take something to court when they want to rely on legal precedent or establish a new binding precedent.
DSMan195276|2 years ago
There's also the fact that Lichess is probably happy to associate with people who have committed other kinds of crimes - are you suggesting they should blacklist everybody who has been convicted of a crime in the past? Or should they make a list of what crimes are/aren't ok? If we're making a list of which crimes are "actually" bad, then aren't we back at the same problem of Lichess having to decide what they're ok associating with?
Additionally Lichess isn't even based in the US, so which country's criminal laws is the owner supposed to use? It's not like any of these alleged crimes could be tried in France.
There's just no other solution to what you're presenting that is reasonable at more than a surface level.
OkayPhysicist|2 years ago
Big organizations like universities, chess leagues, and workplaces are in a middle ground. Exile from such a group is a much bigger deal, as it can threaten someone's livelihood, future, or incur other fairly large opportunity costs. However, they can't throw someone in prison, so compared to the nation state they need less confidence to levy their punishments, and thus are expected to be less accepting of members getting away with inappropriate behavior.
All of this comes to head with the issue of sexual harassment and assault. It's a very hard category of crime to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt", because often the only witnesses are the victim/accuser and the perpetrator/accused. If an organization takes a stance of only kicking someone out when they are convicted in a court of law, they are stating that they are willing to accept some level of misconduct, which is greater than most would like.
slowmovintarget|2 years ago
Within the family, it may not be there in writing, but Mom and Dad run the show. The rules are the ones they set for the household. The neighborhood has its norms, unspoken or baked into ordinances. The congregation has its rules, the corner store has a boss that says what goes...
If you have an organization, and it has even the slightest hint of formal governance, you have rules (laws) and a legal system. In this case, yes, chess organizations must deal appropriately with problems of sexual misconduct, including following the laws of the land. In the situations cited in the article, in particular, even if there were now criminal charges leveled, the legal system of the chess federations should have ensured that one member could not gain a position to continue preying on other members. They should do this regardless of what other supervening laws exist. Those other laws will come into play, but there does need to be governance of acceptable behavior within their sphere of concern.
burnished|2 years ago
Well, from a practical stand point not every instance of inappropriate behavior is illegal, and not every instance of illegal behavior is prosecutable. If you want standards for behavior in your group you probably have expectations of time to resolve and level of evidence than the legal system is not going to meet.
From a more philosophical perspective it would make sense for groups to form and enforce norms - the law sets a minimum expectation of behavior after all and has very different goals/principles. A legal system might err on the side of leniency/underspecifying in order to preserve liberty, and have requirements around process and evidence in order to put constraints on the authority to put a person into a cell for the rest of their life. Rules around who can attend a tournament don't have the same scope or impact and are probably not improved by including the assumptions of the legal system.
From a pedantic standpoint they are not at all creating another legal system because they have precisely zero authority, they are enforcing social norms through freedom of association. That you might see similarities probably isn't surprising given the need to investigate claims and take action, especially given the increased desire around transparency and hence published standards.
Side note; I feel your core observation but I personally wonder how much is something new vs a function that has broadly existed in organizations that is becoming visible due to expectations around transparency and action.
runako|2 years ago
At base, because the legal system:
- takes too long to be a useful preventative measure
- frequently involves re-traumatizing the victims, including via requiring public testimony of incredibly personal information
- often results in acquittal, frequently because victims choose not to submit themselves to trial
The goals of the legal system are essentially at odds with those of civic organizations. The legal system is designed to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a solid standard to use before e.g. incarcerating a person.
However, this standard is not necessarily stringent enough to vet people who supervise minors. More to the point, no private group of people is compelled to allow any individual to associate with them.
dragonwriter|2 years ago
That's not a legal system, and the reason for it is (or, at least, includes) that the organizations themselves have duties that are enforceable through the actual legal system, and they would rather not fail those duties in a costly way. And those duties often include duties to both potential victims and accused, so determining the facts in order to take the correct actions to uphold those duties requires some method of resolving disputes.
unknown|2 years ago
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bravoetch|2 years ago
nonethewiser|2 years ago
hgsgm|2 years ago
moate|2 years ago
Alternative language for what you're saying: Should we force people to allow everyone access to them/their company/their spaces? If not, how do we determine what groups are and aren't protected?
Tangential: Why would banning criminals be fine for you, and what crimes warrant exclusion? Should tax cheats be excluded from chess orgs? What about someone with a DUI?
giraffe_lady|2 years ago
The needs of a small organization are different from an entire state. Transgressions can be disruptive or destructive to organization-scale relationships without rising to criminality.
And the the traditional feminist answer of "why can't the legal system address sexual assault" is "it wasn't meant to." A famous quote on this is that from a woman's perspective rape isn't illegal it's regulated. The definitions of it and the standards to be met for deciding it has taken place were decided by men, to enforce against other men. The way women feel about their interactions with men has not traditionally been a prioritized factor in the legal system.
veave|2 years ago
kstrauser|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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unknown|2 years ago
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nonethewiser|2 years ago
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nonethewiser|2 years ago
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constantly|2 years ago
By using it in the pejorative sense here you’re on the wrong side of history, which is your prerogative.
gnulinux|2 years ago
ajkjk|2 years ago
roschdal|2 years ago
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nickthegreek|2 years ago
veave|2 years ago
From what I can see in this post, the laws against defamation.
lubesGordi|2 years ago