Schoon and a bunch of other
peaceniks stormed an IRS building in Tucson. They were protesting the use
of tax dollars to fund proxy wars in Central America.
Schoon et. al. were arrested
and charged with obstruction.
Schoon admitted the acts,
but argued the defense of necessity
(aka choice of evils),
claiming that their criminal acts were motivated only by humanitarian
concerns.
Basically, they argued that
they were maximizing social welfare by committing a crime where the
social benefits of the crime (US out of El Savador), outweighed the costs
of committing the crime (annoying some IRS workers).
The Trial Court found Schoon
et. al. guilty of obstruction.
They appealed.
The Trial Court found that
in order to invoke the necessity defense, a defendant must show:
The defendants were faced
with a choice of evils and chose
the lesser one.
They acted to prevent imminent
harm.
They reasonably anticipated
a direct causal relationship between their conduct and the harm to be
averted.
They had no legal
alternatives to violating the law.
The Trial Court found that
they failed on every requirement.
The Appellate Court upheld the
conviction, but for different reasons.
The Appellate Court found
that Schoon et. al. were involved in indirect civil disobedience.
'indirect' because they
weren't directly violating the law they didn't like, they were
protesting something else.
The Court found that the defense
of necessity can never be used for
indirect civil disobedience because it requires another actor not
controlled by the protestors (e.g. Congress) to take action.
Basically, it isn't the
protests that will get the US out of El Salvador. The protests will only
raise public awareness, which might
convince Congress to amend the law. Because of that intervening step,
you can never say that the protests were the cause of the change in
policy. So there are no direct social benefits from the crime to
balance out the costs of committing the crime.
The Court found that a
constitutional law or government policy can never be considered a legally
cognizable harm. Therefore there is no social benefit to overturning the
law.
