A Man for All Seasons - The Devil Speech
Why Hacker News recommends it
Quoted whenever HN debates due process and legal protections, even for people one dislikes.
What it is
A one-minute clip of Sir Thomas More's speech from 'A Man for All Seasons', defending giving even the devil the benefit of the law. The uploader ties it to debates about torture and extralegal action.
Recommended by 1 HN commenters across 1 different months, 2019 to 2025.
What Hacker News said
Recommends liampulles · 2025-08 · on “Facial recognition vans to be rolled out across police forces in England”
Is there a public conversation in European countries about the value of liberty? I don't mean arguments about how liberty can lead to more economic prosperity, I mean how liberty is valuable on its own terms. Without this value, the state can continue to erect legislation in the name of "safety", or any other perceived inequity in society, until you can no longer move. How perverse that English law used to be a bastion of civil liberty protections. Here's a great scene from A Man For All Seasons that shows what I mean: [this video]
Cites fennecfoxen · 2019-10 · on “Massachusetts Sues Exxon over Climate Change, Accusing the Oil Giant of Fraud”
Who needs to establish any injury to shareholders? That company is bad! Would you give evil the benefit of the law? [this video]
Cites tialaramex · 2021-06 · on “Van Buren is a victory against overbroad interpretations of the CFAA”
> Whether Van Buren deserves punishment is a separate question from whether the legal theory the DoJ sought to use to get him punished was proper. Exactly. [this video] "That man's bad" / "There's no law against that" "Whilst you talk he's gone" / "And go he should, if he were the devil himself until he broke the law".
Cites ben_w · 2023-10 · on “Alexei Navalny's lawyers are arrested”
Re first paragraph: > The only real step 1 — unless you want to get into a philosophical argument about the foundation of knowledge and the Münchhausen trilemma — is "get a law degree", which for most people is much too hard. Go and do the thing. I'm serious, if you want to make this a real actual argument and not just two random nerds locking horns on the internet (which I'm not interested in so you'd have to find a real actual lawyer to spar with after getting that degree), that's the only way — there is no other. > Also, have you heard of selective enforcement? Does it not worry you at all to see the one side consistently getting prosecuted and persecuted and the other one not at all? Do