Quote:
Originally Posted by Icelander
Convincing society in general of the legitimacy of some position is the province of skills like Politics, Propaganda, Public Speaking and Writing. Arguments can be based on appeals to points of Law, Philosophy or Theology, but whether they sway the populace has little or nothing to do with whether they are technically correct according to the arcane rules of the academic discipline.
|
And yet, for the most part, society at large is convinced that if a court rules that X has committed a crime, or owes damages for breach of contract, that it's just to punish X, or make them pay damages. Courts do not engage in propaganda campaigns to get these rulings accepted—and neither does anyone else. But if you get the court to rule in your favor, with statistically rare exceptions, the general public will take the matter as settled. You may not have carried on a publicity campaign to gain public support, and the court almost certainly has not; but public acceptance is there.
Note that I'm not arguing that this method applies in the generality of coups and countercoups. Certainly, a coup as such is an extra-legal action, and a countercoup may use extra-legal methods. But if people are preparing to engage in a coup, and you catch them before they make the overt attempt, they may already have done things that are extra-legal, and thus be subject to trial—in the United States, for example, on charges of conspiracy, among other things. That trial would be decided by Law rolls. And that sounds like at least one aspect of the initially described scenario, though not necessarily the decisive one.