Laws of Magic and the US Law

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Lameth

Ok all valid points...but you have pointed out the many flaws, can you maybe help with solving the flaws please? Lol. Also none of my players are legal scholars and they understand hand waiving and suspension of disbelief. So I’m trying to come up with a believable scenario that will be fun and work for the beginning.

So what is the best way to set it up in the first six months? I really liked the idea of the pcs being called in as expects to assist the cops or in investigations. Maybe representing their council or masters. Each pc already has police and investigation skills.

So how could the wizards assist in the situation legally? Maybe just at the local level maybe? Let federal law battle it out in the courts and handle it at local levels for a time. Maybe city to city in the “hot zones” where things are happening?

Various cabals might actually end up as being the go-to "consultants" for different police agencies. The United States would expect to be able to try magical malefactors once captured but if their facilities aren't sufficient to handle jailing them there's no particular problem in outsourcing the imprisonment. The private prison industry is after all big business in the states.

[Tenex]

Originally Posted by Lameth

Ok all valid points...but you have pointed out the many flaws, can you maybe help with solving the flaws please? Lol. Also none of my players are legal scholars and they understand hand waiving and suspension of disbelief. So I’m trying to come up with a believable scenario that will be fun and work for the beginning.

So what is the best way to set it up in the first six months? I really liked the idea of the pcs being called in as expects to assist the cops or in investigations. Maybe representing their council or masters. Each pc already has police and investigation skills.

So how could the wizards assist in the situation legally? Maybe just at the local level maybe? Let federal law battle it out in the courts and handle it at local levels for a time. Maybe city to city in the “hot zones” where things are happening?

After 9/11, federal and state governments ran around trying to find people that could provide training in Middle Eastern culture and Islam. Lots of marginally qualified charlatans had a good scam for many years until the dust settled and true competence could be displayed and recognized. The problem was many people in government couldn't recognize a real expert on the Middle East.

Something that gave people an enormous leg up was if they already had an affiliation with government. Local cops, let alone federal agents, with a background in the Middle East or fluency in Arabic were recruited to federal task forces or in-line for some quick promotions.

Just have your PCs have both some level of psionics/magery along with being reserve deputy sheriffs for some decent size agency (like Los Angeles SO) and they are set. Even better is make them existing federal agents or task force officers when this all goes down. They'll be on the fast track for acceptance and official powers. Just force your players to buy all the appropriate backgrounds and give them enough character points to do so.

If you Google "terrorism task force" and research how these things exploded at the state and federal level after 9/11 you'll get an idea of what a magic task force might look like and function.

If the PCs are science nerd types, not action oriented, make them employees of the Department of Energy. Wikipedia has a good page on security clearances. Read up on them and make sure the PCs already have a clearance at the start of the game. That's the way for quick acceptance in the LE and intel community. Government is going to accept one of their own much more quickly than an outsider.

In fact, if mana is considered a newly discovered form of energy, the DOE might very well be responsible for investigating it. Even without express instructions to do so the scientists there would probably be curious in looking at mana from a quantum physics point of view. By the way, DOE has criminal investigators. They might end up running a magic task force the way DEA runs drug task forces.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Lameth

My thought was to use the Dresden Files laws of magic as a base, then have them (mage council for lack of better word now) enforce it. They basically would go “see we have these laws and wardens to enforce them. If this crosses over to your side we will partner up with you to stop the menace.” Thoughts?

There is no way in hell any western government would ever permit such a thing. Moreover, any attempt to act in such a way would draw charges of vigilante activity.

Violent actions taken based on such claims would draw the attention of the most hard-core of no-nonsense law enforcement agencies who would react with considerable consternation and energetic opposition.

As noted in the Dresden Files, a sniper with a high-powered rifle is something most mages rightly fear, and the FBI special tactics teams have lots of those guys.

Basically, if Dresden had chosen to drop a dime at the beginning of the series, Warden Donald Morgan would have found himself targeted for (at least) aggravated assault, or even attempted murder, by the Chicago PD.

In most western nations, the perception is that the power and authority exercised by government has either been actively or tacitly granted to it by the people. As the granters of that power and authority, the people have not only the right, but the responsibility, to set limits on the exercise of that power and to ensure government agents obey those rules and abide by those limits.

Now then, we will always debate how the rules apply, and where those limits lie, and how they interact with individual rights and liberties. However, the vast majority of the populations of western nations accept those basic premises.

Nobody in the United States granted law-enforcement authority to the Council in the Dresden Files, and nobody would grant such authority to anybody not answerable to the public, in this setting, either.

Act as an advisor to the police, the way Harry does? Sure. Serve as an expert witness? Most definitely. Exercise arrest authority? Not ever.

Engage in summary execution outside of the established court system? Face murder charges, assuming the aforementioned SWAT teams don't just decide they qualify as "public enemies" too dangerous to take alive, and drop them from 500 meters out.

Eventually, of course, the police will start to hire mages as officers or (more likely) members of special investigation or special response teams. However, most mages should receive at least the minimal (and questionably adequate) education in law and the limits of authority that most cops get.

Moreover, they'll have to take the same oaths to protect and uphold the Constitution of the U.S. and of the state in which they operate (if they're local PD), and their activities will be subject to the same sort of scrutiny from the local version of Internal Affairs.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Lameth

Ok all valid points...but you have pointed out the many flaws, can you maybe help with solving the flaws please? Lol. Also none of my players are legal scholars and they understand hand waiving and suspension of disbelief. So I’m trying to come up with a believable scenario that will be fun and work for the beginning.

If the wizarding world is accepted as a domestic dependent nation, as recognized Indian tribes are, they would be granted significant rights to govern themselves. Even that would probably technically require constitutional amendment, as the constitution specifically calls out Indian tribes as something other than either states or foreign nations. Also tribal sovereignty only applies on tribal lands. And the federal government would realistically be unlikely to give the idea any serious thought, but if it was done, that's the sort of framework I imagine would be used.

A more likely framework would be akin to other professional authorities like medical and legal, with the organization authorized to produce licensing standards and/or educational accreditation, but no real enforcement power.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by RyanW

If the wizarding world is accepted as a domestic dependent nation, as recognized Indian tribes are, they would be granted significant rights to govern themselves. Even that would probably technically require constitutional amendment, as the constitution specifically calls out Indian tribes as something other than either states or foreign nations. Also tribal sovereignty only applies on tribal lands. And the federal government would realistically be unlikely to give the idea any serious thought, but if it was done, that's the sort of framework I imagine would be used.

A more likely framework would be akin to other professional authorities like medical and legal, with the organization authorized to produce licensing standards and/or educational accreditation, but no real enforcement power.

Moreover, even on tribal lands, the Federal Government exercises ultimate authority and can countermand the ordinances of tribal councils, so long as it (broadly) adheres to the terms of the original treaties.

(That last is fairly new, and really started to matter in the 1980s. The U.S. Supreme Court started to declare Congress had to reign in the Bureau of Indian Affairs and recognize water rights, fishing rights, and other territorial agreements found in treaties. Before then, the treaties hadn't been worth the paper they were printed in, for more than a century in most cases.)

The biggest difference is that state governments have no authority in, or jurisdiction over, American Indian reservation lands. Most have intergovernmental agreements to allow pursuit and mutual aid, but the tribes can nix those.

That reality is why one of the most important responsibilities of the office of Colorado's lieutenant governor is to maintain relations with the nations that have reservation lands, here. That office also represents the interests of the State of Colorado in negotiations between the American Indian nations and the federal government.

No such treaties exist between the U.S. government (or any other) and the community of mages, and I seriously doubt the any government would ever want to negotiate any such thing. It would require a large (and largely successful) insurgency to even bring government representatives to the table.

[Lameth]

Originally Posted by RyanW

If the wizarding world is accepted as a domestic dependent nation, as recognized Indian tribes are, they would be granted significant rights to govern themselves. Even that would probably technically require constitutional amendment, as the constitution specifically calls out Indian tribes as something other than either states or foreign nations. Also tribal sovereignty only applies on tribal lands. And the federal government would realistically be unlikely to give the idea any serious thought, but if it was done, that's the sort of framework I imagine would be used.

A more likely framework would be akin to other professional authorities like medical and legal, with the organization authorized to produce licensing standards and/or educational accreditation, but no real enforcement power.

This is my current frame work. The pcs are lined up as preexsisting police skilled. PC1, the trainer sorcereres, will have advanced training in detective skills ( literally trained by a real Sherlock Holmes that exsisted in the shadows of the world in secret for 150 years or so), PC2 is a psi from a private paranormal research Corp that works as advisors and consulates with police, Interpol, and The Hague court for missing persons and serial killers. PC3 is a Medal of Honor recipient and a former small town Sherriff with natural mystical powers of metal and electrical control (unknowly born in a high magical radiation area and spontaneously had recently had his powers awoken while in horrible stress).

I see it as One of them (pc2) has a old friend contact in the local police, as well as various contacts in Law enforcement agencies. I see her being called as an expect consultant and then she brings her fiends as her “team”.

[copeab]

Once a pack of ghouls wipes out a town's police department in minutes because they refused help from mages ... I think police departments will start getting more friendly to mage consultants especially to deal with supernatural threats that the government may conveniently declare to not be human, regardless of their form.

(I know this contradicts my first response, but only mages were mentioned as going public, not beasties)

[The Colonel]

What, if anything, changes if some or all of the magical traditions going public are, or claim to be, theurgical and claim the protection of the first amendment?

[dcarson]

In what has happened legally that might have precedent.

From Wikipedia

Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that an ordinance passed in Hialeah, Florida, forbidding the "unnecessar[y]" killing of "an animal in a public or private ritual or ceremony not for the primary purpose of food consumption", was unconstitutional.

The court seemed to imply that they might be able to ban all animal killing in the city but not just for religious purposes.

So what happens with religious rituals that actually work now.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by dcarson

So what happens with religious rituals that actually work now.

If a mambo killing a goat keeps vampires out of New Orleans, the city council will fall over themselves voting to let her do it ...