“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come — great responsibility.”
S. Lee and S Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “Spider-Man,” p. 13 (1962)
In 2015, the Supreme Court quoted this line in a patent dispute case involving a Marvel-related product. The Supreme Court said:
Patents endow their holders with certain superpowers, but only for a limited time. In crafting the patent laws, Congress struck a balance between fostering innovation and ensuring public access to discoveries. … What we can decide, we can undecide. But stare decisis teaches that we should exercise that authority sparingly. Cf. S. Lee and S. Ditko, Amazing Fantasy No. 15: “Spider-Man,” p. 13 (1962) (“[I]n this world, with great power there must also come—great responsibility”). Finding many reasons for staying the stare decisis course and no “special justification” for departing from it, we decline Kimble’s invitation to overrule Brulotte.
Kimble, et. al., vs Marvel Entertainment, LLC, successor to Marvel Enterprises, Inc., October Term 2014
I find it interesting that one of the lines that has made it into our culture’s repository of wisdom is that with great power comes great responsibility. I find it particularly interesting because it is a line from a comic book rather than a line from a philosopher, a politician, or a political scientist. The creators of Spiderman were Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Both passed away within five months of each other in 2018. Stan Lee is credited with the line more often than Steve Ditko, but these many years later, I doubt they even remembered who exactly first came up with the thought.
I suppose it should not be surprising that writers who have to encapsulate their thoughts in a comic strip bubble might be among those who come up with the pithiest of sayings. After all, you only have so many letters available in each bubble. What is perplexing is that no other writers, no philosophers, no politicians came up with such a short phrase that distills so much wisdom into an easily understandable saying.
But, that pithy saying encapsulates the reason for the demonstrations going on nowadays. Police have been given great power by the citizenry of the United States. Depending on which proposals pass, they are about to lose some of their power because they have misused it. George Floyd’s death was nothing more than the last straw in a long line of equally disturbing events over the last several years.
Police are given the power of life and death. Previously, they have been granted a certain degree of immunity and a certain leeway in using violence. This has been thought necessary in order to protect us from those who would use violence to kill us or rob us or worse. There is a certain degree of truth in that idea. We do need to have those who will put themselves on the line for us, whether soldiers, police, or firefighters. Both police and firefighters are fairly modern ideas. There were no full-time paid firefighters in the USA until 1850. Police began in England in the 1820s and quickly spread to the USA, although it was not really until the 1920s that what we would recognize as professional police were established. What is known as community policing only began in the 1970s to the 1980s.
But that means that even if we go back to England, what we think of as police is only a 200-year-old institution, at most. It also means that there is no long-standing tradition that we must preserve lest we destroy our society. Professional policing in this country is only about 100 years old. There is no reason why we cannot examine some of the assumptions behind policing. It is not as though it is a system that carries hundreds of years of existence. If it needs amending, then 100 years of professional existence is not much, even in the history of this country.
With great power comes great responsibility. As the Supreme Court commented of itself, that great power should be used sparingly. That, obviously, has not happened. If the police are not able to handle that great responsibility, then either their power needs to be reduced or their oversight needs to be greatly increased and strengthened. It is obvious that groups such as internal affairs are not truly able to police the police. Rather, outside agencies with great power over the police are what is needed at this time. Failure to exercise great responsibility means a reduction of power is needed.
Leave a Reply