The Dictator Leader In The Movie

The train is a metaphor of a society that we are living, dealing with class struggle and the ways that people are controlled to keep social order. The train divided by class, poor people in the back and rich in the front. Group of lower-class citizens living in filth at the poorest part of the train are determined to get to the upper part and spread the wealth around. Tired of being suppressed and trying to make a revolution.

In the most societies, citizens have classified to three categories: lower class, middle class, and upper class. The middle class people most of the time engaged with daily lives, the upper class citizens have the wealth and the power, and lower class is struggling for survival. For the middle and the upper class of people in this society, balance and stability are success keys, but how the balance and stability in such societies should be gained?

A dictatorship government or charismatic authority system

could maintain a proper balance of anxiety, fear, chaos, and horror in order to keep life going. Moreover, if the society does not have that, they need to invent it, by revolution. The importance of using fear and chaos, is to maintain a necessary order and leadership in the society. The dictator leaders are so devout in their beliefs, they are so certain. They are ruling class, this is the system how it should be, and the human spirit has no place for that.

To answer to this question: If you were the leader in the society depicted in the movie and you wanted to maintain the society pretty much as it is, how might you use law to do so?

The movie had this message, despite of all struggles that the people have had, survival requires maintaining the status quo. The dictator leader wants to maintain the Status quo despite the bloody consequences.

We had Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein as both charismatic and dictator leaders, they appears to be hope on the horizon for the group of people that believe on their superhuman qualities or powers of divine origin that set them apart from ordinary mortals. Same situation has been occurred in the movie, the characters worshiped the sacred engine and they believed the engine is the source of life for them. According to Weber, charismatic leaders come from the margins of society and emerge as leaders in times of great social crisis. These leaders focus society both on the problems it faces and on the revolutionary solutions proposed by the

leader.

However, charismatic authority systems tend to be short-lived. Charismatic leaders must project an image of success in order for followers to believe the possess superhuman qualities; any failures will cause follower to question the divine qualities of the leader and in turn erode the leader’s authority. The locus of authority in this system rest with the individual possessing these unusual qualities, it is not derived from “laws.”

Ghaddafi and Saddam Hussein maintained the balance of their society, even if their countries were among the most corrupt and poor countries in the world. To rule on their countries, they hold and abuse an extraordinary amount of personal power especially the power to make laws without effective restraint by legislative.

Although I do not agree with the leader in the society depicted in the movie, since he was thoroughly a dictator and autocrat leader but I think the best way to use law there to maintain the society pretty much as it is and to moderate cruelty, is one in which the legislative, executive, and judicial powers are separate and kept each other in check to prevent any branch from becoming too powerful.

Based on Montesquieu’s theory, uniting these powers, would lead to dictatorship. He used this account to explain how governments might be preserved from corruption. Dictatorship, in particular, as a standing danger for any government not already dictatorial and autocratic, and it could best be prevented by a system in which different bodies exercised legislative, executive, and judicial power, and in which all those bodies were bound by the rule of law. This theory of the separation of powers had an enormous impact on liberal political theory, and on the framers of the constitution of the United States of America. Separation of powers, therefore, refers to the division of government responsibilities into distinct branches to limit any one branch from exercising the core functions of another. The intent is to prevent the concentration of power and provide for checks and balances.

Montesquieu believed the key to understanding different laws and social systems is to recognize that they should be adapted to a variety of different factors, and cannot be properly understood unless one considers them in this light. Specifically, laws should be adapted to the people for whom they are framed, to the nature and principle of each government, to the climate of each country, to the quality of its soil, to its situation and extent, to the principal occupation of the natives, they should have relation to the degree of liberty which the constitution will bear, to the religion of the inhabitants, manners, and customs.

On the other hand, the leader in the movie is the only and the only one that made a decision. In such society (train), when there is not a legislation system, the whole society ruling by a dictator is condemned to extinction. The government is a device for maintaining in permanence the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes.

If we can consider a society as an organization, using agenda setting and policy formation is another option to lead a community or a smaller society.

According to John W. Kingdon, setting an agenda required three separate streams, each of these streams has a life of its own, and they are largely unrelated to the others. The outcomes really turn on how the streams are joined at the end. First, is stream of problems, people come to concentrate on certain problems rather than others and there is a process by which they decide on which problems they are going to concentrate, some problems such as crisis and urgent concerns framed differently. For example in the movie, lack of nutrition and food shortage is a critical problem, as well as in the world. Therefore, Wilford, Gilliam, and Curtis could come together and concentrate on this problem, first.

Second, there is a stream of policies and solutions. They propose policies and refine policy proposals; most of the time solutions and policies generated first then look for problems to solve. Here for food shortage, they can review the solution to produce more raw materials. Although they manage to survive and even produce, its members do not understand its own processes. It operates based on simple trial and error procedures, the residue of learning from the accidents of past experience, and pragmatic inventions of necessity.

Third, there is a stream of politics, are politicians willing and able to make a policy change?
Political events come along, like changes of administration or in Congress, or shifts in national moods, or interest groups' campaigns, and that stream, the stream of politics, moves along on its own.

Then a choice opportunity comes along, and advocates join the streams together. At these moments, a problem is recognized, a solution is available, the political conditions are right, and the three streams are joined together. Therefore, advocates develop their ideas over a long period of time. They develop their rationales and supporting information, they get their proposals ready, and then they strike when such an opportunity comes along. When these three streams come together, a window of opportunity is open and action can be taken on the subject at hand. This occasion called an open policy window. The window is open for one of two reasons: either a problem is pressing, verging on a crisis, and that creates an opportunity for people to advocate their solutions to it,
OR the political stream changes and the advocates take advantage of their open window to push their proposals.

There is a lot of inertia in this process. There is a lot of resistance to change, but the process is fluid enough that there are many opportunities to advocate change. Inertia can sometimes be overcome, and big changes can take place. Most of the time, policy does not change incrementally, little bit by little bit.

There are rapid, big changes, all of a sudden. Then after a spasm of change, the polity comes to rest, as if catching its breath, until the next big spasm of change. People who are trying to advocate change are like surfers waiting for the big wave. You get out there, you have to be ready to go, you have to be ready to paddle. If you are not ready to paddle when the big wave comes along, you are not going to ride it in."

At the end, this quote from Cardoza, briefly explaining about the symmetry of the legal structure: “Those who think more of symmetry and logic in the development of legal rules than of practical adaptation to the attainment of a just result” remain “troubled by a classification where the lines of division are so uncertain and blurred.”

2) If you were the leader in the society depicted in the movie and you wanted to maintain
the society pretty much as it is, how might you use racial differences to do so?

In the movie, I realized class warfare and economic inequality exist more than racial differences, even though, we still have racial inequality in real society. Social location really informs how you think about laws, working class versus privileged. Successful people are not challenging the system, in the other hand, working class born into a system in which they have never had a chance, which have caused to lost impressive intelligent in frustration and bitterness. Marc Galanter explained how privileged class people gain advantages in the legal system. As we saw in the movie, the leader and his companions have luxury living and it was highlighted how unequal resources and incentives of parties may allow elite class (repeat players-as Galanter mentioned) to control and determine the content of law.

As a result, repeat players are able to influence the content and meaning of law. Repeat players,
having been through many similar litigations, have advance intelligence. Repeat players are well positioned to play, not just for immediate gains, but also for the rules. It is the RP who writes the form contract, requires the security deposit, and the like. Not only, are RPs in the position to change the rules through legislative channels, they "can also play for rules in litigation itself.” We would expect an RP to play the litigation game differently from a One-Shotters or those have little or no resources. Moreover, this ability to play differently, affords the RP some very substantial benefits.

The OS inevitably is interested only in the tangible outcome of its particular case, not in legal precedent set down for future cases. Moreover, the RP, by virtue of its experience and expertise is likely to know which rules are important - which are worth maintaining and fighting for.

In short, the RP, unlike the OS, is in an excellent position not only to manipulate, but also to make rules. Equally as important, the RP can withstand long-run engagements in the judicial process, trading present legal costs - even loses - for future gains. Notably, this puts the RP in a powerful bargaining position vis-a-vis the OS which generally can neither sustain lengthy delays nor early losses.

Moreover, the RP is likely to have one other thing on its side: lawyers. Therefore, lawyers might appear to be equalizing agents. That, however, tends not to be the case. Lawyers or law firms who service RPs tend to develop long-term relationships with their clients - they get to know their clients and know them well. They can engage in specialized services for their clients.

So, we have powerful evidences that "haves," here, largely defined as governments and businesses, do win more often on appeal than "have-nots." Haves" were more likely to win during the early and latter conservative judicial eras, and they were more likely to win during the presumably "little guy-friendly" New Deal and Warren Court eras.