I'll set the law on you

    Most people have probably heard, at least on TV, someone threatening to prosecute someone, or to have someone prosecuted--the law of the fishwife.  Hmm. The law is something we make together, as a society, an agreed upon set of standards--one you could have gotten from your grandmother ( or mine, anyway), as in "how would you like it if someone did that to you?', or "what if everyone behaved that way?"  As we make the law together, we administer it as a society, together, through court employees and judges, elected by us, or appointed by our elected representatives. The law doesn't, or shouldn't, belong to one person or group to use as a weapon--when it does, it really isn't the law anymore, it's just someone using the courts for a personal agenda. We'd be better off with an impersonally administered set of rules, with no room for decision-making by administrators, than with a criminal justice system that can be used by the self-styled clever to their own purposes, no matter how high or righteous-seeming. "Would you like to prosecute?" should be removed from our courts, along with "I want him prosecuted."  It's an ancient custom that just doesn't work in a modern world. Our laws are statutory--written--and we, as a society, caused them to be written, and chose what they should be. That's why they work, when they work. No individual citizen should have the capacity to overturn that, by deciding who is and who is not prosecuted.