• 8 months ago
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00:00 >> A number of us, I think, are having difficulty with the distinction between status and conduct.
00:08 You'll acknowledge, won't you, that in those terms there's a difference between being addicted
00:13 to drugs and being homeless?
00:15 In other words, someone who's homeless can immediately become not homeless, right, if
00:20 they find shelter.
00:23 Someone who is addicted to drugs, it's not so easy.
00:26 It seems to me that in Robinson it's much easier to understand the drug addiction as
00:30 an ongoing status.
00:32 Well, here I think it is different because you can move into and out of and into and
00:36 out of the status, as you would put it, as being homeless.
00:40 >> So it's interesting, we today understand addiction as an immutable status.
00:45 In Robinson the court suggested that someone might be recovered and no longer have the
00:50 status of addiction.
00:52 So the Robinson court wasn't thinking about addiction as something that couldn't change
00:56 over time.
00:57 >> Well, that may limit the applicability of Robinson to a different situation, but
01:01 what is the analytic approach to deciding whether something's a status or a situation
01:07 of conduct?
01:08 >> So the question is, status is something that a person is when they're not doing anything.
01:15 So being addicted, having cancer, being poor are all statuses that you have apart from
01:21 any conduct.
01:22 >> Having cancer is not the same as being homeless, right?
01:24 I mean, maybe I'm just repeating myself because homelessness can, you can remove the homeless
01:31 status in an instant if you move to a shelter or situations otherwise change.
01:36 And of course it can be moved the other way as well if you're kicked out of the shelter
01:40 or whatever.
01:41 So that is a distinction from all these other things that have been labeled status, isn't
01:44 it?
01:45 >> I don't think so because, you know, a cancer patient can go into remission, they no longer
01:48 have that status.
01:50 I don't think, I mean, I don't think there's any question that being poor is a status.
01:53 It's something you are apart from anything you do.
01:56 It's a status that can change over time and at that point you wouldn't be a part of the
02:00 class.
02:01 But I don't think it changes the fact that it is a status.
02:04 And what Robinson found so offensive about status--
02:06 >> Well, I guess, is being a bank robber a status?
02:09 >> No, because being a bank robber means you rob banks.
02:13 So the definition and the conduct--
02:15 >> Violating this ordinance means upon being asked to leave, you don't leave.
02:19 >> Violating this ordinance means you're homeless.
02:21 So again, homelessness is not something you can-- that you do, it's just something that
02:26 you are.
02:27 And so the question becomes when you attach the universal human attribute of sleeping
02:31 or breathing to that status, does it make the punishment conduct-based instead of status-based?
02:36 I think the answer is--

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