> ... making something retroactively legal is vastly different than making something retroactively illegal.
I can see the difference. But the similarity is (as I pointed out) that accepting either of them makes the case for the other stronger by removing a barrier - that barrier being the presumption that the law is fixed at a particular point in time.
> The first happens all the time and is the entire point of a full pardon.
I can't think of any examples of illegal acts being made retroactively legal (and certainly not "all the time"). Could you cite some examples for my benefit?
I think you're wrong about what a pardon is. A pardon is a way of publicly acknowledging that a (guilty) individual has fully repaid their debt to society. It's used explicitly to release people who have undoubtedly broken the law from the consequent obligations (i.e. prison/gallows) and is done at the behest of monarchs or their governments.
Pardons are a very thorny issue in general because they do not respect the notion that all individuals should be equal under the law. It would be unfair for a convicted murderer to escape the noose on the whim of a King (for example) while another murderer is left to hang. Similarly, pardoning Turing would not be fair on all the others who suffered under the same laws.
> your approach assumes the law that allows for chemical castration because he was gay was a legitimate application of state power.
I can see the difference. But the similarity is (as I pointed out) that accepting either of them makes the case for the other stronger by removing a barrier - that barrier being the presumption that the law is fixed at a particular point in time.
> The first happens all the time and is the entire point of a full pardon.
I can't think of any examples of illegal acts being made retroactively legal (and certainly not "all the time"). Could you cite some examples for my benefit?
I think you're wrong about what a pardon is. A pardon is a way of publicly acknowledging that a (guilty) individual has fully repaid their debt to society. It's used explicitly to release people who have undoubtedly broken the law from the consequent obligations (i.e. prison/gallows) and is done at the behest of monarchs or their governments.
Pardons are a very thorny issue in general because they do not respect the notion that all individuals should be equal under the law. It would be unfair for a convicted murderer to escape the noose on the whim of a King (for example) while another murderer is left to hang. Similarly, pardoning Turing would not be fair on all the others who suffered under the same laws.
> your approach assumes the law that allows for chemical castration because he was gay was a legitimate application of state power.
I don't understand where you get that from.