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Comment by hsjqllzlfkf | Hacker News Reader

I fully agree with the person you're responding to, and it is a gotcha. I also understand your point that the offended party is the Bahamas, but if the US said it would pursue some charges, why is it then trying more? Why is it that the mechanism is "one parry can do what it wants unless the other party complains" instead of "one party can only do what it agreed to"?

Also, I BET YOU that behind the scenes the us is telling the Bahamas "you better not complain about this or else we'll get you on that other thing". Because.... you think US prosecutors would leave this possibility to chance? Why would the Bahamas not complain?

That's right, this is why people view lawyers as dishonest.

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"Why is it that the mechanism is "one parry can do what it wants unless the other party complains" instead of "one party can only do what it agreed to"?

Because that concept is consistent with all of US law - See third party standing, third party beneficiaries, etc.

In the US, you usually can't raise claims on behalf of others, whether they are constitutional, contractual, etc.

This was not a surprise to anyone involved - the US, SBF, the bahamas, the lawyers, etc.

They are all quite aware of this.

You can argue this mechanism sucks, or is bad, but the answer to your question is because that's what all of US law says everywhere - this is not some unique feature of extradition. It's a core concept common across both civil and criminal law.

Hey I'm sure this all makes sense to lawyers :-)

Anyway I understood your point, thanks for making the effort.

Let me go further - Lawyers didn't make this up. Elected officials did :)

Non-lawyer elected officials, actually.

Lawyers are just charged with knowing enough of the mess to be able to advise people - but don't shoot the messenger.

The criminal system is also deliberately adversarial, something lawyers didn't make up either.

The civil system is not, at least.

> Non-lawyer elected officials, actually.

What do you base this on? It depends on the year but Congress is usually 30-50% lawyers.

A lot of legislative drafting is carried out by lawyers in the Legislative Counsel (of the House of Reps, of California, etc.), anyway.

Unless you mean these rules were written before the Bar associations were a thing

These things are older than the US, for the most part.

Those that aren't are from very close to founding, done in conventions that were mostly not lawyers :)

These are mostly not modern doctrines created by Congress.

Given much of this comes from English Common Law, we get to blame time immemorial for how our legal system works.

> Why would the Bahamas not complain?

Because most countries are, in the general sense, not hugely interested in harboring (or even letting in) foreign criminals.

He's not a Bahamian national, they have zero reason to not turn him over.

The only reason they might want to keep him is to get their pound of flesh, given that he's also defrauded Bahamian citizens, but they seem to be quite happy with letting Uncle Sam foot the bill for prosecuting and jailing him.

> Why would the Bahamas not complain?

If the Bahamas wanted to keep him, they wouldn't have extradited him in the first place. Why would they want to protect SBF?

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