Pirating Gang Wiped by Justicar - Humans, Batarians Dead

I thought the Code didn't permit Justicars to kill any innocents, even in the pursuit of the most dangerous criminals.

But, look, not asari, never met a Justicar, so don't really have a great grasp.

Also, to whoever said Justicars are 'investigators', I would argue that you use that term very loosely. It doesn't take an expert detective/criminologist to go 'hmm, my radar says there is a ship full of pirates, let's go kill them'.

I didn't say that and if you understood it that way it's not what I meant nor how it is, you should know, unless you're out of the Republics for too long.
You don't need to adapt the handling of a murderer or thief for like forever but of course you have to adapt laws regarding stuff that wasn't around two millennia ago or changed significantly.
So don't just get simple.

The Justicars are part of the Republics' old law. Of course it lines up, since it's not outside the law.
Them being scarcer than scarce and very drastic does not exclude them as an institution of law, largely accepted by society.
Not creating much collateral damage in history or killing off the wrong guys by accident, but hitting the correct targets (and mostly those very very hard to get otherwise) adds to their reputation.

How many of the incidents you mention have happened at all or just got exaggerated afterwards? The same goes for Eclipse operations I assume. Refusing to admit any collateral damage happens is kind of unbelievable as well.

I don't think of them as heroines, their portrayal in art is very different from what their lives must be really.


The point is, a Justicar, set out to take down smugglers will investigate very throughly. She has to be absolutely sure about her target, since as you say, innocents are off limits.
It seems it wasn't that easy to find the head of that snake. I wonder how long it took her to find them and track down their base.

It's one of those marvellous little subtleties of the Code - as soon as someone obstructs a Justicar in any way, they are considered to be obstructing justice itself. There are therefore no longer innocent, and thus ripe for the killing.


Except that you do, because as much as the Republics would like to assimilate everyone into their way of thinking, we live in a galaxy with a myriad of other species. For example, forty years for stealing is quite reasonable for an asari, but decidedly unreasonable for a salarian caught committing the same crime.


And why, exactly, are they still largely accepted by society when it is clearer than clear that they have no place in this morally grey galaxy? I hate to invoke this particular law of the extranet, but would you still laud the Justicars if they had, say, murdered Commander Shepard during the Reaper War? She did blow up that relay and kill all those batarians, after all - an act clearly done for the greater good, and yet still a severe enough crime to warrant pursuit by a Justicar. The only reason these relics are still around and accepted by asari society is because that society has stagnated to the point of being completely incapable of accepting any real change. Just because we have the lifespan to facilitate decades-long debate doesn't mean that such debate is an effective means of government. Look at what it did to Thessia in the War - such devastation could have been mitigated if only the Matriarchs hadn't spent so long debating that they'd forgotten how to act.


Of course collateral damage happens. However, I do not deliberately kill civilians for the crime of obstructing my path to the target. Nor am I held up as a hero - that's the real difference. If the Republics were willing to admit that the Justicars were fanatics as ruthless as (if not more so than) any of the mercenary companies they like to decry, perhaps I would take less issue with it.

Ach. You know this isn't handled like that since we encountered the salarians 2K years ago.

Look at earth or palaven and see what difference it would have made.

A way to look at it, Vesh.
But it's still different. You do it randomly for money on a large scale. The Justicar doesn't get rewarded and she can't alter the code.

If you obstruct a Justicar, they don't see you as innocent.

Which is why the only sane response to having a Justicar show up is 'kill them on sight, ideally before they land'.

The salarian were just an example. How about handling newcomers like us humans, the geth, and if they come back the ralois? The galaxy is changing fast, and laws do need updates.

WOW! Taleeze I really like you, but this is not an OK thing to say. Earth was attacked by surprise, and Palaven held out. Thessia, despite ample warning time, crumbled like wet tissue in a matter of days!
And despite having their homeworlds in flames, humans, turians and krogans led the war. Were was the enormous asari army during most of the war? Your matriarchs even refused to helped negotiate the alliance, because it was moving too fast for them!
Now, let's remember that hundred of thousands of huntress battled in the war. But your government was little to no help compared to the Republic's means.


One is judged by their action, not their intent. And mercs exist outside the law, we can't do much about that. But the asari people have the power to stop or update the justicars.

Miss Rondor, I think I should apologize, the choice of words was poor.
It originated from a detailed knowledge of what the pirating has been doing to the Nebula. The many lives it has cost by starving, understocked medication, lack of construction material. I still think, they deserved the harshest punishment though. I am sorry if this is offensive.


Taleeze had it right actually. I wanted to note that the existence of Justicars is not having destructive effects on how our daily life, our society inside the Republics works. But again, I think those eighteen individuals have earned what got them. They really worked a record for that to happen.

Hey I'm all for the bad guys being stopped. But for all the reasons we covered until now this is not the proper way to do it. Now if she had tried to restrain them but had to use lethal force in the end I'd be ok with it. But that's not what happened is it? The article says it : executed. Death penalty. And eye for an eye. Aren't we supposed to be above that by now?


Yeah, because you have serious people doing actual police work to make that happen! The justicars don't hold the republics afloat!

Once more, in case that wasn't clear. In court justice there are no fixed sentences in a law to begin with. No need to update individual look on the subject.
The code only knows one sentence, you are correct but it isn't executed 'just like that'.

wow yourself. I know and like you as well but this is low, especially since you know what I did and what my mate did during the war.
I sure do know where I and a lot of my comrades where and I was glad about the asari fleets keeping Reapers of Cyone so your ships could have the fuel from its reactors. So pleeeze, don't shit at me like that.
We really shouldn't go at that level. This has nothing to do with the Justicar.

Also,let me point out again, we don't have a centralized government. I know we are slow and need time to set stuff up. That's just how we work though. Not likely to change, looks like a force of nature. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I think most of our people are smart enough to defer to the wisdom of those with centuries more experience and knowledge than them.

This entire thread seems to be a debate on the very nature of the Justicars themselves, which while I don't mind, I do have a very simple question to pose. Not just for you, but for everyone, regardless of how they feel about the Justicars as a whole.

Do you think that this particular Justicar was wrong in this particular instance for killing a group of criminals? Bear in mind that the circumstances surrounding this action are entirely vague at best, and that all we have to go on is that she did, in fact, kill them.

I for one think she was entirely justified, that imprisoning these people would have been a waste of resources, because you clearly are not the sort of criminal who will rob from the selfish and give to the needy when what you are stealing are necessary supplies for the survival of refugees and the rebuilding of an entire civilization.

Some Matriarchs are wise. The same could be said for some Matrons, and for some Maidens. It is not smart to defer to someone purely because of their age, it is blind. If it so smart to just listen to the Matriarchs, then what is the purpose of 'letting everyone have their say'? The Republics need new ideas, and we all know how the Matriarchs respond to that. Or have you never been in one of the forums when one of them gets going on some poor young Maiden who thinks the asari should maybe take a more active role on the galactic stage?


'Justice' claims to be fair. Therefore, each of those pirates should have been entitled to a fair trial, provided that the Justicar was not forced to kill them in self-defence. As you say, circumstances are vague - if they surrendered and she killed them anyway, as Justicars are wont to do, the Justicar was wrong. If they attacked first, she was in the right.

Of course, none of this changes the fact that law enforcement or military officials could have done the same job with much less controversy, and it would probably never even make the news. More proof that the Justicars are unnecessary, and something the asari should consign to history.

It's an ill-defined area. Illium (for obvious reasons) hasn't endorsed the Code, so a Justicar would never be sent here, or assigned a target based on an Illium conviction or somesuch. Off the top of my scalp the only way one might arrive here would be one bound by oath, or one in immediate pursuit (the Code standard) of a criminal. There are always rumours, of course - any time any criminal or gang is found dead without obvious evidence of who did it, you start hearing how there must be a Justicar on world. One would hope, if that were ever really the case, the authorities would have the sense to stand aside and let her do her work.

The consequences of not doing so would certainly make the newsnets, which it hasn't in my time here, so let's be charitable and assume if it came up, they did the sensible thing. Or someone somewhere along the chain of command did the sensible thing, anyway.

Justicars don't 'go kill' anyone. They are presented with cases, which subject to the scrutiny of the Order may be committed to their lists, and those targets they track and execute. Any wrongdoing they are personally faced with, they are bound to right (and yes, usually with extreme if not lethal force). For what I'd hope would be obvious reasons, the Code is quite firm on Justicars not being excessively curious about anything not directly related to their cases. So far as I understand criminology (little enough, I admit, but some things are pretty self-evident), that imposes some very difficult limitations on a Justicar, one which she must counter with excellent investigative skill applied to the avenues she finds it advisable to pursue. It doesn't exactly make their lives easier, but then their lives are never easy; there's no other way, though.

...you just don't. Justicars don't operate like Huntresses, out of sight - procedurally I mean, not tactically. Anyone obstructing a Justicar knows what she is, and given the nature of the targets Justicars are assigned... it may be very, very harsh on a personal level (and I don't begrudge anyone grief or anger in such a situation), but ultimately if you raise arms against a Justicar, you're fighting on behalf of her target, and that is never morally justifiable.

It is black and white, with all the horrible consequences that entails - there's a very good reason the Order isn't the model for all Republican law enforcement. But we need them, as they are, where they are, to do what we can't, to be what we aren't.

So, you let them basically have free reign to kill anyone between them and what they perceive as a wrongdoing they are bound to deal with...On the basis that you need them to do it to keep the asari people from getting too out of line. Am I getting that right, Daia?

Oh, well, we have this organization which is thousands of years old based off horrific religious ideals set up to remove a small, almost mythical sliver of our population to concentration camps throughout the economy instead of focusing on a real method to remove the problem, even when they still get loose on occasion.

But it's okay to allow Justicars to do what they want because, uh, tradition and, uh, they get stuff done. And we're Asari and we know everything, especially reality. But the CODE!


I wonder whatever happened to that "End the Justicars" movement ran off to from before the war. I wouldn't be surprised if they were murdered.


Oh, Asari, never stop being so utterly fascinating for the wrong reasons.

Jesus Christ people I step away for a day.

Police officers are answerable to the general public and direct civilian oversight. What you're suggest would be the same as going "well we know what rules they're working off of and we don't have any problem with those so I suppose we really don't need any of that paperwork saying who got pulled int and who shot who where".

You see you say that and then in your very next post go
So essentially Justicars are highly trained investigators who don't respond unless obligated by the code who can't really probe too deeply into most cases because otherwise they would be obligated to kill all guilty parties because of The Code.

The extrapedia article alone was so exceedingly dry that I only survived by dint of throwing my haptic interface out the office window.

Hardly, given the effective rise of extra-Citadel Space regions as more prominent suppliers of raw minerals and ore Thessia is in for some

rather difficult times.

...It was thirty seconds of effort devoted to a particular hobby for a single instance. Time well spent regardless but I'm not entirely sure how it equates to "your arguments have no bearing whatsoever"

As I have stated multiple times the main deviation lies between how the Republic's portray themselves to their own civilians and other states and how they behave when faced with problems that they do not wish to deal with.
...As arguments in support of Justicars go that's not a particularly great one.

You mean like the civilian and military appointed agents who answer directly to the overarching governing body of the Citadel?

Oh indeed. Something perhaps actually being accomplished and the Republics avoiding ostracization and general revulsion by their peers?

Perish the thought.

Don't backpedal quite so hard dear, you'll trip over something. On a tangential note

Evacuation of civilians and wounded, logistical support, hit and run attacks on Reaper reinforcements such as their drone ships or conversion platforms in space, guerrilla strikes on processing and internment camps, elimination of indoctrinated leaders and their subordinates in the Terminus thus allowing additional allied troops to be brought in, delivery of WMD payloads into Reaper superstructures a la the Miracle.

Any one of those actions could have potentially saved millions and yet the Republics did not deign to directly intervene until their Councilor was almost slaughtered on the Presidium and Thessia itself was burning. What difference would it have made?

All the difference in the world.

So, to rephrase for clarity, it's perfectly acceptable to kill someone then provided they did something wrong and you aren't being directly compensated?

I so do love C-Space types like you who turn around and criticize the Terminus and Abyss for being too bloodthirsty.

Speaking of which...

This is such a hilariously narrow view of reality that I am actually appalled.

Edit: Aaaaaaaand in hindsight that was entirely too long.

Yes it is.

Justicar trespasses on private property, you bring her in, she fucking murders you. Justicar gets caught in legal mix-up, you stop her to question her, she fucking murders you. Justicar brought in as a suspect in an investigation fucking murders you. Justicar illegally kills a cop for trying to stop her, you try to bring her in, she fucking murders you.

I feel fully justified in saying that Justicars should be shot on sight in civilized space.


No you don't! No-one needs something like the Justicars. They're pointless, absurd and indefensible!

We're the only race besides the krogan who can watch a thousand years go by in a single lifetime, and unlike the krogan our homeworld wasn't a hellhole of thresher maws and nuclear war and goddess knows what else. We can afford to watch a few decades of inaction go by if it helps the long term role. Youngsters like yourself almost always want to act brashly- I know I did. Wait until you've seen more than nine centuries go by though, and I assure you the galaxy and it's civilizations will look both larger and so much smaller.

They also could have done so with a lot more red tape, and to be quite frank, we're a bit too busy trying to care for innocent civilians and don't need more criminals who sit around eating up our supplies awaiting a cushy prison cell, or worse, a chance to get out and do it all over again.

The ones who are given the authority to do pretty much whatever they want in the pursuit of their targets, without a moral code to ground them? Those ones, yes.

Ah so it's people like you who run things in the Republics. This...

explains a great deal actually.

As you so graciously point out asari are the only race besides the very recently unsterilized krogan to live for literal millenia (unless you'd like to count the geth but even they react faster than you). The vast majority of the galaxy on the other hand: humans, salarians, volus, elcor, hanar, turians, batarians, vorcha, quarians, and indigs do not. Given that the asari are effectively outnumbered by an order of raw magnitude perhaps it would be slightly prudent to recognize something that I have had to say repeatedly in discussions with some of the other asari on the board.

Not everybody plays the long game; the galaxy most emphatically does not revolve around the Republics.

Oh yes let's ignore things like "due process" and "justice" and "sapient rights" because they're inconvenient.

Fuck it, let's just shoot all the criminals. Saves space in the end.

Note: This is sarcasm layered with a fair bit of contempt in case you need to ask (and I get the sense that you are one of the ones who will).

Ah yes, I know exactly what you mean: the ones who can and have been stripped of their rank, title, privileges and followed by criminal prosecution and kill orders if they go off the reservation.

I've never passed a law in my life or given a speech, and I don't 'run' anything, not even when my own shift ends. I'm just an old lady with a gun in a temporary housing area.


Working on the assumption that you believe every race should run it's own little corner of the galaxy the way they see fit, wouldn't that also apply to asari and the Justicars?
As has already been pointed out, the Republics don't have the same system of laws that many other races do. Due process and the definition of sapient rights in one republic might be very different in another.

Not the first personal attack you've leveled against me. You seem a very angry sort.

The very ones who do exactly what Justicars do, except add in a genocide or two.

And lo, the patronising asari stereotype raises her head. I have spent near on five centuries in this galaxy, both in the Republics and out. I have seen more than enough to know that the Republics could do so much more, and yet simply choose not to.

Yes, you can afford to sit back and do nothing for a few decades. However, the galaxy at large (which the asari claim to want to be a part of) cannot. And like it or not, that galaxy will have an effect on the Republics - when they do not act fast enough to respond effectively, they set themselves up for tragedy. The galaxy moves at a different pace than the asari - it is time the Republics both recognised and embraced that. They've had long enough.


See, the human understands.

Let me re-emphasise: the human, one of the newest races to enter the galactic community, understands said community better than the asari, whose race has been around since the beginning.


So your solution is to just kill them all. And here I thought the Republics were supposed to be all about peace and understanding.

Now, understand that, had I been contracted to kill these people, I would have done so without hesitation. However, I do not claim to be a representative of justice or the law. Said law states that someone is innocent until proven guilty by trial, no? Execution, unless in self-defence, is thus unlawful until the criminal has undergone fair trial.

Incidentally, red tape exists for a reason. It's there to ensure that law officials don't accidentally hunt down the innocent, or do something similarly unlawful. In essence, it exists to prevent those hunting criminals from becoming criminals themselves. Not to say that it couldn't be implemented better, but that is a discussion for another time.


No, dear, I think he's saying that the galaxy works together, not as a collection of regions that govern themselves. As such, the asari need to start recognising that their long-term planning does not work for the rest of the galaxy, and should start adapting. Like every other race has.


Sapient rights are a universal concern, not an asari-only concern. Much like the use of WMDs, I would assume they are encoded in Citadel law (which applies to all C-Space and Citadel races, including the asari), but I'll admit that I haven't researched it thoroughly.