Law is Rule

Times have changed since the days of the Salem witch trials. The culture (at least in the United States) is unmistakably different than it was back then. In The Crucible, Salem was a theocracy, a land ruled by religious officials.  This lead to the power of the land to be held by a few number of people. As you saw in the readings, this can lead to injustice very quickly, with people being unfairly put in a no win position. These situations can be created on a whim by a person of power and can be very difficult to stop. The action/ accusation may not always be an intentional corrupt plan to gain power or exact revenge, but a simple mistake. People back in the days of the Salem witch trials really did believe in witches, and that lead to innocent people being murdered.

In our current culture we are ruled by laws set by a democratic republic, or a democracy of representatives.  This allows the people many safeguards that protect them from the wild witch hunts of the past. The main driving force for being convicted of a crime is the laws set by our government.  Even if you were a witch, you would be free to go about your day as long as you followed state and federal law. Even if someone in power wanted to condemn you for something arbitrary you are still safeguarded by the type of government we have. In order to create a new law it would have to be justifiable to over half of our lawmakers. This would make it impossible for a lawmaker to successfully have one person they disagreed with executed for a wild accusation.