10 Legal Problems Superheroes Don't Like To Talk About
If they fought the law, would the law win?
Aside from shoehorning in incredibly contrived reasons for the good guys to be pummelling seven shades of sparkling sh*t out of each other, this year’s Batman Versus Superman: Dawn Of Justice and Captain America: Civil War have two major things in common. Longwinded titles with no verbs and a misused colon, and a cold, hard look at the notion that superheroes should, just maybe, be held accountable for causing massive collateral damage in their dumbass fistfights.
But that’s life in the Marvel and DC universes, because (newsflash!) superheroes break the law all the time, or at least bend it like Batman. It’s something that comic books and the movies made out of them tend to skip over, because taking all of this into consideration might get in the way of all their noble angst and face punching.
Laws are, of course, more elastic beasts than people realise, and not every law is enforced as strictly as the rest. Sometimes the court will exercise judicial restraint, limiting the exercise of their own power, and sometimes a judge will base decisions (where he or she has leeway to do so) on personal objections or prejudice.
That being the case, all of this discussion is, of course, purely hypothetical. Were the comics set in the real world, things would probably be considerably different.
With all that in mind, let’s take a look, in layman’s terms where possible, at the legal issues that keep responsible superheroes up at night.
10. Your Secret Identity May Be More Trouble Than It’s Worth
There are two ways that a ‘secret identity’ works, if you’re a hero or villain trying to keep your private life separate from your more colourful escapades, and it depends which comes first.
People who adopt a super-identity later on in life will have been born and raised in the system: they’ll have genuine birth certificates, social security designations etc. For them, the issue will always be the separation of church and state: constantly policing how their masked activities impinge upon their personal lives.
That mask will have no legal weight, so no additional legal documentation will be necessary to adopt it… but it carries its own share of problems. Many hi-tech solutions to gaining super powers will require licences to operate, and certain power sources may simply be illegal. There’s a paper trail that comes with obtaining the parts and fuel for these things, and more and more, all of this paperwork is stored digitally. Even low tech heroes will need to replace things like costumes and weapons on a regular basis.
When your super-identity is your default and you’ve adopted a civilian identity to blend in or hide, you’ll need all the documentation that goes into maintaining that identity in the 21st century. The more you want this new ‘person’ to take on a normal role in society, the more entrenched and official this fake documentation needs to be.
It’s practically impossible these days to undertake significant transactions without identification and without leaving that ubiquitous paper trail. Renting an apartment, opening a bank account, obtaining insurance - even something as simple as getting a job is fraught with problems.
In this day and age, fake identities will usually be unable to withstand serious scrutiny. And the more bulletproof your fake identity is, the more laws you’ll have had to break - or have broken for you - to obtain it.
Aside from the moral/ethical issues in committing a felony, breaking the law creates a different kind of paper trail. Everyone always cites the example of Al Capone, who wasn’t indicted over any of his appalling criminal activities as a racketeer, but simply over failure to pay tax. And if you need to move money around to fund or facilitate your super-identity, that creates a trail of its own, and may violate money laundering laws.
Above all, maintaining the necessary legal fictions in this day and age pretty much requires you to be, or employ, a super-hacker just to keep your head above water, with all the ongoing felonies that go along with that.