The term "selective enforcement" seems to imply that laws are enforced at the whim of the enforcers, which strikes me as an undesirable property of a legal system. It seems to me that selective enforcement, if present at all, should work the other way around: occasionally choosing to acquit, rather than occasionally choosing to enforce.
> It seems to me that selective enforcement, if present at all, should work the other way around: occasionally choosing to acquit, rather than occasionally choosing to enforce
Do you mean going through the trial and then occasionally choosing to impose a null sentence, as opposed to skipping the trial altogether?
Otherwise I'm not sure how what you propose is different, given that there are so many levels of enforcement within a legal system.
The military is in fact struggling with that issue right now, with debates on sexual harassment in the military taking up a lot of time in the House and Senate. And in fact it seems that Congress will probably remove the ability of the court-martial convening authority to acquit someone at all, due to abuses of that power. So there is no panacea.
Much as your quote seems to imply, there is really only the consideration of what scheme would work best overall. And right now selective acquittal (as opposed to selective enforcement) is destroying the credibility of the military on sexual harrassment issues.
"Act as if the maxim of thy action were to become by thy will a universal law of nature. So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world." (https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant#Groundwork_of_th...)