“Justice” is a popular word today. Overall that has to be a good thing. But if you contemplate the common use of the word in our discourse, it may cause you to wonder just what the word has come to mean to a lot of people.
One of the more recent uses of the word in our culture is to refer to a utopian achievement of total sameness. Rather than equal treatment, justice is seen as equal everything - equal family stability, equal talent level, equal psychological make-up, equal income, equal health conditions. If one person has two gas stations near his home, but another person has to drive twice as far to fuel up, someone will want to take up the cause of “petroleum justice.”
Justice is “Rightness”
The simplest definition of justice is that it is rightness. We don’t use that word much in English, but we use related words: fairness, righteousness, correctness. In the original biblical languages these are interchangeable. It means lining up with an objective standard. It is the scales being in balance. It applies personally (being a just or righteous individual), as well as corporately to systems of law.
Justice is a basic and intuitive concept. If you give a 5 year old child a piece of cake, then you give his 3 year old sister a slightly bigger piece, and then you give his 7 year old brother a huge piece, what do you suppose that 5 year old child will say?
You know darn good and well what he will say. “NOT FAIR!” It won’t matter that he should be pleased that he gets cake in the first place. He can’t help noticing the size differential in the slice distribution. Where did he get this idea of fair treatment? He probably hasn’t read much on moral theory. It’s just wired in. He simply finds himself with the intuitive awareness that he has been wronged in the respective proportionality of dessert.
The kid is onto something, but as he gets older he will come to see that the world is fundamentally unjust in many ways. If it weren’t it would be a perfect world. This is why the dreamy contemporary notions of total equity, as wonderful as they may be in theory, are naive and childish.
Blind Impartiality
At the root of Western Civilization are the great law-givers, and none is greater than Moses. Until very recently, you would find images of the 10 Commandments in all kinds of public (including government) spaces. Removing those doesn’t change the fact that the Torah is a cornerstone of the moral thinking and legal systems of Europe and America (not to mention others). And with good reason.
The genius of Israel’s law code was that it took justice out of the hands of fallen rulers. Yes they had kings, but it was not an absolute monarchy as in other places. It was a constitutional monarchy. The body of written law superseded the king. Not even the great King David could abuse his position and violate the law without facing serious judgment a the higher court of the true King, as he learned the hard way.
Reiterated throughout the Hebrew Scriptures is the appeal to justice as impartial treatment of all people. “You shall have just balances and just weights” (Lev. 19:36), all judges were told. “And I charged your judges at that time, ‘Hear the cases between your brothers, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the alien who is with him. 17 You shall not be partial in judgment” (Deut. 1:16).
Hence the American image of ‘Lady Justice’ wearing the blindfold. She’s not blind to truth, to morality, to fairness. In fact, those things are all that she sees. She’s blind to the particulars of those involved - their birth, status, race, class, wealth, connections, talents, family names, etc. She considers none of that. She can’t be bought off. She won’t let snap judgments, personal preferences or petty considerations pollute her rulings; she sets potential biases and emotions aside. Fair treatment for all, no impartiality. That’s the essence of justice.
Justice, and Only Justice
Another thing that justice must not consider is politics. And that is the issue that should be setting off alarms for us at present. Consider the following scenarios, and whether they represent justice.
Two different men have very similar accusations of sexual assault against them. Because the two have opposite political affiliations, one is presumed innocent, and the other presumed guilty.
A politically motivated mob ransacks a city, committing numerous crimes (vandalism, theft, assault) in the process; the guilty persons are treated by the law with sympathy, leniency, light sentences for some. Another mob, with different political motivations, commits similar crimes; all persons get the harshest treatment: imprisoned for months without bail to await their trials, given maximum sentences - no exceptions, no leniency.
A protestor for a political cause is allowed to disrupt, harass, block, interfere, scream at people, etc., under the guise that this is his or her right of free expression. Another protestor for a very different political cause is later awakened in the night by armed agents of the law storming into his home to march him out in his pajamas as a public spectacle.
A politically-aligned non-profit gets by with gross mismanagement and misappropriation of millions of dollars before the IRS bothers to notice and look into it; another non-profit that is aligned differently has every dime of its operations scrutinized in fine detail as though someone is hoping to find anything that might be used against them.
A prominent political candidate or leader has financial red flags and whistle-blowers indicating plausible corruption, but the agents of justice seem too busy or indifferent to take up the case; meanwhile a prominent candidate or leader from the opposite wing of the political spectrum has suspicious financial records from the past, and the full weight of the government comes against him with every potential charge it can make.
If you’ve been paying any attention, you know that the scenarios above are not merely hypothetical. The reason this needs our attention is that history has dire lessons for societies that let their systems of justice be co-opted by the powerful. Once impartiality is no longer respected, once the blindfold is off and selective prosecutions commence on the basis not of the merits of various cases but on the basis of people’s political alignments, you have taken an ugly detour. This is the hallmark of all police states. Anybody willing to let this happen should be voted out. You don’t want people like this anywhere near the levers of power.
Let the words of Moses sober us up: “You shall appoint judges and officers … and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment. You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, … Justice, and only justice, you shall follow” (Deuteronomy 16:18-20).