What is justice?
My friend the Oxford Dictionary tells me that justice is ‘to treat someone with due fairness’. To be fair is ‘to treat people equally.’ However, Justice in our legal system requires far more than simply unbiased decisions; it also requires a concept known as procedural fairness. This means that all the steps in the process must be fair; not just the final decision.
However, this important qualification does not equal what justice really means to most people. There is a quality about justice that requires something golden: that is truth! Therefore justice is ultimately the discovery and revelation of truth. A cruel man may be able to avoid prosecution; his lawyers may be able to make the process procedurally fair, but if the truth remains undiscovered then no justice has been achieved.
Justice without truth is a game society plays to make itself believe it is civilised. Those who take revenge against their persecutors are jailed. The rulers above us say that people have no right to take the law into their own hands! The unsuccessful are supposed to accept the decision of the courts no matter the consequences. Their child may have been murdered; their wife may have been raped; their business may have been destroyed; their lungs may be full of environmental poisons; but the decision is final. In other words, shut up and suffer in silence!
Why does suffering matter anyway? We have anti-depressants to help us; alcohol and counsellors. There are now multiple types of professionals who make money from the suffering that results from the falsehood that masquerades as our justice system.
If ever you criticise our legal system when there are lawyers around; you will usually hear the following response; ‘Our system may not be perfect but it is the only one available!’ This is not only Anglo-centric, elitist and ignorant; it is a blatant lie. There are many different forms of judicial systems in the world. In fact most of Europe overtly avoids the cumbersome anachronism know as ‘English Common Law’.
Are we really to believe that a people in the twenty-first century cannot invent a practical application of justice that is superior to the layers of decisions made by half-literate judges many centuries ago?
I truly believe that justice is nothing without truth. Therefore the goal of justice should be to reveal the truth. Are judges even the right people to sit in judgement on truth when they know so little about human psychology and motivations? I wonder if the whole concept of a legal system is outdated. Maybe the road to truth lies somewhere completely different.
Whatever the solution to the charade known as justice in our society, if it is to achieve its ultimate goal; it must never be separated from the pursuit of truth. For truth is the essence of justice.
President
In Justices Australia