A friend of mine recently posted this about the recent Roman Polanski arrest. I know little about the case, and can say nothing intelligent about it. My friend's post, however, reminded me about Derrida's essay "Force of Law," which speaks of the fact that law can never equal justice.
If justice is a cosmic balancing scale upon which wrongs are righted, it's quite easy to see how law can never fulfill justice. Imagine a murderer who takes the life of another man. What caused the murder? The murderer? Yes. The older brother who tortured the murderer growing up? Yes. The murderer's father who abandoned his family? Yes. The mother who abused him? The mother's economic status? His teachers, his community, society as a whole with its violent television? Yes, yes, yes. All are complicit, all owe something on the scale of justice.
How could law ever calculate and accurately punish such a crime? The reality is that law is only enough of a deterrent to keep it from happening again. Only enough revenge to vindicate its victims. Only enough closure for society to bring resolution to the narrative of "justice" it has imposed upon a set of events -- a narration whose authors are trained in creating fiction (lawyers), whose audience is addicted to a happy ending (jurors).
But when the crime happens again, when the victims continue to lose sleep, and when society is still plagued by the narrative (consider the OJ Simpson case, for instance), we realize that the kind of retribution law dispenses has the propensity to leave behind ghosts with unfinished business: Justice.
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And when law is taken to the ridiculous...
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/28/indiana-prosecutor-s.html
Justice seems very far away.
wow. that's a great example. and by great i mean horrendously stupid. poor granny.
Interesting take on justice. While I agree that the root cause of wrongs is complicated and can be blamed on many things, you seem to have brushed over the idea of free will. Yes, some people lack the resources and experiences that privilege brings, but there is always a moment before a crime is committed where a person can think, "No. I will not do this. This is wrong."
I'm pretty lax when it comes to punishment. I don't support the death penalty and I'd much rather see probation and rehabilitation doled out than life sentences. But even if justice can never be perfectly served, there still has be to be some kind of consequence for people who break society's laws. If there isn't, then how can we expect those who have never been taught right from wrong, or who never even had the opportunity to make a choice, change their ways?
I could go on for days about Roman Polanski, but I won't. :)
Aha! Narrative, my old enemy. I knew you were behind this.
And the Indiana grandmother serves as a great example of the Utopian elevation of ideas (oh The Law! The Law!) over common sense and consideration for human beings.
Y'know, though, in that particular case the problem is the law. Whatever I plan to do with it, I should be allowed to buy cough syrup by the gallon. I should be able to walk into a drug store and say "gallon of tussin, please, plan on whipping up a fine batch of meth."
But that's a rant for another day, I suppose.
I suppose I should qualify that. The tussin purchase is fine because at that point I have neither committed a crime nor announced plans to do another harm.
If I went to the feed store to get a ton of fertilizer to "whip up a jim-dandy bomb," that's diffent.
@chrissy: yes, free will figures into this importantly, and by brushing over it, i avoided a complicated issue ;) but i think the context in which the decision is made is equally important as the decision itself. i think courts already try to take this into account -- not all murderers are treated equally, for instance. the problem is that punishment always falls on the shoulders of the murderer alone, even when there's plenty of blame left to pass around.
i'm not advocating getting rid of the legal system. i just think that instead of justice, we should call it something else, like closure.
@nick: i have mixed feelings about controlled substances. on the one hand i think almost everything should be decriminalized. on the other hand, i think things like alcohol, pesticides, etc. should be more regulated. this goes back to our argument about labeling dangerous texts ;)
http://i84.photobucket.com/albums/k16/wizeboy2gh/My%20Myspace/ParentalAdvisoryExplicitContent-1.jpg
(not my photobucket)
Warning labels are badges when it comes to texts.
I am all for avoiding complicated issues! I see what you're saying about "justice" as a problematic word. I think "closure" is equally problematic. For example, in the Polanski case, the woman has said she wants the issue dropped, that it happened long ago and she wants to put it behind her. Which is valid, and yet... a crime was committed and sometimes "justice" is more important than simple closure. Sure, the victim is "over it," but allowing someone to get away with a crime just because they escaped their punishment for x number of years and the victim has closure isn't a precedent we want to set.
Interesting post, at any rate!
"but i think the context in which the decision is made is equally important as the decision itself. i think courts already try to take this into account -- not all murderers are treated equally, for instance."
Often that context includes race.
"For example, in the Polanski case, the woman has said she wants the issue dropped, that it happened long ago and she wants to put it behind her. Which is valid, and yet... a crime was committed and sometimes "justice" is more important than simple closure. Sure, the victim is "over it," but allowing someone to get away with a crime just because they escaped their punishment for x number of years and the victim has closure isn't a precedent we want to set."
It's a form of closure in that a citizen's social status has not exempted him from the laws we are all purportedly subject to.
A happy ending by any other name....
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