Justice -- Reality or Illusion?

I am real. I am typing this right this minute. The letters are appearing on my laptop's screen and forming into words. Into sentences. Forming symbols that will convey my understanding of Justice to anyone who can read English.

Reality or Illusion?

I might be an app and if I am there would be no need for me to use a keyboard. And this minute could have been hours ago. Or days. Or years. The letters may never have appeared on any screen until you started reading this post. And, I can assure you, only I will understand the thoughts I write exactly as I intend them to be understood. And that's just for today. Some tomorrow, I will have forgotten most of today and experienced enough of life to change my understanding of Justice.

Merriam Webster defines Justice as:
1   a :  the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of
           conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments
     b :  judge
     c :  the administration of law; especially :  the establishment or determination of rights according
           to the rules of law or equity
2   a :  the quality of being just, impartial, or fair
     b (1) :  the principle or ideal of just dealing or right action (2) :  conformity to this principle or
           ideal :  righteousness
     c :  the quality of conforming to law

I want Justice to exist, especially the fair part.

We humans are not alone in this. My husband and I used to have two dogs. Oscar a Dachshund and Bess the Basset Hound. (Actually, we've had many dogs, though never more than three at a time. And cats and birds and fish. And the idea of wanting fair treatment has been observable in all of them. Well, maybe not the fish. I never got well enough acquainted with individual fish to be able to ascribe to them any particular interest in anything other than food and sex.)

Anyway, Oscar and Bess liked to lick our yogurt cups and ice cream bowls. When there was only one for us to share with them, we had to give the other a doggy treat. Even then, they could hardly wait until their sibling finished so they could get a chance at the cup or bowl. They made it quite clear that they did not consider a Milk Bone in lieu of the yogurt cup or ice cream bowl, fair.

I think the desire for Justice is the driving force for the popularity of fictional murder mysteries. Although true crime inspires many nonfiction books and television shows, it's fiction I like. In a novel, TV show, or movie you almost always find out who done it. And the murderer is dealt with, promptly and without regard to their family or financial status. That's fair.

Unless, of course, the accused is innocent, then Justice is served because they are acquitted and the right baddie is identified. We're still talking fiction here.

That's why I write Science Fiction/Murder Mysteries. (Murder on Ceres)

Real life and true crime stories don't work that way. In real life, unless you personally know who done it (or maybe you did it yourself) you can never be sure that the right person is 'brought to justice.' And all too often the application of Justice is capricious and random.

Reality is if you get caught smoking a joint in the privacy of your own home in Denver, you might be considered inhospitable if you don't offer your guest a hit.

Get caught smoking a joint anywhere in Oklahoma and you could face a felony charge and one year in prison. Get caught again, and you could be looking at two to ten years incarceration.

More reality, in Oklahoma, a person can get convicted of First Degree Rape and be sentenced to five years. Or anything up to life without parole. Or the death penalty.

Wait a minute -- step across the Colorado State Line into Oklahoma and get caught more than once smoking a joint and you could be sentenced to more time in jail than someone who gets the minimum sentence for First Degree Rape. That can't be fair.

Ah, the reality of Justice is murky water meandering through a dangerous bog. (That's why lawyers get the big bucks.)

Now, I'm not a lawyer and I sure ain't gonna smoke marijuana in Oklahoma.

Think I'll stick to fiction where Justice is the kind of illusion I want to be real.

Justice -- an essay

According to the American Heritage Dictionary the first definition of the word justice is “…fairness.” The second is “The principle of moral rightness; equity.” The third is “…fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law.” And the fourth is “conformity with truth, fact, or sound reason.”

Fair? What if you hit Millie with your car and she dies? Completely by accident, you understand. You were driving within the speed limit. You were not impaired by drink or drugs or cell phone or rowdy children in the back seat. She stepped in front of you and you hadn’t time to stop. For the purposes of this essay we won’t even consider the question of fairness to Millie.

Because you were in no way at fault for Millie’s death, you have moral rightness on your side and equity would require that you be absolved of any responsibility for Millie’s death.

If Millie were Joe’s pet of ten years, morally all you would be required to do would be to apologize to Joe. You could also offer to pay a token amount to cover Joe’s loss or replace Millie. And maybe that would be due reward – especially if Joe had other pets he liked better or he had family and friends who would continue to provide companionship.

But what if the situation is more complex? Millie was Joe’s only friend in the world? Because Millie was not a human being, you will not be required to answer to the law for her death, nor will Joe have recourse to civil law. He cannot sue you for everything you’ve got. You receive fair treatment in accordance with honor, standards, or law. But he’s lost everything important to him. Will your apology and offer of money be due reward for Joe?  

Or what if Millie was Joe’s wife of fifty-two years? Or Joe’s mother and only support? Or Joe’s only child? Even if the law determines you were not at fault in any way. That it was truly an accident. Something beyond your control. It might take weeks or months. Can that be fair to you? Your life is on hold until the situation can be resolved. However it is resolved can the loss of Millie be fair to Joe?

Finally comes the question of conformity with truth, fact, or sound reason. The truth is that you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact is that Millie is dead and sound reason holds that nothing will change that. You can’t un-be at the moment of impact. Joe cannot un-lose Millie. Can there be justice?

Does this mean justice only happens in trivial cases? Or in our imaginations?

In murder mysteries we almost always find out who dunnit and we end the books assured that the perpetrator will be brought to justice. I think that’s what I like so much about John Lescroart’s novels. (That and the fact that they’re well-written.) And when the hero is involved in something that seems right but against the law, he gets safely out of it. But then we run into the Italian justice system as Donna Leon writes it and even though her indefatigable Commissario Guido Brunetti identifies the baddies they don’t get their comeuppance because of who they are or who their family is.

In what is considered literary fiction justice happens even less often. Steinbeck’s Goad family in The Grapes of Wrath finds no promised land. McCarthy’s cowboys in the Border Trilogy don’t find true love and live happily ever after. Unfortunately these injustices, as uncomfortable as they make us, seem more true to life.

Maybe justice is just a human construct to give us hope and keep us trying.

J is for Justice

J is for Justice

 Justice is one of those two needs that motivate our highest and our basest behaviors. The other is Safety. Neither is attainable. We can’t give nor get them. Scholars and philosophers have studied and discussed them. Governments and religions have been built around promises of providing them. Tiny humans take up the concepts as soon as they realize that they are separate from the world around them.

Perhaps because Justice and Safety are impossible to have in our everyday lives, we imagine them. We invent stories around them.

The bad guy is identified, stopped, and punished. Safety is restored and Justice is served. There is nothing so dissatisfying as a murder mystery that goes unsolved or a villain who goes unpunished.

It happens all the time in real life and we still stop what we’re doing to watch our daily dose of news about the O.J. Simpsons and the Oscar Pistoriuses of the world on trial. We weren’t there. We can’t know what really happened or who did what or why. We hear too many possibilities – the prosecution’s story, the defense’s story.

These events underscore the perception that Justice is not only blind, but she’s lame. She staggers and stumbles along like Shakespeare’s Richard III, Cheated of feature by dissembling nature, Deform’d, unfinish’d, scarce half made up. The difference in Justice in the real world and Justice in Shakespeare’s fictional world is that Shakespeare could establish without a reasonable doubt what the crime was, who the criminal was, exact the appropriate punishment, and reassure the realm of a time to come with smooth-fac’d peace, With smiling plenty, and fair prosperous days!

Since I have to live a real life, I am thankful for the fiction writers who give me moments and hours of respite in the imagined world of Justice and Safety.