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Thoughts on the mysteries of the universe, the human soul, and cats |
| Today, an icon of jurisprudence lies in State as she is honored by those we elected to lead us. Among many things Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known for, justice is listed as most prominent: justice for the poor, the oppressed, the disadvantaged. Many have applauded her for her compassion. Others have cursed her for her activism. But one thing all will agree on is that an important mind from the U.S. Supreme Court has passed away. To say that RBG represented justice seems obvious. I mean, she was a judge, right? But what exactly does the term "justice" mean? It should surprise no one that many brilliant minds throughout the ages could not answer this question definitively. Even Socrates struggled with this question in his dialectics. The Oxford English Dictionary defines justice as: 1. just conduct 2. fairness 3. exercise of authority in the maintenance of right Not very helpful, is it? The dictionary goes on to define "just" as "morally right or fair." As usually we can count on the dictionary to be reductive and useless. So, for my purposes, I'm going to define justice as "getting what one deserves." What do we deserve? A firefighter who pulls someone out of a burning building might deserve recognitions and awards for their heroism. A thief might deserve a jail sentence for their crime. A business owner might deserve profit for their hard work starting up their business. The list could go on ad infinitum. But when discussing justice at the level the Justice Ginsberg presided at, the picture becomes more complicated. For the Supreme Court deals with justice at a far vaster scale. They deal with systemic justice, or what whole groups of people deserve. This is a gordian knot that great thinkers have been trying to unravel for centuries, with no end in sight. The concept of systemic justice makes me think of the protests that are happening around the country, the world even, regarding the conduct of police toward certain groups of people. Those who protest and those who support the protests clearly believe that justice is not being served, that people are not getting what they deserve, that the law is net serving everyone equally. On the flip side of this issue, I hear people complaining about the damage happening as a result of the riots and lootings that are occurring sporadically at the fringes of these protests. These comments reflect people's concerns over security. Turning back to the so-reliable dictionary, we find the definition of "secure" to be: 1. untroubled by danger or fear 2. safe 3. reliable; certain not to fail I saw a news article a while ago which included a photograph of a married couple standing outside their home brandishing guns as protestors walked by. Clearly this couple had concerns about their immediate security. But what about the big picture? Debate rages about how to guarantee security without impacting civil rights, how to employ the police against criminal elements without harming justice. How to create a safe world that is also worth living in. But here is where the paradox lies, the one that I think security proponents don't see: these protests started because justice wasn't being served. Does that mean that without justice, there can be no security? Whatever the answer, I think that the record shows that Justice Ginsburg stood for justice, not just in the legal sense, but in the moral sense. Perhaps she understood the security paradox, or perhaps she simply wanted to do right by all. I hope whoever replaces her can bring the same level of compassion and humanity to the judiciary as Ginsburg did, for we are going to need it. |
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