Justice

 https://x.com/travelingflying/status/2043796373645005168?s=51&t=cLq01Oy84YkmYPZ-URIMYw

Justice is an interesting concept.  

AI tell us that "Justice is the ethical concept of fairness, impartiality, and giving individuals their due, often upheld by legal systems"

 MW tell us that it's "the process or result of using laws to fairly judge cases, redress wrongs, and punish crimes"

Justice in Scripture seems to encompass the notion of getting what is deserved, whether that is reward or punishment.  

I tend to think that many of us see justice the same way a child sees fairness.  That justice is getting the result that we prefer, sometimes regardless of evidence or facts.  

In the video above, a juror from the OJ trial seems to be saying that 90% of the jurors acquitted OJ despite believing that the evidence proved him guilty.   I'm having a hard time seeing that as justice.

In the Derek Chauvin trial the jurors were subjected to crowds chanting threats of violence if Chauvin was not convicted.   I'm questioning if threatening a jury is conducive to justice.  

As we've seen in multiple examples of using race in admissions for higher education ending up putting less qualified students above more qualified students in an attempt to provide justice, this version comes at a cost.

We've watched over the past few years as DAs have increasingly released or not charged people based (apparently) on their race, more and more repeat violent offenders set free to commit more violent crimes, and (especially in the UK, but also in MN) seen child rapists get remarkably light sentences.   We've also seen (in Europe)  victims of violent crimes get harsher sentences than their victimizer because of things they've said about those who victimized them.  

 We've seen a proliferation of  zones within cities (mostly in Europe) where police will not enforce laws because of the risk to their lives.  

 

Can justice for individuals be achieved through threats of violence intended to produce a specific result regardless of the evidence , ignoring of evidence, or inflicting injustice on others?   Doe not justice need to follow the evidence wherever it leads without pressure or threats to disregard the evidence?  

Obviously justice does sometimes require force to be administered.  If someone is in the act of committing a rape (for example) clearly force or violence used to stop the rape is appropriate.   Likewise, the only possible means to bring justice to the victims of Germany and Japan required their military defeat before their leaders could be tried.