The Injustice of Lower Justice

" The existence of injustice anywhere affronts all justice everywhere. "

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How Society’s Often-Accepted Form of Justice Is Rarely True Justice

Today’s arbiters of justice sit berobed with gavel in hand, passing sentences on the criminals who stand before them. In truth, some form of this type of justice has existed for as long as mankind has been capable of judging those who commit crimes. Yet, this form of justice is one of two tiers and, as my explorations into the concept of justice reveal, may be a lower form that fails to offer equitable penance.

Lower Justice is False Justice

In the following, I present examples of lower justice in action, explaining how it is definitively of the lower tier because it fails to take into account the full impact of a crime. It is rarely, if ever, merely criminals and victims who are impacted by crimes.

The Lower Justice

I’ve come to discover two main tiers of justices, one as the lower justice I shall now address: the Platonic idea of justice in the concrete world.

When my cellmate, Brutus, stands trial for murder in a criminal court, he stands inspection because he is being held to a standard of lower justice – justice in the natural world. He is being judged because a standard for proper behavior was set. But he disobeyed.

The judge, or a jury of his peers, must determine whether he is salvageable to society or is worthy of the supreme penalty of loss of life.

" Justice is never served in the lower sense. "

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The kids of the man whom he killed no longer have that fatherly wisdom, the Dad jokes, or the person who puts together the Schwinn for their own kids at Christmas. The daughters no longer have their father to walk them down the aisle or to display to their husbands how a true man takes care of his family. His wife has lost a piece of herself as well, and because she now has to go back to the workplace to provide, her kids have lost much of her impact as well.

Multiple lives of the victims are destroyed, while the perpetrator of evil loses just his one life. In fact, if he is truly an evil man, and the murder was not one of justice or accident, his family benefits from his very absence.

Will your wife’s new husband be the person benefiting from your demise, or will others?

The father’s victimized family is less than half of what it was for multiple generations;

The falter’s family is better off.

Lower justice is never fair.

Now I imagine a fractional man named Freddy.

Freddy, who could serve time in prison, but could also provide financially for the victims, coach their kids’ soccer teams, and become the worthy husband to the widowed wife. A judge working in a world of individual fractionality may get closer to fair justice if the family of the victims could compartmentalize the evil man from the man who wants to be good again. The judge could command a more true justice while still imperfect in himself.

It would take an infinite amount of time to undo the injustice to all future generations.

And herein lies the problem with this justice of the first, lesser kind.

" The existence of any injustice anywhere affronts all justice everywhere. "

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For any justice to be beheld in the world, it must be manifest in all places at once. And, if I might presume a little further, I would assert this also means justice must be manifest at all times as well if it were to want to be at all places. An impossibility.

Any injustice today means justice is at risk of annihilation tomorrow.

Therefore, this lower justice is not unjust – unless our fake fractional Freddy is real – merely because it is time-constrained, but because its nature is existing forever. Only the higher can be just.

The Three Takeaways

First Takeaway – Lower Justice Fails to Account for the Many

Consider the story of Brutus in the above excerpt and you see lower justice enacted against a single man for a single crime. However, from that crime springs many others – perhaps unintentional on Brutus’ part – as entire families are impacted by a singular act. How can humanity’s justice comprehend and account for the generational damage a single crime can cause? Perhaps it cannot, which is why we must seek a higher form of justice.

Second Takeaway – There Must Be a Higher Justice

" There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts. – Mahatma Gandhi "

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Perhaps then, true justice is found not in the banging of a judge’s gavel, but in the conscience of those who commit the crimes. Ghandi’s court of conscience may suffice, yet that is still not solace to the grieving widow, the children who have lost a father, or the family of the incarcerated who have lost a portion of their lives as well. A conscience careening into chaos may be justice on an insular level, but it is not justice that satisfies anybody.

Third Takeaway – The Existence of Any Injustice Is an Affront to True Justice

Herein lies the problem with lower justice – it is not infinite as the effects of an injustice often are. A single prison sentence does not create the same ripple effect of generational injustice as the act for which that prison sentence was given. Lower justice thus becomes unjust simply because it is unable to manifest at all times in all places. 

The possibility of ultimate justice somewhere affronts all false justice everywhere.