In the past few years, I’ve written many posts lamenting the defeat of reason and the rise of tyranny in our time. The inevitable consequence of these is the demise of justice. So I hope my readers would forgive me if, in my pessimistic and cynical frame of mind, I’m not terribly enthused about the current protests for social justice: I tend to think of the phenomenon not as a harbinger of hope, but the last gasp of justice. Nay, perhaps something worse. It is almost as if Justice had already been killed, and an Imposter had taken her place in the public square, paying homage to its victim in the same way Vice would pay homage to Virtue.
Justice and Respect for Law
Respect for Law means that the individual must submit to an authority other than himself. It is an antidote to tyranny, which is essentially elevating oneself above law and reason. The mark of a just law is consent of the people, and the mark of a just society is respect for law. Isn’t it ironic that current social justice protests lead to policies that “defund” the police, weakening precisely the part of the government responsible for enforcing the law?
According to the social contract theory of government – first articulated and exemplified by Socrates in Plato’s Crito, each citizen is obligated to abide by the laws of the state. The citizen has received numerous benefits from the State, and by remaining a citizen, he implicitly accepts a contract to abide by the laws, including the verdict of the court, even if he believes the verdict is wrong, and even if the verdict is a death sentence against him.
Vigilantism, i.e. “taking the law into one’s own hands”, is unjust, because the citizen refuses to submit to properly constituted authority, but presumes to usurp authority over his fellow citizens, who are his equal before the law. The citizen has no right, no authority, to take life, liberty or property from his fellow citizens, whereas the State has such right and authority, given by consent of the people, with the consent of each individual implied. In Plato’s Republic, if I remember correctly, any citizen can be an enforcer of the law and executes another, if and only if the State has already passed judgment on the latter.
Some of my readers might have seen the movie “A Time to Kill”, a story about a black man (Carl Lee) put on trial for killing two white men who raped his daughter. In a memorable scene, we hear a gospel song “Take my Hand, Precious Lord”, with the words “Lord I’m weak”, at that moment, we see Carl Lee charging into the courthouse, firing an automatic weapon, killing the two rapists and severely injuring a police officer.
I wept over that scene: Like Carl Lee, we are overcome by evil, because we are weak. We have become unjust, and Justice has suffered injury at our hands.