Justice and the Law

In the aftermath of George Zimmerman's acquittal, I've found myself in conversations about how the law isn't always synonymous with justice. Given that Trayvon Martin's murderer just walked away free - not to mention countless other examples - this is undeniably true. It is also undeniably tragic. After all if the laws don't give us a sense of justice, why do we have them?

The notion of justice existed before the idea of laws. Sadly, but not surprisingly, for much of history, justice was more synonymous with retribution than with law, and even many of the first laws were dictated to give the state - rather than individuals - the right to exact justice. These more primitive social contracts monopolized power in the hands of the state which meted out justice for the people (fairly or not) while also using the laws to maintain power.

Some societies still operate under the eye-for-an-eye notion of justice, and other societies still have a more antiquated form of justice, but slowly over the course of history we have improved the social contract. In our society - which after the verdict in the Zimmerman case, we should absolutely NOT consider the apex of political evolution if anyone was silly enough to believe that anyhow - we have the ability to petition the state for redress of our own grievances, and our social contract places no man (or woman) above the law. The rule of law is paramount if we are to remain a stable, unified society, but what happens when the laws are horrible and fail to provide justice?

That George Zimmerman walked seems to have been the right call legally - though had I been a juror we'd have either ended up a hung jury or the man would be in prison today - but you are living in a different universe if you don't believe George Zimmerman is morally responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin. The law failed. It's that simple. And this is a problem, because laws - like money - are only as good as our faith in them. When we start to see and believe we don't have a stake in our society, it starts to unravel and ultimately ceases to be a society.

There are of course many examples of this, but perhaps the most pertinent is that of America itself, formerly a group of colonies whose inhabitants found the laws of their government unjust. No taxation without representation. If that's unjust - and I certainly think it is - is it not far more unjust for a murder to walk free? So what should we do? The founding fathers were pretty explicit:

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Now I don't propose a revolution, but we need some serious reevaluations of some of the laws in this country. We probably won't ever get it perfect, but the outcome of this trial makes it clear we aren't even close. We should strive for our laws to provide justice as often as possible, and when they don't there is room for them on the ash heap. Not all that long ago - and in some places still - Trayvon Martin's family would respond to this tragedy by killing a member of the Zimmerman clan or at least stealing their cattle. That's not the society I want to live in. Violence begets violence. Justice should prevent it.

Justice may not always be synonymous with the law, but when it isn't we have a moral obligation to rectify the law. If not, we may as well submit to anarchy. They just came out with some movie about that recently, it's called "The Purge," I wonder what that looks like...