Blind Injustice

There is no justice in the justice system. There can’t be any.

Justice means that everyone is to receive what they deserve, but who is to say what they deserve?

Every case is different. Every crime has its individual history and its peculiar measure of guilt. Two people formally committing the same transgression are not equally guilty. One of them can be somewhat excused given circumstances and biography while the other one looks like a plain hardened criminal, but who is to know? Who can scrutinize the depths of the human heart and all the intricacies of past events?

Judges and juries sometimes try, but the task is doomed to fail. Nothing short of divine power would be required to find the true quantum of culpability and if that were possible the human system of justice would be redundant.

The law is written to make up for human imperfection. It reduces unique actions and specific time and place to sweeping generalities. “Like cases should be treated alike,” that is the basic principle of lawful justice and it arrogantly ignores that no two cases are in fact alike.

Still, a mere human judge cannot act otherwise. He is a subordinate ally of the cruel Lady Justice – that blindfolded woman who dangles her powerful scales and swings her sword without mercy.

Justice is blind, but blindness cannot be justice. There is no solution to this contradiction, but society cannot survive without it. It must protect itself against its delinquents and regrettably it must punish; not because justice demands it, for strictly speaking there is no justice, but because anarchy would be a greater threat.

Courts are prone to make mistake, so don’t believe in them. A verdict is never final and innocence is likely to be punished. Trusting human justice is superstition.