Justify this.

Once again, getting this reflection typed off early so I have one less thing to do Sunday.

Let's talk about today's class.
Was it the best run? Probably not. PTJ gave us the suggestion to put Cortes (and actually La Malinche too, but whatever on that) on trial. And that's it. Since he's in Italy right now, he couldn't give us a lot more guidance, so we had to come up with what he meant by "put on trial".

Mnadler said he couldn't come up with a better way to practice justice than the current legal system because we're all "just freshmen". ...Alright, on that same vein, we're just freshmen who aren't exactly experts in the legal system, so how to run a court trial without witnesses and without a real clue as to the formal proceedings of any court means we did the best we could with what we thought.

Whatever, some will think I'm just trying to provide excuses. Don't care.

The point of the debate/trial was to look at how you discuss justice. What is justice? What is just? Is something that is just and justice two different things?

And, going with this week's question, is our way of practicing justice better than older forms of "justice"?

Let's look at some fiction, which reflects pretty well the court system in the 1930s, and apart from that is an excellent piece of writing (with an amazing performance by Gregory Peck):



Sorry to spoil it for those who haven't read the book (and you should, by the way), but they lose the case. Racism (combined with fear and ignorance) meant thousands of people died because of how they were. Not because they necessarily committed a crime, but because they were considered inferior.

Let's go back farther, to the Salem Witch Trials. Were the people convicted of being witches really anything of the sort? Probably not. Fear and ignorance, however, are powerful things, and in this case resulted in the deaths of innocents.

Let's go into the 1950s and the Red Scare. Untold numbers of people were blacklisted...even if they had nothing to do with communism (and so what if they did?). Lives were ruined based off of fear and the need for a scapegoat.

Let's look at now. The more money you have, the better lawyer you can get. The better lawyer, the more likely you are to win a case. Even if you are, in fact, guilty.

Where, throughout history, is the justice in that? And yes, I realize I'm only looking at the American court history here, but that's the history I'm most familiar with. But, it can be imagined similar occurrences happen in other court systems across the globe.

So where's the justice? How is it just?
I don't know. Yes, I'm looking at just certain examples of when the court system in all likelihood failed in its duty to uphold what is right (or what is law? There's a difference there too.) There are countless times when people are tried and correctly convicted.

...Maybe that brings in another question. Do we maybe just have to settle for an imperfect system? Is "just" a perfect abstract, and we, as imperfect beings, can never hope to fully practice it and deliver the fault to the correct party?

I think yes to that last one.

And finally, because you know that Common is fantastic:





Testify.