Watching the News: thoughts on legality and justice...

"Won't you stop citing laws to us who have swords by our sides?"
- Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus



I have often wondered about, and struggled with, the law. Perhaps it is because I am a amateur student of history; perhaps it is because I come from a generation nursed on the post-modern suspicion of power structures. Whencesoever the cause, it remains that legality seems a strange and nebulous concept to me.

Some cite laws to call for the execution of justice, while others cite laws for the justification of injustice. Similarly, laws have been written to defend the powerless and others written to prop-up the powerful (often at the expense of the powerless). Legality does not make an action right, it simply makes it legal. So to, illegality does not make an action wrong, it simply makes it illegal.

Let it not be thought that I am by any means an anarchist. Indeed, quite the opposite: I see laws, whether written or tacitly understood, as being necessary to any just and ordered society. I suppose my real problem is in believing that most laws are designed with the goal of a just and ordered society. Often it seems as though they are designed merely with the goal of an ordered society, a society ordered towards the hegemony of the powerful. History suggests that those with swords will simply defy laws only to write new laws to suit their interest once they have acquired power.

Is it fair to hold this view of legality? Yes, threat of violence will always be inseparable from laws (Why do law enforcement officers always carry guns? Because law always necessitates the threat of enforcement). But no, strictly speaking this is not a fair/balanced assessment of legality.

Laws ought to reflect, or be guided by, the divine law. That is, they ought to provide the societal framework for justice: protection of the poor, the widow, the orphan, the alien. In the end, though,I am forced to admit that just because many laws seem to promote the opposite (injustice), this does not negate the overarching purpose of legality. Despite the unjust laws, there remain many laws which serve the cause of justice.

I suppose what I am struggling with is not the laws and legality, per se, but rather injustice in their creation and execution. I watch the news, I read the papers, and it pains me. I hear people cry out for justice; I hear the rhetoric in response. I see the flash of the sword; I hear the rhetoric in response. I think to myself, where is the justice - where is the mercy?

I know from whom comes justice, from whom comes mercy. I know he is active. Still, sometimes it's difficult to watch...