Law vs. Justice


Law is a body of customs, examples and ordinances; some good, some bad, but all dedicated in theory, if not in practice, to the security and maintenance of public order and the dispensation of proper justice. Sometimes these ends accord with one another. Sometimes they are in contradiction; so that justice may be ill served while order is most certainly maintained. Sometimes the ordinance is too simple and sometimes it is too detailed; so there is always need for gloss and annotation to arrive at its true intent.

For example, the law says bluntly: ‘You shall not kill.’ Is this the end of it? We know its not. We put a uniform on a man’s back and a gun in his hands and we say, ‘It is holy and blessed thing to kill for a man’s country.’ And we pin a medal on his chest when he does it….

Sometimes law and justice seem to be far away from each other. For example, if a person sees his house being robbed on gunpoint and in the process of saving his people and his hard earned money, kills a robber, would we then charge him with murder? No! We would commend him as a brave man defending his people. We might even pin on him a medal for bravery! But what if he had killed that same robber after the robbery, as an act of revenge? He would have been put behind bars for premeditated murder. We need to be more clear on this issue. The law is an instrument and not an end. It is not and never can be, a perfect instrument of justice.

We all, as civilized human beings, are dedicated to truth and justice but we know that they are beyond our reach. The duty of the Court is, not merely to uphold, but to ensure that the greatest justice possible is done within its imperfect framework.

It is not merely the law that is imperfect. There is imperfection also in its ministers - the police and the judiciary. If these fail in their duty, if their power is perverted or misused so that the evil men flourish and the innocent are left defenseless…. What then? There is also imperfection in us, the common man. It is not the sole duty of police to maintain law but of all of us. We must understand that if our right is somebody else’s duty then everybody else’s right is our duty as well. If we all perform our duty well then we won’t have to depend on any ministers of law for justice.