Justice 2-24-2013

  [ I am back working through my prison journal. It is out of order… Well, the order is as I have opened boxes. The date in the title is the date it was written. I hope this is not confusing. What you are reading is what you get for your tax dollars. sch 7/6/2025] 

Judges concern themselves with the law - not with justice. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, wrote a line similar to that sentence. I see so many fellow inmates thinking the law will give them justice.

I cannot recall all the divisions Aristotle made of justice. These passages from Michael Eric Dyson's Can You Hear Me Now? strike me as belonging to distributive justice:

We have to be willing to wish for every other group what we wish for our own if we are to make the identification of the public good with the good of our group work.

***

The public good is hampered when we idolize our slice of the social welfare and elevate our group above all others in the political order. Such a thing is bad enough if groups simply aspire to unjust social dominance, but if they've got the power to get it done, it greatly harms the commonweal.

Chapter 8: Justice and Suffering

Aristotle made justice one of his virtues in his The Nicomachean Ethics. I thought politics was ethics made public; how we live properly with one another. I gather Aristotle thought likewise, as he premises his Politics on his ethical theory. Dyson fits this tradition.

The English common law lacked greatness until the creation of the courts of equity. Lawyers will reduce any system to a set of forms and procedures - even equity lawyers - but equity gives justice a way to enter the legal system. The older I get, the more I appreciate Indiana's mixing of law and equity. Every lawyer should read Justice Story's treatise on equity.

Without fairness, the legal system becomes a fraud.

If we are to maintain any semblance of fairness, we must bring terrorists before international courts of justice that have proved proficient in prosecuting war criminals from Nuremburg to Bosnia. To do less would be to extend a marred recdord of American governmental justification of misdeeds in the name of protecting our democracy. The ultimate safeguard against such distortion is to behave justly, even when dealing with the enemies of court country. Otherwise, we are no better than the unprincipled and destructive terrorists we condemn.

 Can You Hear Me Now?; Chapter  9: Justice and Suffering

Guantánamo has shown our injustice to the world. The Bush Administration confused justice and revenge. They apparently spent too much time watching television. Terrorists will happily turn our stupidity into an example of American craven hypocrisy towards justice. A lie having the semblance of truth is hard to dislodge.

 Dyson also brings the matter closer to home:

The issue of racial profilin, indefensible detentions, and unjust raids only perpetuates the belief that our nation is practicing reverse terrorism. If we are to root out terrorism, we must make certain that our efforts don't negate the very principles to which we claim allegience: justice, truth, and freedom. If we deploy unjust practices to attain just ends, we not only leave a legally twisted trail of justifications, but we undercut the ethical legs upon which we stand in the resistance to terrorism.

 Can You Hear Me Now?; Chapter  9: Justice and Suffering

 This prison is a prisoner-of-war camp in the War on Crime. Having seen this place's inhabitants, I worry about the future of the country. We have here a source for a new plague infecting the boy politic with disaffection.

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7/6/2025

One thing missing from prison is information. No Google. I would have liked to see what others thought about the books I noted above. Well, I got that chance now, and you can decide if I am a moron or not. You may also want to follow the links provided in the text.

I make no claim to being a prophet. Re-reading my prison journals, I am all the same struck by how often they resonate with current events. No, I am not a prophet; the problems were there before Trump arrived to take advantage of us.

‘The American system is being destroyed’: academics on leaving US for ‘scientific asylum’ in France (The Guardian)

Trump's big, beautiful bill: Where SNAP benefits could get hit hardest

Schools Scramble After Trump Admin Withdraws $7B in Federal Education Funding  (Truthout)

LA protests timeline: How ICE raids sparked demonstrations and Trump to send in the military (ABC News)

Families arrested in LA Ice raids held in basements with little food or water, lawyers say  (The Guardian)

LA protests: Small demonstrations continue after massive 'No Kings Day' rally in downtown LA Saturday (ABC7 Los Angeles)

Trump says he will ‘take a look’ at deporting Musk as feud reaches new height (The Independent)

Famous Mexican boxer Julio César Chávez Jr arrested by US immigration (BBC)

US Supreme Court ponders the balance of power – and sides with President Trump (The Conversation)

Can Trump Deport U.S. Citizens Like Elon Musk and Zohran Mamdani? (TIME)

Trump’s Big Bill Is Building a Big Police State (The Nation)

sch