It seems that every time a community faces tragedy in the form of loss of life, and especially in those cases where people are killed or injured by law enforcement or other government actors, there are placards demanding justice for the person who was killed or injured. And yet when a gunman killed a health-insurance executive or conservative speaker, those who typically cry out for justice were seen to defend these actions as “justice”. People could be forgiven for thinking that the term “justice” has been evacuated of any objective meaning in our culture.
As long as people have lived together in communities there has been a concern for justice. For Aristotle, justice is the virtue governing our relationships with others, demanding fairness and proportion. In general, Aristotle saw justice as the exercise of moral virtue within communities. St. Thomas Aquinas followed Aristotle to a large extent, and wrote that justice is “a habit whereby a person, with a constant and perpetual will, renders to each one his due”. (Summa Theologiae, II-II, Ques. 58, Art. 1)
Justice requires an objective standard by which we can determine what each person is due in any set of circumstances. And justice in this sense does not necessarily demand that people be treated equally: if a thief steals $10 from one person and $100 dollars from another person, more will be required in justice to make restitution to the second person than to the first. The victims are not equally situated, so cannot be treated equally in fact.
One of the essential features of justice in the Anglo-American legal systems is the concept of “equal justice”. As just noted, justice may or may not be equal in its outcomes; but the legal concept is about processes, not outcomes. The idea is that the processes of law apply equally across the board and are employed in the same way no matter who the parties are. The rich have the same due process rights as the poor; the state is bound by the same rules as the defendant. If anything, the process of equal justice in some important ways favors the individual as against the state, which is, after all, the biggest player of them all. The burden of proof in criminal proceedings and the presumption of innocence are key examples.
So what does it mean for a society to give justice to someone who has (to take one example) been killed? Can a dead person receive justice?
What is really being demanded in these cases is retribution. It is definitely unjust to take the life of another person in most contexts. But there are exceptions: self defense and defense of others spring readily to mind. Justice in the kinds of public cases we see on TV really demands that a thorough and impartial investigation be undertaken to determine whether the taking of life was justified under the circumstances.
The problem with public outcries for justice is that very often those making the outcries are not asking for a thorough and impartial process. They are asking for an outcome that fits with their predetermined idea of what is just. This is the opposite of justice by any workable definition of the word.
Justice is important for Christians because we are commanded to act justly (See Micah 6:8). Some scriptural examples of justice are the payment of fair wages, the protection of those who cannot protect themselves, and the avoidance of fraud. Justice is ultimately a function of both reason and moral truth. When we act immorally, we always fail to act justly, and not least against God, who in justice is owed our full obedience.
An often-overlooked truth is that God does not treat us as in justice we deserve to be treated. We have all, in ways big and small turned ourselves away from God. We are, in the language of the Prayer Book, “very far gone from original righteousness” and “there is no health in us”. We know that the wages of sin is death. That is what we deserve. The justice which we deserve is not anything that any of us would want. We don’t want God to treat us with justice; we want God to treat us with mercy.
But God is not a just God who sometimes waives the requirements of justice in order to be merciful: God is always merciful and since that is God’s nature, it is just that he be merciful.
This truth was very offensive to some of the Protestant reformers, who held that, strictly speaking, God’s mercy to sinners would be unjust. God had to balance the scales, so to speak, by punishing his Son in our place. Punishment was due; punishment has been meted out; justice is done. Now God can be merciful, at least to some people.
Setting aside the Nestorianism latent in that argument (is God punishing himself?), mercy is always justice when it is God who is acting. And so it can be for us, as well. That is why God not only commands us to “do justly”, but to “love mercy” (Micah 6:8). Think of the Parable of the Good Samaritan, which ends with Our Lord asking the lawyer, “Which now of these three, thinkest thou, was neighbor unto him that fell among thieves?” The lawyer answered, “He that showed mercy upon him.” Our Lord then told the lawyer, “Go, and do thou likewise”. (Luke 10)
For those who are following Christ, justice involves being merciful. It is true that a judge or other official administering a legal code must abide by the rule of law, but in our personal relations with others we must think first and foremost in terms of mercy. This doesn’t mean that we open ourselves up to abusive or dangerous people to allow them to harm us. It doesn’t mean, if we are charged with administering the law, that we violate it by failing to hold people accountable. But it means that we must always be ready to forgive and to pray for those who hurt us, anger us, or annoy us.
Justice, as Aristotle thought, is primarily a virtue that governs our interactions with others and demands of us that we give them what is due them. And Our Lord has told us that what we owe others first and foremost is mercy.
