The first instructional lesson in all my Government classes, AP and regular, has students answering a warm-up: "What is Justice? Write down your answer." I step outside the room ostensibly to run an errand, then put on a black robe, a peruke, throw open the door, and the fun begins.
Usually the first response from the mainly 10th graders in the room is that justice is punishing those who break the law? I will then challenge - if the student is African-America I might ask "does that mean that Harriet Tubman should have gone to prison, perhaps for the rest of her life, for the many slaves she smuggled out of Dorchester County?" If Jewish I might respond with remarks about Mies Giep and her family hiding the family of Otto Frank in Amsterdam, including his daughter Anne - should they have been executed by the Nazis? Whatever the student says, I push further.
We explore the idea that the question "what is justice" goes back at least to Plato's Republic, and note references to justice in the Declaration (for example, "He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers") and the Preamble ("establish Justice"). We then go on to the idea of the social contract, where Hobbes say the life of man in a state of nature without a social contract is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" and Locke argues that we establish a social contract surrendering some of our rights in order that the others be protected, a notion clearly in the Declaration ("That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed").
These two themes - the nature of justice and the nature of the social contract - are the two themes around which the course is organized.
At the end of the course we revisit the first day, with the notion that our idea of justice is what we agree to in that social contract, it is what we require, it is what we accept, which is why in a liberal democracy it is incumbent upon us to be active participants lest we awake one day to find that rights we assumed were protected no longer were.
Might I suggest the lesson I taught my students, remembered so well by one last night in the context of the verdict in Sanford, is relevant for us?
Florida has its Stand Your Ground law. It is law enacted by a legislature elected by the people of Florida, signed into law by their governor. We now see its affects, and might well want to argue that the family of Trayvon Martin were denied justice.
Further, at least under Florida law it might not be possible for Martin's family to be able to sue for wrongful death, because that seems to be precluded, again, by a law enacted by the legislature and signed by the governor.
This is but one example.
So is what many of us view as the abuse of the Fourth Amendment by the Federal government under the last two administrations.
So is the distortion of our political processes by decisions that seem to empower money more than people.
So are decisions that tilt the legal system to the protection of corporations and against the presumed right of the people to obtain damages for corporate wrongdoing.
Federal judges are not elected, which given the distortion of the judicial process by elections in some states is probably a good thing.
But Presidents can be held accountable for whom they appoint, the Senate has the power to confirm or reject, and if behavior is egregious enough the House may impeach and the Senate may remove - even if that judge has been found not guilty of any criminal charges - ask Alcee Hastings.
This is a political site.
It presumes that in various ways we will be involved in the political processes that
- decide who holds elective offices
- shape policy
It is through elections, politics and policy that we have the capability of shaping the nature of the social contract under which we live.
It is that social contract that ultimate frames the answer to the question which I asked my students - what is justice?
If we feel the social contract is warped or broken, then we can take action to fix it. Or if I might a more extended passage from the Declaration, placing in context words which I have already offered:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
We are engaged in a struggle over the nature of the social contract that governs this nation.
There are those who want to have our governing document interpreted in a way that rationalizes their theocratic approach.
There are those who seek to expand the rights of artificial persons at the expense of living persons
There are those who seek to elevate some rights, such as that to keep and bear arms, out of context and to the exclusion of other rights.
Many argue now that justice was denied in Sanford Florida.
Others will counter that due process of law was applied and George Zimmerman was found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, which is true - in part because of how the determination of justice was shaped by laws that advantaged some behaviors even at the expense of the most basic right of all of another human being, the right to life.
In a bit more than a month I will again have students in a classroom with me in a class in which they learn about Government and Politics.
Once again I will raise the question with which I have always begun that course: What Is Justice?
Were I in the school from which I retired, which was majority African-American, or the school in which I taught briefly (albeit World History and not government) which was entirely African-American, there is no doubt that students would raise the question of yesterday's verdict either in responding directly to the first question, or in the ensuing discussion. The school at which i will be teaching will have by comparison relatively few African-Americans. I still expect that at least some students will raise the case, and if they do not I can assure readers that sometime during the year-long course it will come up: my teaching is never in isolation from the world in which we live.
If we as a society are willing to believe that some lives are worth less than others - because of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, education, monetary wealth - then how the instruments of justice function will be heavily shaped by that.
Those will be instruments not merely of the criminal justice system to which George Zimmerman was subject, but also the instruments of civil justice - when it is legal for an actor, governmental or private, to discriminate against us in employment, housing and so many other areas of our lives. If the social contract allow for such discrimination, then society has decided that is just.
If we surrender our participation in the shaping of the social contract, we acquiesce in how it will be applied, to us or to others.
I am of an age when enough people in America had their consciences shocked that it led to significant changes in the social contract, so that first African-Americans, and then others, were more fully included therein. The understanding of what was just was changed, because people dedicated themselves to changing it.
Some died in the process.
Some were imprisoned, wrongly in the eyes of many of us.
Some found their economic livelihoods destroyed.
There are words we should remember, for someone who labored mightily to change the social contract and the nature of justice in this nation:
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.
He was born a slave, as Frederick Augustus Bailey. We know him as Frederick Douglass. We should not forget those words, and I have chosen to offer the more complete quotation because they are very much in tune with the more extended quotation of words by Thomas Jefferson that I have already offered.
We now face a challenge.
It is not a new challenge.
It is one our Founders faced.
It was faced by those who struggled to overturn the legal discrimination of Jim Crow
We have seen changes in society on behalf of those whose sexual orientation is "different" and thus somehow "frightening" to some.
The struggle is never fully accomplished. This societal journey is a pilgrimage, and on a pilgrimage how you journey is as important as the destination one seeks.
Last night a former student remembered a lesson we shared:
I asked that question of my students because to some degree the future of this country depends on how they choose to engage with that question.
It also still depends upon us.
So, since my name is still "teacherken" allow me to ask you as I did them - and myself -
What Is Justice?