Is it possible to achieve true justice?

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/12/2023 (629 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Justice is invoked, at some point, in almost every newscast, is a regular feature in every newspaper I read, and is ever-present on social media sites. For Jordyn Reimer’s family, the court penalty for the drunk driver who killed their daughter was a miscarriage of justice, not nearly severe enough. Their story presents a good case study of the elusiveness of justice.

I’m reminded of Edmund Burke’s 1789 comments to British parliament on quite a different matter, “An event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak, but impossible to be silent.” Injustice is that kind of a matter.

In the face of an overwhelming list of too-frequent injustices, our current pursuits of justice, and our so-called justice system, just don’t seem up to the task at hand. I wonder how we might individually and collectively respond to the “event” above about which it is difficult to speak,

The Reimer family’s tragic loss is an injustice on many levels — a daughter, sister, and friend who was a designated driver being struck by a drunk driver — and a family and various communities experiencing an unjustifiable, and preventable, loss.

The further problem is that there exists no known way to reconcile or logically deal with this matter. No matter how severe the punishment or penalty handed out by the court, it could never suffice to bring about so-called justice as fairness. And so, within our courts system, we defer to procedural justice to bring closure to the matter, a closure which we cannot reasonably expect the Reimers to accept or experience at the moment.

Procedural justice relies on a process which is to ensure impartiality as neutrality, and preserve victim and perpetrator respect. Neutrality is intended to use reason to remove emotional bias, result in a reasonable response, and achieve logical penalties.

However, even though procedural justice is often more an application and interpretation of the law than a logical consequence of negligence, recklessness, or other poor judgment, it may be the best we can hope for. Any punishment that fits the crime as laid out in law or rules of enforcement seems inadequate and feels unsatisfactory to the wrongfully harmed, just as there is no way to compensate for overwhelming loss.

And there is no way to undo the harm, the sense of being somehow deeply wronged. So, this is a process more intended to bring a kind of closure as opposed to justice, because not going on with our lives at some point can become a huge injustice to ourselves and others in our worlds. It is in keeping with the idea of closure and reconciliation that many advocate restorative justice.

Restorative justice seeks not to compensate for injustice but to restore relationships destroyed by criminal actions. The purpose is to restore trust and respect, and encourage forgiveness, in the hopes that both parties can agree on a way forward which allows them to bring a measure of closure to the violations in question. However, the only way it can bring any satisfaction is if both parties agree on the way forward in a spirit of mutual benefit, so often impossible to imagine, let alone achieve.

How then are we to respond to inadequacies of our systems to achieve a justice on which there is no consensus?

The best I can offer is the work of Amartya Sen, Nobel prize-winning economist and philosopher, who tries to address the above quandaries with sensitivity and logic. Just as we cannot think our way to, or set up, perfect systems on our journey to justice, it would be unreasonable to ask the Reimers to set their emotions aside, thereby denying the huge hurt and deep loss they have experienced. It would be equally unjust to ask them to just “get over it,” in other words, to be silent.

In The Idea of Justice (2009), Sen’s suggests our response to injustice can and should be guided by the capacities that most humans possess — we can reason, argue, disagree and concur — but more importantly we can care, sympathize and be compassionate. In that knowledge, the Reimers need not to be doomed to an isolated and solitary grief as we communicate our empathy to them as we are able.

Sen calls on us to listen and give others every opportunity to express their feelings, to respect and trust them enough to find their own particular ways of reconciliation and acceptance, to not judge their efforts or offer unsolicited advice but rather encourage them along the way to healing, giving support only where it is requested.

Justice will remain as elusive as it is complex, as nuanced as the human condition. According to Sen, while justice may be unachievable, it is a worthy pursuit to seek ways and systems that confirm our dignity and worth. Our capacity to be human alongside other humans makes the world that much less unjust. That may be the most just response!

John R. Wiens is dean emeritus at the faculty of education, University of Manitoba.