Justice: the Achille's heel of democracy

The principal theatre of operations is the court room but certain acts may also take place on the scene of the crime, in forensic laboratories or elsewhere. The actors are numerous: magistrates, coroners, judges, prosecutors, plaintiffs, defendants, police, detectives, witnesses, lawyers, juries, experts, social workers and others. The objective of justice is to settle conflicts impartially with due respect to the law. In order to achieve its objective, the court proceeds to reveal the truth, define the responsibilities, pronounce its judgements and order the execution of its decisions.

The task is rude, complex, delicate and hazardous. The actors are more or less competent, more or less diligent, more or less biased and more or less honest. They express themselves more or less precisely, more or less fully and more or less coherently. Their memory is more or less reliable. Material evidence may be more or less explicit, more or less adequate, more or less significative and perhaps, even, more or less conflicting. The state of the art of technology may be more or less favourable for the revelation and interpretation of material evidence.

It is little wonder that the decisions of justice, even in the most favourable conditions, are rarely considered satisfactory. According to the popular proverb, "a bad settlement is better than a good trial". Generally speaking, this is not possible in penal cases though it has been reported that plaintiffs in the USA have been known, in several instances, to accept to drop penal charges in exchange for large financial compensations.

For some, justice is assimilated to equality, for others it means fairness, for yet others it is the strict application of the law. Still others consider it is the rightful punishment exercised by the community in the name of the victims for misdeeds committed by the offender. John Rawls, the American moral and political philosopher, suggests that justice is to social matters what truth is to knowledge. What truth is to reality may, perhaps, have been a more appropriate comparison. No doubt, these are all valid images of justice seen from different perspectives. While the law is theoretical and immaterial, justice is practical and visible. Its visibility has an educational effect on the general public by providing concrete examples of the practical effect it has on the lives of real people.