Parshas Shoftim: What Is Justice REALLY?
We’re all familiar with the saying, “The grass is greener on the other side.” We each have our little yard, our little world, and when we look over to someone else’s we think it looks better than ours. But the reality is that when we climb over the fence and get a closer look, we see that their yard isn’t filled with perfect green grass after all. It’s astroturf or weeds or crabgrass.
So it happens that when you’ve been living for a while on the other side of the fence you get a new perspective. You start noticing things you didn’t before, both good and bad. Maybe you see that the “weeds” are dandelions, with beautiful flowers and leaves that go great in a salad. Or you notice an apple tree growing – but see that the fallen fruit makes quite a mess. For me, this is what being a lawyer is like. I get a good view of the other side of the legal fence. And I have a better idea now of what is good and what is bad about that particular “green” lawn.
On the one hand, lawyers get a bad rap. There are a plethora of lawyer jokes out there to attest to that. But on the other hand, lawyers do a lot of good. When there has been an injustice, we turn to attorneys to stand up for us in courts of law and defend our case. We expect justice to be done.
But set the lawyers aside for a moment and look at the laws themselves. Lawyers are simply working within the confines of a complex legal system, with justice as its end goal. If a murderer goes free on a technicality, can we really blame his “shark” of a lawyer? His lawyer, no matter what sleazy tactics he might have used, was just doing his job within the bounds of what the legal system allows. When we don’t like the end result of the case, it’s not the lawyer we should be upset with. It’s the laws we should be upset with.
In fact, the Torah even tells us, in effect, that lawyers are okay. ”Justice, justice you shall pursue.” Isn’t that what lawyers are really trying to do? Pursue justice? I know that as a lawyer when I found out a client was lying to the courts, I fired him – not only did I refuse to represent him but I withdrew from the case publicly enough that the judge was able to infer that something fishy was going on. Justice was what I was pursuing.
The pursuit of justice is so vitally important to Hashem that not only does it get its own parsha to shine in, but it is even one of the seven Noahide laws that apply to all non-Jews as well. But what is this justice we’re supposed to be pursuing?
Here’s an example of justice as we know it today: Jeffery Skilling, former CEO of Enron. He was convicted of multiple counts of fraud and insider trading in relation to the Enron scandal and sentenced to nearly 25 years in prison. Justice has been served! Or has it?
What Skilling did was undoubtedly the wrong thing. He did something bad. And sure, he deserves to be punished for his crimes. But sending him to prison didn’t just punish him – it punished a whole host of other people. It punished his three children. It punished his wife. It even punished his ex-wife. It punished his whole family. Were they to blame for what he’d done? Did his youngest son, only 16 at the time of conviction, even know what his father was doing? Surely not! But now these children have to grow up without a father. His wife has to continue without a husband. And his ex-wife has to contend with the effects her children will suffer from having their father absent. Is this justice? When Skilling’s youngest son died from a drug overdose a few years later, was justice done? Now a whole family is grieving the loss not only of a husband and father, but also of a son and brother.
Perhaps this is why Judaism does not include prison as a punishment. It has long-reaching effects on other people. Things like reparations and lashes would be preferred. And the death penalty was rarely implemented. If it was used even once in 70 years, the court was considered a “bloody court.” And in the event that the death sentence was imposed, Hashem in His divine wisdom ensured that it was something that either the family truly deserved, or that He would make it up to them in the future. It was justice on a divine scale.
The Torah places a lot of safeguards to make sure that true justice is done. We all know that bribes cannot be taken by judges even in a Western system, but what is a bribe? Just like justice has a different definition in the Torah, so too does a “bribe” for a judge. Any benefit to a judge is considered a bribe and the judge must recuse himself. This means that even if the only benefit the judge received was that a litigant held a door open for him once. Even if he is being paid a bribe to judge fairly and honestly. It doesn’t matter. It’s still a bribe and in the Torah it’s not allowed.
So justice, justice let us pursue, but let’s make sure we have a clear perspective on what justice is first.
Shabbat shalom!
