A heads up before we dive in - this article is mostly philosophical musings. You might be into that (I hope you are). Those of you who aren’t, feel free to check out the plethora of other articles we have available about the more practical elements of law.

The concept of justice is broad and differs widely across cultures, but at its core, there can be no justice without truth. We can see this in the practical applications of justice - if someone was found guilty of a crime they did not commit, justice was not served because a false narrative was presented. We can also see it in the more esoteric, philosophical notions of justice - do the punishments meted for certain crimes truly deter criminality and improve society? When we agree on what’s objectively true, but subjective notions like intent come into play, how do we find the truth? Conversely, when we have evidence of the intention to commit a crime, but we stop the would-be criminal before they can act on it, how much does their subjective truth matter versus objective reality? (For a great podcast on this very notion, check out Jolted).

Once you acknowledge that justice cannot exist without truth, or at least an evaluation of what is true, it might make you question a lot of the decisions that are being made in our courts. How often do we see rigorous, evidence-based policy being applied across the board? How much do we know about how our sentencing guidelines positively or negatively affect all stakeholders? How problematic are privately funded prisons? If states continue to use privately funded prisons, can we find a way to improve transparency?

The other bizarre facet of this whole thing is that while what is true may remain static, what is seen as just can differ so broadly. There was a time where homosexuality - not gay marriage, but homosexuality - was seen as wrong, and what was seen as just was something like forced sterilization. This is really what gets my goat about this whole dynamic - you need truth in order to mete out justice, but what is seen as just so rarely relies on considering the actual social consequences in any empirical way.

All this to say, I’m personally fond of studying the different methods we have of meting out justice more closely. How effective is retributive justice versus restorative justice for victims, their families, and offenders? How effective are our laws at deterring criminal activity? The problem with testing all of this, of course, is that all the testing must occur in an incredibly complicated system, and even a little tinkering can come with massive consequences for whole populations.

Alright, that’s enough philosophizing for one day. I know this article was more questions than answers - trust me, if I come up with any great answers, you’ll know about them. For now, here’s a plug for what we do extremely well - finding you a special appearance attorney when you need one. See you next time!