Lady Justice

RAYMUND FERNANDEZ

It makes sense that the symbol of justice we abide by is a blindfolded woman with a sword and a balance scale, one respectively for each hand. This symbol makes perfect sense. The symbol incorporates a woman and not a man because woman represents continuity. A woman gives birth and so carries within her no less than the future itself. The blindfold is there to represent a purposive blindness to personal bias. The case to be judged must be taken in its uniqueness. It is not elemental to a predetermined agenda. It cannot be dismissed as a mere single event inside a preset of other events such as a singular goal, such as the war on drugs. Every case must be judged. No particular case can be dismissed as inevitable “collateral damage.”

Lady Justice holds a balance scale in her other hand. And the balance scale is there to tell us that justice results from a rational decision applied after the facts of very case are known. This rational decision weighs the value of known facts. It is never perfect because not all facts about every case can be known. But justice, if it civilized, presupposes the urge to fairness, completeness and correctness, as an adjunct to the common good. Justice can only come as a result of the collective will. Consequently, the same justice must be applied to all without regard to race, color and social class. If the scales of justice are not correctly balanced, if they favor the rich and powerful, if they work against the poor, then there can be no justice. There can only be oppression. And justice is defiled. It is raped.

The meaning of the sword is easy enough. Justice presupposes the inevitable effect of punishment and retribution. However, in the high tradition of justice, judges never mete out legal punishments themselves. The administration of punishment, if such is the judgement of the court, has to be delegated to jailers, the police or the armed forces. This arrangement makes perfect sense. The justice system and judges would become overly powerful if they controlled their own police and armed forces. And so the sword in the hand of Lady Justice is merely symbolic. The fall of Rome was marked by a time when the Roman emperors became both magistrates (or judges) and executioners. The reverse of the foregoing logic holds also true therefore. If we give policemen and the armed forces the right to judge cases themselves, there can be no justice. The very concept of justice is defiled.

It is raped. Justice becomes an empty concept more myth than true. It would become merely a tool of propaganda, a mere gesture having no true meaning. Whenever and wherever policemen become both judges and executioners themselves, their power becomes absolute. And since absolute power corrupts and corrupts absolutely, the end result would be chaos and the end of civility such we knew it in a better time. Imagine Lady Justice dressed as a policeman or soldier sans the blindfold, holding a skewered scale and a bloody sword and then you might imagine Justice such as we see today: corrupt, perverse and absolutely ugly. And the fact she is a woman forebodes not a better future but no future at all.

Lady Justice, although purely secular, is no less as sacred to us as any saintly religious icon. It requires the essence of the sacrosanct and the pure; otherwise, it cannot hold its true meanings. It can tolerate neither compromise nor change in any of its essential symbolic elements: the woman, the scale and the sword. The sword is all-important. Lady Justice controls the sword even if it is wielded by policemen and soldiers. This symbolizes nothing less than the rule of law. If there is no rule of law, then justice becomes only oppression. It is defiled. It is raped. But it is not only justice who is raped but all of us.