Justice for Injustice

Justice for Injustice

David Amerland examines the roots of creating a system of justice.

Originally shared by David Amerland

Justice is a Social Construct

The Middle Ages, it would appear, weren't a great time to be hanging around after dark, with your drinking buddies if you didn't own a castle, a moat and some men-at-arms. There is an inherent logic to the notion that justice serves those who have something to lose and that those with the least to lose end up losing the most because they lack the means necessary to control their lives. This frequently finds them in a state of crisis where every altercation and every problem can potentially be life-threatening.

Deplorable as this state of affairs may be it also runs counter to intuition that would have us believe that justice is an inherent characteristic of any sustainable social structure. That is true, it is, but justice is expensive to create and expensive to maintain which means that it is only sustainable by those who benefit the most out of it, i.e. the rich and powerful who don't want every single crisis they face to be a life or death situation.

Recent data seems to back this up: https://goo.gl/La9C3q. It means that when we create a system of justice we do so in order to lower the cost of injustice.