Have you ever seen a statue of Lady Justice? She is in many courthouses and her origins date back to ancient Greece and Rome. She holds a scale which balances crimes committed against potential consequences. Beginning around the 16th century, she was also adorned with a blindfold came to symbolize impartiality, the idea that justice is blind. Under the law, regardless of race, sex, religion, or political belief, everyone is supposed to be given equal treatment. This is what is meant by “equal justice under the law,” which is written above the front entrance of the Supreme Court of the United States.
In the spirit of judging with a blindfold on, let’s examine seven stories:
A political candidate misreports payments made to a law firm to obscure spending.
A political candidate pays his attorney through internal business records.
These two examples sound similar, yet the justice rendered is extremely different. In example number one, the Hillary Clinton campaign paid the law firm Perkins Coie to do opposition research and manufacture a document containing false information about her political competitor when running for president in 2016. These payments were misclassified as legal services. When this violation was exposed in 2022, the punishment was a $133,000 fine and no criminal charges were filed.
In example number two, Donald Trump paid his attorney for legal services related to his defense in the case with Stormy Daniels. The payment was made through internal business records, not from election campaign expenses. Trump was indicted and misdemeanor charges were increased to felony charges.
Approximately 420 defendants have had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their criminal activity.
120 defendants across the United States have pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of federal crimes.
Example number three is the result of the January 6th political protest at the United States Capitol. Between ten and fifteen thousand people attended the protest. Approximately 2,000 people entered the capitol which resulted in an estimated $2.7 million in damages.
Example number four is the result of the series of over 7,000 protests that devolved into riots in 2020. These riots involved somewhere between 15-25 million people and resulted in up to $2 billion in damages.
Six police officers injured during protests that turned to riots in DC.
You would be forgiven if you thought number five was another reference to January 6, 2021, but it is actually from January 2017 when Donald Trump was inaugurated. All defendants were acquitted or had their charges dropped. When the January 6th convictions are taken into consideration, this should be concerning.
Social media influencer tells voters to skip lines and vote by text in 2016.
Social media influencer tells voters to skip lines and vote by text in 2016.
Examples six and seven represent identical crimes, so they should yield identical outcomes. Yet, that is not the case. Two different individuals recommended people vote by text, but Douglas Mackey’s audience was largely Hillary Clinton supporters where as Kristina Wong’s followers were largely Trump supporters. Douglas Mackey was sentenced to up to ten years in prison. Kristina Wong has had zero consequences for the same “crime”.
Undoubtedly by now, you have heard terms such as “social justice”, “racial justice”, “environmental justice” and “climate justice”. Are we operating under a new legal system? Have we taken off the blindfold and eschewed equal justice under the law for a new form of justice? What is behind this perversion of justice and what are the end goals?
To understand this perversion of justice, we have to define the terms.
Equal justice is “the fair, equal, and impartial treatment of all people”.
Social justice is “fair treatment of all people in a society, including respect for the rights of minorities and equitable distribution of resources among members of a community.”
Racial justice is “fair and just treatment of all racial groups, such that equitable opportunities and outcomes are possible for all members of society.”
Equal justice has always been the gold standard. Impartial judgment without respect to race, sex, political belief, etc, is the act of a just system. All social justice or racial justice does is add qualifiers to that statement. Those qualifiers necessitate taking the blindfold off, and observing who is being judged. By doing so, personal biases of the jury and judge come into play, and group characteristics become a determining factor over individual accountability. This negates the idea of “equal” justice. Once someone’s political leanings are taken into consideration, the result is unequal justice. Once status is taken into consideration when determining the distribution of resources, the treatment is no longer equal, and justice is no longer “blind”.
For example, in the case of racial justice, taking race into consideration involves judging based on the past offenses of people long since deceased, and correcting past wrongs with current judgments. To do so involves holding people accountable today who had no responsibility for the past offenses. This turns the idea of justice into vengeance. One has taken the blindfold off of lady justice so she can then judge the person in front of her based on an immutable characteristic that has no bearing on that person’s character. It is a perversion of equal justice.
Once the blindfold is off, there is no longer equal justice. The accused are at the mercy of what those judging think of the accused’s affiliations and characteristics; not their actions. The accused are then to be judged predominantly based on skin color, political beliefs, religious beliefs, etc., rather than the merits of the criminal case. In 1770, the trial of the Boston Massacre took place. John Adams, a Patriot, and our future second president, defended the British Redcoats. He believed it important for everyone to receive a fair trial and defense. In other words, political beliefs could not be a determining factor in the application of the law for self-government to work.
Do the above examples illustrate we have substituted the principle of equal justice under the law with biased, political notions of justice founded on social, racial, environmental, or whatever emotional causes of the moment? Are we to descend into a never-ending tit-for-tat, whereby whenever a different political party gains power, their enemies then receive unequal justice? Has our new guiding principle simply become that those who have the power shall wield it to their desire? Or can we put the blindfold back on, and treat each other equally under the law?