By Alana Rubenstein
The Jewish High Holidays are rapidly coming to an end. There are a lot of things to think about during this time period. Yet, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, I found myself thinking about Law and Literature.
One of the Rabbis at my synagogue was speaking and began his sermon with words “Justice is truth.” And I couldn’t help asking myself, “Is it really?”
According to Black’s Law Dictionary, justice is defined as “the fair and proper administration of laws.” That has nothing to do with truth though. The laws of the American legal system are concerned with procedure, efficiency, and some may argue fairness, but they are not especially concerned with arriving at the truth.
If they were, settlement wouldn’t be the ideal in the American legal system. Settlements do not uncover details and stories. They do just the opposite. Settlements cover the truth, silencing the parties and forcing no one to actually divulge what happened. There is no admission of guilt, and there is no public declaration of innocence. There is only a change of money. This is justice, not truth.
Truth is a moral concept. Lawyers are not concerned with the truth. Take the lawyers in the film The Verdict. They are concerned with putting on a show. They are preparing for their case and want to win their case without any discussion of the actual case and what actually occurred between their client and the woman lying as a vegetable in the hospital. This concept is also illustrated in the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Atticus Finch is so remarkable because he is unlike any other lawyer around. And what is it that makes him so different from other lawyers? It is the fact that his lawyer persona and his man persona are the same. There is no split in his values, his personality or his beliefs. Unlike his peers, Atticus is moral at work. He is concerned with the truth and is not afraid to publicize it regardless of the consequences. This is illustrated twice in the novel, both when he exposed the Bob Ewell and at the end of the novel when he was willing to expose Jem.
So was the Rabbi wrong? No. In the context of religion, which is what he was talking about, he was correct. Justice, morality and truth are all connected and related. This is seen clearly in the children’s book “The Month of Kislev,” a Chanukkah story in which the Rabbi is both a judicial and spiritual figure who makes no distinction between justice and morality.
But had he been referring to the legal/justice system in the US, the Rabbi would have been wrong. There is a separation of church and state in this country, and justice for the legal system of the state is completely devoid of the morality and truth religion brings to people.
