As thou urgest justice, be assured

Thou shalt have justice

More than thou desirest.

— Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice

WHAT is justice really? And is it administered fairly in everybody’s life? We often see people on TV chanting and wailing as they cry out for justice for some situation or person who they think warrants it. It may be a relative or a friend who ran afoul of the law and suffered the consequences. In almost every case they insist that the person was innocent and was dealt with unjustly by the security forces. So, they want justice.

Justice means to deal with someone fairly, the quality of being fair and reasonable, the administering of the law or authority in maintaining this, the quality of being fair and reasonable.

To achieve all this, justice has to be blind. And that’s why the symbol of justice in many jurisdictions is the image or statue of a Roman goddess wearing a blindfold and holding a measuring scale in her hand.

She’s supposed to apply equal justice without the benefit of seeing what’s on that scale. Blind justice it’s called. Maybe you’re aware of the practice of some dishonest sellers who will add weights to scales to fool the consumer into thinking that the product weighs more than it does. Or they’ll use their finger to press lightly on the scale, adding more weight.

Well, no such thing for blind justice who has to be fair and equal. So justice is supposed to be impartial in the pure sense but it’s often different in reality for very often, as the saying goes, “There ar