JUSTICE Is there any justice in this world? Do we receive our just desserts, rewards in measure as we work hard and do good, punishments in measure as we are slothful and do harm? Is justice part of the way things are or is it something for which we must strive? The question of justice is one of the earliest questions we struggle with as human beings. We may remember in our own childhood saying or, if we are parents, we will surely have heard our young children say, "It's not fair." It's not fair that I have to go to bed at 8:00 or that I may not play with my brother's toy or that I have the chicken pox and they itch like crazy. Justice is also one of the oldest questions with which humanity has had to contend. The 4,000 year old Code of Hammurabi was an effort to put into organized form some principles of justice that transcended mere tribal or familial loyalty. "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" exemplifies the principle of exact recompense for injury done as a way of doing justice. The Greeks saw a universe filled with wild injustice, the lives of human beings largely determined by our own stupidity and cupidity, and somewhat determined by beings they called gods and goddesses but that we would describe as chance, randomness. The Hebrew Bible can be seen as the desperate struggle to answer the question, "Is God Just?" Job certainly raises that question because of the ills that befall him, as does Jonah. The author of Lamentations, mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, ponders whether justice has anything to do with life at all. There is the famous conversation between Abraham and God Yahweh in which the man attempts to bargain with the deity so that a few just people-in this case, ten-can save a whole city. In the end the Hebrew Bible leaves the question unanswered, the universe open to our doing with it what we choose within the limits of what we can, with no promises on the part of God that justice will prevail. In all societies, those who have a lot of money and power tend to regard the world as very just place. You may remember the old Billie Holiday song, "Them that's got shall get. Them that's not shall lose. So the Bible said, and it still is news." "Them that's got" often think that the reason they've got is their own virtue, which may or may not be true. It certainly helps one make one's way in life if you start with good genes, caring parents, a goodly amount of money, and a prominent social position. There is a marvelous cartoon that speaks of those who believe the world is just because they are among those "that have got." It shows three fish of different sizes, a small one about to be swallowed by a larger one who is about to be devoured by an even larger one. The little fish says, "There is no justice in the world." The larger fish says, "There is some justice in the world." The biggest fish, beaming, says, "The world is just." If our vision of justice takes in only our own circumstances or only the circumstances of those who are like us, it will be a narrow vision indeed. It will be a vision committed to the status quo, to maintaining the privileges that we have, ignoring the suffering that others must endure, often through no fault of their own. I have sometimes wondered if the Congress of the United States ought not to be elected according to categories based on the percentages of people in different fields of endeavor. Housewives would have the highest percentage, perhaps, and then laborers, with a goodly mix of administrative and clerical people. There would be a lot of small business owners, computer workers of one kind or another, and a fair number of retirees. Or maybe we could do it by income, with a huge proportion of people from the assets under $100,000 category and a tiny number from the $500,000 plus category. I suspect, though I could surely be wrong, that our laws would look very different from the ones we now have, tax policy in particular. If we are doing very well and we see the question of justice only from our own standpoint, it is not justice that we are concerned about but the preservation of our good fortune earned or given to us. There are other people who believe there is no justice in this world but who do believe that justice will prevail in the next world. Some of those who hold to such beliefs are people whose suffering is immense and whose prospects for relief from that suffering are dim at best. The so-called sorrow songs of the black slaves in the American South were in part songs of a day of justice that was coming in the next life. As W.E. B. DuBois wrote, "Through all the sorrow of the Sorrow Songs there breathes a hope-a faith in the ultimate justice of things." Others are less burdened with pain and sadness but full of anger at those they consider their enemies. Tertullian, an early Christian theologian, described almost gleefully the torments of monarchs and governors who had opposed Christianity groaning in their agony in the lowest darkness and the fiercest fires of hell while the saints rejoiced at their anguish. Some modern day Fundamentalists hold similar views, in Christianity and in other religions. This is not justice but revenge for real or imagined slights. It is a perverted morality that imagines a universe run by a tyrant deity who expects petty acts of obeisance and subjects who live in fear. This is the kind of justice that Osama bin Laden apparently believes in, a justice that calls for the deaths of numerous innocent people to satisfy and pacify an angry divine figure who is easily insulted. People who have this vision of justice are either desperate in their misery and so are understandably and nobly looking to some future day when justice will heal their wounds, or are furious at the world's rejection of their narrow vision of life and so postpone justice to a distant day and justify terrible acts of injustice to help speed that day's coming. There are also people who think there is no justice anywhere anytime. Cynics say that justice is too good for most people and impossible even for those who deserve it. Life is heedless of our ideals and hopes and dreams. Life is unfair. A teacher asked a student why he had put sand into another student's mouth and received the answer, "Because it was open." Life makes no sense. The rain falls on the just and the unjust and we all die. That's what life is like. Life is unfair. The late Walter Kaufmann, the philosopher, thought the pursuit of justice futile, and wrote a book called WITHOUT GUILT OR JUSTICE to make his case. He argued that it is impossible to determine rewards and punishments that would be truly just. What punishment, for example, would be a fair one to administer to Adolf Eichmann, the man who ran the Nazi program of extermination of Jews. He murdered millions but can be murdered himself only once. To torture him endlessly through a long life would reduce us to a moral level close to his. Justice is not possible. The best we can do is endure, accepting whatever blows come to us, be responsible for ourselves so that we do not create more distress in the world, and not waste our time worrying over justice or injustice. There is no such thing. To base our sense of justice on our present condition is short-sighted. To defer justice to a future age can encourage us in accepting injustice. To despair of the reality of justice is to leave us prey to the worst side of our nature. There is a better way of looking at justice that offers us hope as individuals and as societies. It is suggested to us by John Rawls in his influential book, A THEORY OF JUSTICE. Rawls argued that we are most likely to establish a just society if we set up the laws of that society from behind "a veil of ignorance," knowing nothing of the circumstances of our lives. Of course, this is impossible, but it points to the need to base a system of justice on more than what suits us. We need to look at the broadest possible picture of life to understand the meaning of justice and to work towards its realization. There may or may not be something in the nature of things that bends towards justice. There certainly does not appear to be anything that would prevent us from establishing justice. Indeed, justice appears to be a human idea, a supreme, wonderful, grand notion of how we might live and what the world might be like. No one has spoken this vision of justice better than the Hebrew prophets. They spoke of justice rolling down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream. They talked of caring for the widow and the orphan and treating the stranger like one of your own. They said that violence should no more be heard in the land and that peace would flow out of righteousness. They said that when there is justice and when there is peace, then no one shall make any one afraid and all people can sit calmly and joyfully under their fig trees and be secure in their habitations. The Greeks understood justice to be one of the four cardinal (not derivative) virtues. In Book IV of THE REPUBLIC, Plato held justice aloft as the ultimate standard by which human beings could live together. He understood justice as fairness in opportunities and procedures as well as fairness in outcomes and consequences. A modern Christian rendering of the ideal of justice calls it "a consistent decision to do what is good toward God and my neighbor." For those of us who are not theistic in our beliefs, we can substitute the word Goodness for God and the point is the same. Justice means that we are striving towards the highest ideal of human behaviour possible and trying to make that ideal real in our dealings with others--family member, friend, and stranger. Some people regard retribution as the proper way to "do what is good toward God and my neighbor." If my neighbor is kind to me, I will be kind to my neighbor. If my neighbor is unkind to me, I will reciprocate in the same manner. This is a tit for tat way of doing justice in which justice is accomplished through reaction rather than action. The American system of criminal justice is a retributive system. We punish those who commit crimes by community service, by fines, by imprisonment, and by death. Under this system, on a per capita basis more Americans are in prison than in any other nation. Our rate of recidivism is higher than in any other nation. One out of every 42 Americans is either behind prison walls or on supervised release from prison, also higher than any other nation. The system tilts heavily towards the incarceration of minorities. Forty eight per cent of our prisoners are black and 18% are Hispanic, though blacks make up only 13% of our national population and Hispanics 10%. The features these prisoners have in common with the more than 30% of white prisoners are poverty, addiction, lack of education, and joblessness. Is this system just? Is retribution a good way to build a just society? Does the system help the prisoners to prepare for a life outside prison? Given that two thirds of those imprisoned for a first time return to prison later, many of us think our criminal justice system is anything but just. A growing number of people-more than 600 communities in the United States--think there is a better way. It is called restorative justice. New Zealand has used this approach to justice for nearly 30 years, first on a trial and error basis, since 1989 as a mandated process for those under the age of 17 facing charges. In 1998 a pilot program of restorative justice was started for adults in that country. After an arrest, the offender, his/her family, and the victim(s) meets with a facilitator from the Department of Youth Justice. The offender admits his crime and explains any extenuating circumstances. A supporter may offer clarifying information. Then the victim(s) speaks his/her anger, pain, and grief. This whole group, very much including the victim(s), makes a decision that is then submitted to a judge. In 95% of the cases, the judge accepts the recommendations. The offender signs a contract to carry out the sentence: payment, return to school, drug rehabilitation, rebuilding destroyed property, or some other means of satisfying the hurt and loss of the one(s) injured and the need for repentance on the part of the one who has offended. New Zealand has found this system works far better than their former one largely because it helps to heal the wounds the offense has caused. It includes the community in the decision-making process and in the acts of restoration. It has decreased not only incarceration but, more importantly, repeat offenders. This approach to justice was used in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa and in similar commissions in several other countries torn by civil strife and racial/ethnic tensions. Restorative justice is helpful in the criminal justice system. It can also be applied to other areas of concern in our lives. A sense of restorative justice can help us to deal fairly with the organization of society, the institutions of society, and the inequities of society. It would be especially helpful in three areas of our common life. The first of these areas is the earth itself. There is a need for the whole human community to develop and to practice a sense of justice towards all living things. There is a need for justice that embraces trees and grass, birds and animals, insects and waters, clouds and mountains. There is a need for justice that protects and nurtures this marvelously intricate and delicately balanced system within which we live and move and have our being. Justice for the earth is the purpose of the seventh principle of the Unitarian Universalist Association's By-Laws, which speaks of "respect for the interdependent web of all existence." Justice for the earth is the purpose of our Green Sanctuary project, to which this whole congregation has committed itself. Justice for the earth takes seriously the fact of the interdependence of all life and recognizes the responsibility humanity has to care for the earth. More than any other living form, we have had a dramatic impact on the earth. By what we have done-by cutting down forests, by polluting waterways, by fouling our skies, by destroying ecologies, by causing hundreds of life forms to become extinct, by consistently putting human comfort over all other values, among other ways in which we have assaulted our home-by what we have done, we have rendered life on this planet more perilous, less beautiful, and maybe even impossible for future generations. The Union of Concerned Scientists among other eminent scientific bodies has warned that "every life system on the planet is in decline." There have been endless reports across the last 30 years from governmental and non- governmental and United Nations committees of the dangers of global warming. We continue to burn fossil fuels at high levels and to reduce standards for pollution controls and greenhouse gas emissions. Justice for the earth would strengthen every conceivable protection for the earth's ecological system to flourish. We would create jobs without harming our brother and sister animals and our cousins who come in millions of diverse forms. We would remember the genetic unity of all life and learn not to destroy our relatives for our own convenience. We would benefit from the wisdom of indigenous peoples around the world who have learned how to live with rather than trying to dominate nature. Justice for the earth would reclaim forests and grasslands, clean up rivers and lakes, treat animals with dignity and guard endangered species, learn the value of trees so that we do not chop them down carelessly, slow down the concretization of arable land, develop mass transportation and begin walking more and driving less. Restorative justice would have us do the work of treating our home with care and respect, nurturing earth the way we do our own children. I have recently signed a Declaration of Interdependence that hundreds of other religious leaders have endorsed. It includes these motivational words: "May nothing we do mar the holiness of life by causing any other human being or creature to lose the joy of living." That is a commitment to justice for the earth. A second area where restorative justice is needed is in international relations. Justice in this realm would look like this: "WE THE PEOPLES OF THE UNITED NATIONS DETERMINED to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war...and to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained... "AND FOR THESE ENDS to practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbors, and to unite our strength to maintain international peace and security, and to ensure, by the acceptance of principles and the institution of methods, that armed force shall not be used, save in the common interest... HAVE RESOLVED TO COMBINE OUR EFFORTS TO ACCOMPLISH THESE AIMS..." These words are from the Charter of the United Nations, and are followed by others that say that the nations "shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means," and that they "shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force..." The United States attack on Iraq is a clear violation of these words. Many other nations across the 58 years since they were written have also violated their letter and their spirit. Such violations do not render these idealistic words meaningless. To the contrary, these words calling for the resolution of disputes by peaceful means, refraining from the threat or use of force, and acting with military might only when it is in the common interest are still the ideal that best represents justice among the nations. Jonathan Schell, in his new book THE UNCONQUERABLE WORLD, makes the point that war is no longer war but annihilation, If we do not stop making war, we shall very likely perish. The weapons we possess and that we have the knowledge of how to make-nuclear, biological, chemical-are of such destructive power that we could devastate this planet for centuries to come by unleashing a sufficient number of these weapons. We must learn how to resolve our differences non-violently or we shall end by perpetrating the greatest injustice in history, a destruction of every kind of life form on this planet more vast than anything ever imagined, including the human species. Restorative justice looks for what brings harmony. Internationally, what will not bring harmony is one nation attempting to impose its will in every corner of the globe. That is totalitarianism. It is not justice. It will inspire hatred, terrorism, and fear. It already has: with Rome, with Turkey, with Britain, with the Soviet Union, and now with the United States. Harmony is found only in listening to what other people say and being willing to work together until we have found ways of getting along. The United Nations is at this moment the only hope we have of accomplishing that kind of harmony, that kind of justice, restorative justice. One other note: the creation of the International Court of Justice, the labor of a century of effort, is a significant step in the direction of a more just international society. This is true despite our government's arrogant self- exemption from the court's jurisdiction. A new institution has been created. It will evolve standards, and they will have their impact even on a nation as self-regarding as our own. There is a need for restorative justice at the international level. Finally, there is a need for social and economic equity. If justice is fair opportunities and fair procedures, fair outcomes and fair consequences, the world is terribly unjust. Hundreds of millions are starving. Hundreds of millions are without water or decent housing or medical care. Hundreds of millions have no work to do. Hundreds of millions live in misery. If the whole world lived in such poverty, there would be a rude kind of justice at work. But the truth is that there are some who live very well indeed, live with several dwelling places, never run out of food, have the most gifted doctors to treat them, enjoy comforts and conveniences beyond the imagination of the wealthiest people of just a few centuries ago. Too many others barely survive. The discrepancy between the rich, of whom there are a few, and the poor, of whom there are a great many, is vast. The gap grows larger almost daily. No nation exhibits this discrepancy as vividly as America. Kevin Phillips notes in his WEALTH AND DEMOCRACY: A POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN RICH that the United States is "the most polarized and inequality-ridden of the major Western nations." He describes how wealth and power have always been close in this country, so that those in power are sure to pass laws and execute existing laws in favor of the well- to-do. He writes that "the last two decades of the twentieth century...echoed the zenith of corruption and excess-the Gilded Age and the 1920's." Phillips, a political conservative, unhappily sees these trends continuing forcefully into the present century. Many of us feel that the current tax bill is a continuation of the cozy relationship between the rich and the powerful. Among the critics are Alan Greenspan, the bi-partisan coalition of former Cabinet officers and Senators called the Concord Coalition, and a conservative newspaper like the New York Times. Among other criticisms they make, they point to the reduction of the tax on dividends. Given that the richest 10% of the nation owns 90% of the stocks and that the wealthiest 1% owns more than half of the stocks, it is clear that this tax cut favors those who have a lot of money over against those who do not have very much. Maybe the tax cut will inspire those who receive the benefits to create jobs and maybe it will not. The earlier tax cut of this administration did not have that effect, nor did Mr. Reagan's tax cuts. In point of fact, according to a study by Miles Benson, economic growth is more associated with times of higher tax rates than it is with times of tax cuts. A few years ago the newsletter TOO MUCH prepared a chart of corporate America's ten biggest downsizing announcements over a three year period. Some 280,000 jobs were cut at IBM, Sears, AT&T, Boeing and other giants, while the CEO's of these corporations received annual compensation ranging from $2,691,000 to $33,289,000, with an average compensation of more than $13 million. How many jobs might have been saved if each of these individuals had been willing to work for only one million dollars? Even if jobs could not have been saved, with more than one hundred million dollars available, a whole new company could have been started, giving jobs to at least a good number of those who were let go. I know, that is not the way America works. America works as the headline on the stock market page of the New York Times of Sunday, May 4 described it: "Profits Recover. Jobs Vanish. Stocks Rise." That is not justice. That is an inherently unjust system. Winston Churchill, a Tory, described "the unnatural gap between rich and poor" as "the seed of imperial ruin and national decay." Kevin Phillips views the current excesses as characteristic manifestations of the decline of a nation's powers, and details how this happened to Spain, Holland, and Great Britain. What applies within our borders must also apply in our dealings with other peoples. We must learn to think larger than just in terms of our own interests. If we truly want a just world, we must relate to other countries not alone in terms of what we can get from them and certainly not in terms of forcing them to our will, but in terms of what are genuinely equitable arrangements by which the peoples of all countries may benefit. If we truly want justice, we must strive for greater social and economic equitability. The alternative is continued degradation for millions, anger erupting in some into violence, and a world made more perilous by the discrepancies between the rich and the poor. Is there any justice in this world? Yes, there is, if we are willing to create it and sustain it. The kind of justice we need is not retributive, punishing the bad guys and dividing the world into us and them, good guys and bad guys. The kind of justice we need is restorative, justice that restores the dynamic harmony of life, The kind of justice we need treats the earth with respect and care. The kind of justice we need resolves conflicts between nations with creative diplomacy and non-violent pressures and the force of truth itself. The kind of justice we need narrows the gap between rich and poor so that every person is honored and no one is deprived of the goods of life and the joy of life. Yes, it is a utopian vision, and yes, it will be a long time coming. But I cannot think of a more worthy ideal for which to work and I invite you to join me in doing just that. 13