I am the State. And You are the State. And You, and You and You. If you want Liberty and Justice for All.

The law is not justice. And justice is not law. Nor is it equality under law. Justice exists beside the law, when one human treats another human with respect and dignity.

Jul 02, 2024

Dred Scott v. Sandford. Plessy v. Ferguson. And as of today, Trump v. United States. Decisions of the United States Supreme Court that are too real reminders that law and justice are not the same.

Michel de Montaigne, Blaise Pascal and Jacques Derrida each tackle the mystical foundations of authority and its consequences for the formation and application of the law, along with the possibility of authority or law ever delivering justice. While Pascal borrows from Montaigne and Derrida deconstructs both, they all reach more or less the same conclusion. Law is the power of the sovereign and it comes with the force and violence required to protect the sovereign. Any individual justice that comes from the application of this law is mere accident.

Justice, when defined as custom, as Pascal does, provides that the majority position must be just because, well, they have the numbers. But justice, like Liberty, is not something that belongs only to the sovereign, to the majority, to the in-group. The minority and the out-group are usually found to have their universal Liberty and any claim to justice squashed, reduced or worse yet, eliminated. This is not a win for the sovereign or the majority, but rather a loss for all of humanity.

As the Tory tradition of the colonies flexed its muscle today in letting the rest of us know that the founders did in fact plan for us to have a King, we are reminded that Liberty, and therefore justice, has never actually been extended to every American. Although, it is a fun, if not dangerous myth, that we are all equal under an unequal law.

So if the law is not justice, and current authority has no interest in guaranteeing a universal justice, how do we the people create a just world for each individual?

By replacing the mystical foundation of authority with a new individual human foundation of authority. All of the authorities before this new authority will always be built on top of the mystical foundation. However, we can have a new mysticism, the mysticism of your own mind. Your mind, when doing no harm to others, should be the sole source of all authority.

When harm of another is involved, then the sovereign authority can take its turn. And that sovereign authority should extend no further than ending the harm and making the harmed as whole as possible. And this extra-individual authority should not intervene in individual authority for any more time than is required to end the harm and make the harmed whole.

There will be times when making the harmed whole requires the sovereign authority to restrict or even fully remove the rights of the person who has done harm to another, especially when the harm was to life or liberty. When it comes to harm to property, restitution by the offender to make the harmed whole should be the first use of sovereign force.

This authority will never be simply granted, both the sovereign and the majority prefer power, or its illusion, over rightness. So we must take this authority ourselves. But this authority only has credibility, and thus any power, when we all agree that the individual is the first sovereign, or primary ruler in our culture. This will only happen when we guarantee each other the right, and it is a human right, to pursue our own self-interest. From this guarantee will spring happiness, and from this happiness will sprout a true and just society.

For the justness of law is only as just as we are to each other.