what_is_justice oldephebe I'll tell you what it's NOT. Justice is NOT a middle aged mediocre attorney who worked for a souless corporation and who as an assistant prosecutor at times sent men and women to prison heedless of the dearth of evidense against them or even who upon suddenly being catapulted to the bench (because of his ideological/philosophical compatibility with the president that appointed him) acquires a kind of iviolable understanding of the law, the framers of the constitution and the elitest mandate to violate and or ignore the rights of the poor, and inadequately represented. Justice is not curtailing the original role of the jury with classist and ideologically derived constraints thereby completely disemboweling the jury nullification a power vested upon the jury by jefferson, hamilton et al. Justice is not the rote mechanical and cold application of a one size fits all approach to the law. ... 050901 ... ? Why_did_the_Chicken_cross_the_Road 050901 ... :) If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature. 050901 ... oldephebe Hey "?' and 'smiley face' are you guys canadian or american or what? if you're not american then i'll just applaud your irreverant and or insouciant riposte ... i just wanna say that the american jury embodies the very heart of democracy in such a way that eclipses the aspirations of the patrician landed gentry who framed our constitution. the jury is the beating heart of democracy as it relates to american jurisprudence. the jury was supposed to be a counter whieght to the potentiality of a patriarchical and tyrannical despotism of a black robed adjudicator that considers looking into the mundane realities/lives of hard working people, or marginalized people who can't possibly posses the intellectual talents that he/she has--so looking into those mundane lives and seeing the grievouse injuries that rapacious dead eyed corporations and even over zealous cops have subjected the individual to is an exigency that the expediancy of the court just cannot accomodate. So how can anyone but Hizzoner of the bench sift and sanction the arcane inner workings of justice in america? The men and women who chose the law as an oppurtunity to expedite social change are rarely placed on the bench. I can't believe an american would be so cavalier about the systemic inequities woven into the fabric of american jurisprudence. Perhaps we won't begin to feel the sense of outrage or even betrayal so acutely until we've been sodomized by some sanctified and pious golf club wielding "savant" of the bench. If you walk into the halls of justice, you will see the wood polished, the marble floor waxed, and the guards uniform pressed and his shoes buffed to a startling shining brilliance...you will see the acoutrements of justice, the flag, the ladies and thier scale, the state flag and the Bible piously handled by the officers of the court, but what you won't see is the rotting myth of justice, of equal justice for all citizens, becuase if you could smell it you'd want to place a pipe bomb under the pious judges robes and duck tape him to the magesterial chair/throne and watch him/her vaulted into the parking lot. Am i imbecilic and uninformed? Maybe. Once we stood together under the shade of Liberty. But in the intervening years its shade has shrunk, the strong stout tree that it once was has been infested by the scourge of special interests and judges who are ideologically and professionally predisposed to exert their unchecked judicial authority to orchestrate the proceedings in such a way so that it benefits the State and or the souless, heartless corporation. ... We should be ALARMED. ... 050901 ... UN21 Right_or_Wrong? The_rule_of_Law... 050901 ... 0^0 Iraq_war_apology 050901 ... black I'll tell you what we should be We should be aware that the same sort of judicial bullshit has happened since 1776. What's different today? People have bigger TV sets and bigger lungs to yell. Don't you think during the Jim Crow heyday and the march of Communism people thought the same way as you do? Absolutely they did. They sang the same song and played the same tune as you, only the scenery was different. So get all worked up over something you see as SO important, and I'll be out here just like I am everyday. Turning a wrench, keeping my nose clean, and making for damn sure your civil fucking liberties don't get even marginally wrinkled. Why? Because for all your crusading about generalization and stereotyping, you don't realize that you're doing exactly what you're on about, and that's judging. So yell on, crusader! You're quite the social and independent mind. But it still goes down to the fact that you, like the millions of those like you on this continent, are just like each other. And you know what we call that? Mediocre. 050901 ... oldephebe So let me get this straight. You are objecting to me stating a well known and documented state of being that has persisted since the beggining of recorded history right? One man, one voice CAN change things. Just look at the exploits of Ralph Nader or Harriet Tubman or well I can't say Lonnie Guinier because legal savant scholar that she was, even her french/african heritage hadn't equiped her to navigate the twin rivers of bill and hilaries ruthless and rapacious ambition..so she was fed to the wolves. C'mon man what are you objecting to here? Do you think that turning a wrench is more noble than the mind numbing borderline corporate sychophantic crap I have to negotiate through every day? We ALL have our slave right? Should we sit mutely? Can we begin to re-examine the way lawyers are trained in this country? There was a time when lawyers were trained by experienced attornies and not by bespectacled scholars who have read no poetry, who have not sat across a table from a client whose lost a loved one to an ill constructed automobile and seen the sorrow and rage and confusion and devastation right up close, these savants of the Law have never walked into the homes of the lost girls parents and seen the trophies on the mantlepiece or the pictures adorning the walls of a bright young adult snuffed out before its time. Am i mediocre? Sure by a lot of standards I probably am. By some standards I may be woefully lacking. I'm not an attorney. My training was in music and Business Administration. Should O.J. and William Blake and William Shatner get aquited or be found innocent because their celebrities or because thier legal help has gone golfing with the Judge when the judge was a practicing attorney who worked possibly for the same company? Should we as citizens of the republic NOT try to unite and collectively and individually exert pressure on our state and national legislatures and judiciaries to if not listen to thier own consciences at least listen to those whose taxes and votes are derivative of thier standard of living and a life of power and influence? At this juncture in our countries embattled history, can we really afford NOT to forthrightly object to the commodification of our lives? Should we allow ourselves through attrition and or the moral exhaustion that seems to be an endemic artifact of our times, to eschew and or abondon our God given facility of Reason in order to innure ourselves in a husk of calcified cooperation so we can tolerate what we have to become or what the world has become to make it to the next day? What about the countless others who labor in anonymity securing the rights of the disenfranchised, and victimized? Should we not shine the light of Justice upon thier noble efforts. Could you consider pouring your passion into a more efficacious endeavor? I don't think we're REALLY that far apart. ... 050901 ... REAListic optimIST the only difference is that there is hope in OE's reality. if i was a baby motherless monkey, i would nuzzle up to oldephebe for warmth rather than the cold, steel, monotonous clang of the inevitability bell. 050901 ... oE okay well... just so you know, my mild form of autism makes it very difficult for me to show affection and be the object of affection...so... but it's the thought that counts right? ... 050903 ... REAListic optimIST it was a metaphor... sheesh... ;) 050904 ... oE yeah..that was ahh mostly kind of tongue in cheek ... 050904 ... dafremen Mediocre? Is that what this misguided speaker for the BEAST called you phebe? This person whose only function, through that entire blathe was to repeat what the system has been telling you since you were old enough to understand? Because let's face it. All that black really had to say, if you boil it right down to its basic purpose, was "Sit down and shut up." That's right black, all of those words you spoke about this that and the other, amounted to your repeating the mantra of the status quo. I don't know you, so I'll hold my tongue...a bit. It's rude to be rude, but it's INFURIATING to have a person use their intellect and their grasp of language to act as a speaker for this system that enslaves us all. Why choose to act as tools of the brainwashing machine, if we become nothing more than speakers for repeating the SAME thing the cops will tell you if you get up in the park and start shouting to the heavens? The SAME thing the judge will say to you when you tell him that the laws he's enforcing are outrageous, bloated and unwieldy. He will tell you to shut up and sit down, or be forcibly silenced and seated. And if the cops can't do it, and the judge can't do it...then the military will do it, or the government. With their money, they would silence us and seat us. With their power, they would silence us and seat us. And finally, with their pawns, like you black, their brainwashed drones, fully programmed with the same derisive, apathy-inducing message. "Sit the f**k down!" You know what it is to speak those words black? It is mediocre and common. Still..speak those words, obey the master that is your lifetime of conditioning, Accept your chains as "freedom." With so many forces pitted against us, you repeating that same tired message amounts to not much more than background noise. Bonne chance avec votre discours. 050904 ... dafremen see also: meet_the_beast point number 9 050904 ... oldephebe Daf - I was pleasantly, suprised to see that you've added your uniquely sagacious perspective to this page. I do believe that "black" has a burr in his behind and his vitriolic comments are merely symptomatic of that. I do believe as you that if enough of us choose to wake up and join our brethren and sisters in a human crusade against the souless corporate/governmental autocratic control systems that we can be free. I'll be right back. 050905 ... oldephebe And then I'm wondering, is "black" african american? Have I allowed myself to be played by a cognitive illusion? By invoking Jim Crow, a dark period in Humanities history, and using a psuedonym like black, does that neccesarily mean this is a black male/female flinging his fecal brain matter in an ode to the Jason Pollack ouvre all over this blathepage. Someone:"flinging his fecal brain matter" (my what an odiferous splatter) "all over this blathepage"? Aren't you the one who always harping about dissention is vital blah blahblah? oldephebe: Yes I am. It seems the sepia tainted ink of my ire has polluted this page as well. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anyway...What a lot of us tend to forget or over look in our naivette, is that like many of us in positions of authority or those that aspire to positions of authority--Judges, just like the faceless collective whores and hordes of the corporate machine, are beholden to power. We can invoke all of the poetic and idealistic crap that we want... ... 050906 ... oldephebe For some justice is an ideal, a natural out growth or product of a democrat system of governance. But democracy is really just a term to describe the mechanics and means by wich POWER is wielded. And in a democracy POWER is wielded by the people who elect thier representatives and leaders who are then beholden to the specialized interests of REAL power, the corporations who contribute to thier campain fund and who hold jobs for them after they leave the public sector. True power will never cede itself to the interests of the people for then it would participate in its own incremental dimunution. The slow accretion of POWER will never make its way drop by drop to the individual. This is what power wants us to believe. Well..since the late 50's Ralph Nader as one man, as one equality minded attorney who could've been bought off and later ascended to the bench to sadistically sanction liberty, equanimity, fairness and justice as intended by the framers who were unfortunately misogynistic, elitist slave holding hypocrites...but still...chaffing under the exacerbations of the crown. ... 050906 ... oldephebe For some justice is an ideal, a natural out growth or product of a democrat system of governance. But democracy is really just a term to describe the mechanics and means by wich POWER is wielded. And in a democracy POWER is wielded by the people who elect thier representatives and leaders who are then beholden to the specialized interests of REAL power, the corporations who contribute to thier campain fund and who hold jobs for them after they leave the public sector. True power will never cede itself to the interests of the people for then it would participate in its own incremental dimunution. The slow accretion of POWER will never make its way drop by drop to the individual. This is what power wants us to believe. Well..since the late 50's Ralph Nader as one man, as one equality minded attorney who could've been bought off and later ascended to the bench to sadistically sanction liberty, equanimity, fairness and justice as intended by the framers who were unfortunately misogynistic, elitist slave holding hypocrites...but still...chaffing under the exacerbations of the crown. ... 050906 ... oldephebe In the late 15th Century the Catholic Church in conjunction and cooperation with the ruling male caste in response to the increasing authority and prominence of midwifes and healers who were mostly Irish pagan women of the peasant class, formulated a mysogynistic judicial instrument to sanction the de facto extermination of thier class and caste. It was called the Malleus Maleficarum. It is the basis of the civil and religious persecution of women in the Salem Witch trials. The judges and Church officials destroyed that wich bound the destitute celtic peoples together and deseminated thier pagan beliefs by ordering the women who represented those beliefs burned before the eyes of the people. It was a venerated legal insturment of European jurisprudence for three centuries. You can peruse it online by going to the Malleus Maleficarum.org. These women wielded a great influence over the people and naturally the patriarchy of the crown, the church and country were threatened by the usurpation of thier influence. Power and influence should NOT be vested in derelict matronly women who practised the dark arts and birthed the kings citizens and the churches souls through some pagan alchemy and ritual--this was of course the ostensible rationale for no one in power REALLY believed these women were the brides of Mephistopheles or anything. The prerogatives of power are sacrosanct and above reproach and completely guiless. HAH! The prerogatives of power can be barbarous and not even as thinly veiled as Napoleons fist inside a velvet glove. ... 050907 ... daf Thank you for that piece, my friend. It fits the puzzle perfectly. 050907 ... oE t'anks daf The Malleus Maleficarum= The Hammer of Witches 050907 ... z by one standard justice is equal parts empahty and ethics. 050908 ... Please explain. 050921 ... z ethics is the rational for the relative treatment of all people, individually and as a group. it is a system of values which allows us to intuitively balance cause and effect observations with the practical needs in any situation. it is a generator of if/then guidelines and ratio based thresholds between the acceptable and the proscribed. empathy is an intimate emotional visitation of the experience of another person or group, a seeking to understand their inner life. it allows us to begin to understand a person or group's motives, needs, desires and their fears. i can also illuminate their strengths, blind spots and limitations. with only ethics, justice is founded on facts about events. with only empathy, justice is an exercise in motive and suffering. only when we balance the two does justice begin to approximate an outcome that can be said to have some larger meaning. 050921 ... oldephebe ethics is a pie in the sky ideal we'll never attain it, or obtain equitable justice down here in this realm quest for power? corrupted by power? a vehicle to exorcise ones mysogynistic, rascist and bigoted impulses...yeah now that's the real face of jurisprudence sorry z, that was a well wrought peice of reasoning and exposition. Greater men than I have exhausted and impoverished themselves in the cause of freedom and justice but the consitution canot compell citizens to care about folks they don't comfortable around, the constitution cannot compell the police and prosecution to discard thier cellular animus that burns in depths unknown and unfathomed within. It's stirred with a golden stick forged in the Stygthian realms. ... 051006 ... stork daddy don't worry guys, i'll give it one hell of a mediocre try. 051006 ... CornishAcid Foetal constipation erases grace's racist faces. 070228 ... ? ... 070228 ... pete justice is each being in its own space but that begs that question, where does each belong? 070301 ... Lemon_Soda Is justice different from vengeance? 070301 ... pete yes, the confusion comes about because we call the legal system the "justice department" or "ministry of justice" suggesting that it actually has something to do with providing justice. this is wrong. the legal system has nothing to do with justice. it is merely an attempt to manage injustice. 070301 ... stork daddy master's house with the master's tools etc. 070301 ... pete are master's just though? they may say so and try to convince their slaves that it is so, but that does not make it so. 070301 ... pSyche why does justice even matter, when you keep telling me that everything is relative? 070301 ... pete who knows if everything is relative. it could be. people see things different from others, so human perception of the world is relative. that doesn't mean that there can't be absolutes. 070301 ... . Something we absolutely must pursue, and yet can be [almost] certain of never finding. 070301 ... sameolme Bush impeached would be a good start. 070301 ... - - 080401 ... stork daddy veil of ignorance etc. justice is our attempt to weight the dice. to keep those cause and effect relationships we see as predictable, inevitable and built into our understanding and to eliminate those we see as capricious, cruel, and external. 080401 what's it to you? who go blather from