So this is jury duty. I’m waiting for 10:00 am to roll around so I can check the latest status of my group, 117. And I’ve been contemplating what I will say in the event they actually contemplate putting me on the jury.
I will have the opportunity to say something because I will object to the idea that I should render a verdict based solely on law. My current phrasing goes something like this:
It is not just that there is more to justice than law, but that the preference for law at the expense of justice reflects a preference for social order at the expense of other values in a politically conservative moral hierarchy. This is not justice for all, but justice for rich, white men, and it is not the kind of justice I will render.
To fully understand what I’m saying here, one must read George Lakoff, Moral Politics, and then the philosophy of Richard Weaver, a conservative theorist. And to understand the justice that this system produces, one need only look at a range of cases from censorship to the incarceration and execution of African-American men.