Justice is not blind
Tomorrow – today, already, in some time zones – is Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, celebrated as a holiday in these United States. This coming week is also a big deal for the pro-life movement, with the national March for Life in D.C. on Friday the 22nd, preceded closer to my home by the Washington State March for Life on Tuesday the 19th.
Both these movements, civil rights and right to life, are movements of social justice that base themselves in the idea of human rights. They argue that basic human rights are (or have been) unjustly denied to human beings.
They both are political movements, asking for changes in the letter or in the application of law. They ask that the law conform to the ideal of justice. But they both also acknowledge that justice truly comes to life in the concrete actions of individual people.
Human law and Natural Law
Dr. Martin Luther King repeated a saying of St. Augustine’s on the relationship of legal justice to moral justice: “An unjust law is no law at all.” That is to say, there is a law higher than any laws that human legislators can pronounce.
This higher law usually goes by the name, Natural Law. Natural Law claims to be a universal moral and ethical code, rooted in human nature and common to every culture and creed in the world. Natural Law is the ideal of justice, the standard by which all human laws are measured.
The theory is that, if anyone from any culture gave a question sufficient thought, he or she would arrive at the same basic conclusion about what is right or wrong, what is good and what is evil. Freedom and equality are good, theft and murder are evil, for example. Therefore, these are principles that can be applied across national borders and religious differences.
This is the basis of fundamental human rights. Today, people largely agree that human rights belong to all people, regardless of racial, ethnic, or national background. In the U.S., at least, many people disagree about whether human rights belong to all people, regardless of their stage of biological development.
Legal justice, social justice, personal justice
So, the laws our government makes and enforces should not merely follow the will of the people; the law should reflect the justice of Natural Law, of fundamental and universal human rights.
But justice requires more than human legislation. It is not enough to permit people of different skin color to use the same drinking fountain or to attend the same schools. People are more than just citizens; they are members of a society, a culture, and justice requires that they be treated as fully human in that social context.
Regarding race and ethnicity, this remains a live question in the U.S. Should there be such a thing as “black identity” (or “Irish” or “Latino” or anything else)? If so, how do people of diverse “identities” treat each other with fairness and respect?
Regarding abortion and euthanasia, this question is almost forbidden. The social climate thrusts the entire matter onto the individual, the mother of an “unwanted” child – as if there are no social implications to children being “unwanted.”
Finally, justice appears properly as a virtue in the actions of individuals. Today, in this situation, facing this person or these people, how does one act with fairness and respect? How does one give to each person what is due to him or her?
Justice begins by recognizing the dignity of every human person, based simply on the fact of his or her humanity. And this becomes obvious in our actions in times of crisis: look at the response to the earthquake in Haiti. No one questions whether the Haitians are human enough, or are worthy. It is enough to know that they are human, and that their suffering is beneath human dignity.
Justice is acting to restore that dignity, wherever it is threatened.
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