THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

JUSTICE IS ***NOT*** FOR SALE | 2000-08-26

Watching rich people get away with things while the poor are executed, the media like to say that, in America, "Justice is for sale." It is very important to understand why this is not true, and what that means.

What is for sale in America is ACQUITTALS, not JUSTICE.

If you spend lots of money on lawyers, as OJ Simpson did, you can get acquitted. But acquittals are not justice.

When the media say that JUSTICE is for sale, they are saying that, if we spent more money on judges and lawyers, we would have more justice.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, you could spend the entire national income of this country on lawyers and judges and have no more JUSTICE. Lawyers learn all those technical legal points and the latest Opinions of courts, but there is not the slightest bit of evidence that all that rigmarole provides any more justice than a simpler procedure would. All the stuff that lawyers learn has nothing to do with justice, and nobody claims that it does.

More lawyers mean more acquittals, not more justice. There is no evidence whatsoever that any of those procedures or legal papers or motions or Opinions provide the slightest bit of JUSTICE.

The bottom line is

1) We don't demand justice, therefore

2) We don't get any.