Legal Trickery # Our public courts have always been a cockpit driven by a trial by a combat mindset of conflict that is undermining the way decisions are made, the way we see the world and the way we relate to each other. It started out as trial by physical combat where you could hire a knight to fight for you and slowly evolved to a verbal stouch where theatrical rhetoric of clever barristers win the day while everyone else can lose.
The Law # Anything that is unjust, cannot be considered lawful. There are good laws and bad ones. The determining factor is whether they enhance society or diminish it. Primal, instinctive reactions, desire mere revenge, but a civilised reflective response tends to avenge - to right wrongs - to set things right. Primitive perceptions of Justice was that it was all at the mercy of the gods and man needed to propitiate the gods with sacrifice and abstemious behaviour.
Oresteia # In 458 B.C., Aeschylus produced the Oresteia, the greatest tragic drama in human history. It is a window into the evolution of Athenian justice, the principles underlying its law, and the threats to justice inherent in human passions. The play is a transcendental plea. For democratic justice. The third part of the trilogy its final act portrays a courtroom trial in which the mental state of the defendant is central with all the elements of what today we call legal insanity.
Biblical Law and Justice # Old Testament Justice The Bible: is perhaps one of the most consequential of books in Western Civilisation, it forms the basis of most of our values. It can of course be used to justify all manner of doings, both good and evil. It does provide us a foundation of virtuous metaphysical principles; tolerance, understanding, equity, altruism and acceptance. “replenish the earth and subdue it”. Genesis 1:28 This can be used to used by both environmentalists and exploitive developers.
Helen Garner, Literature and Justice # Love’s progress is seldom smooth. But everyone knows that love is brutal. A thousand songs tell the story. Love tears right through to the centre of us, into our secret self, and lays it wide open. Surely Sigmund Freud was right when he said, “We are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.” ABOUT THE AUTHOR - HELEN GARNER Helen Garner is an award-winning novelist, short-story writer, screenwriter and journalist.
Jewish persecution # Jewish intellectuals like Hannah Arendt, Franz Kafka, Albert Einstein and many others have made outstanding contributions to the world’s progress. Religions tend to arouse deep passions, strong convictions and assumptions of righteousness that justify entitlements of power to impose their views on others. Most conquer territory by a combination of coercion and conversion forcing the indigenous inhabitants, as part of their hegemony, to adhere to their teachings and practices - Catholics in South America, Protestants in North America and Africa, Muslims in North Africa and in the Balkans, later India and Afghanistan and the Hindus vied the Buddhists for hegemony in the Orient.
Biblical Law and Justice # Old Testament Justice # The Bible: is perhaps the most consequential of books in Western Civilisation, it forms the basis of most of our values. It can of course be used to justify all manner of doings, both good and evil. It does provide us a foundation of virtuous metaphysical principles; tolerance, understanding, equity, altruism and acceptance. “replenish the earth and subdue it”. Genesis 1:28 This can be used to used by both environmentalists and exploitive developers.
Euripides’ Revenger’s Tragedy, # Euripides 480 - 406 BCE # “No man on earth is truly free, All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform.” “Euripides was the third tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles. More of his plays (18) have survived intact than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together. (7 each) The most technically innovative and iconoclastic of the three great tragedians, Euripides, considered by Aristotle to be the “most tragic” playwright, was famous above all for his penchant for depicting heroines struggling to break out of the roles assigned to them by society.
Social Justice Films # The modern moral guardrails are presented by the visual media today. Due to the dramatic fall in church attendance, people get their ethical guidance through social media. Movies have the power to make us laugh, cry and feel a large range of emotions. While there have been numerous good films that have contributed to the betterment of society, there have been a few bad apples in the lot as well.
Solon, The Just # A contemporary of Homer and Hesiod - circa 700 BCE. Solon, is generally credited with the introduction of Justice and Democracy to Athens. His esteemed authority has stood the test of time. Both Plato and Aristotle bow to his acknowledged authority in law. Juvenal simply refers to him as “eloquent Solon, the Just”. Solon appears in all lists of wise men of antiquity. Responding to the early 6th-century Athenian conflict between the landed aristocracy and peasantry, Solon was called upon to mediate the inequities that denied government participation even to the intermediate classes of craftsmen, merchants, and farmers.
Sophocles - Antigone # Antigone, in Greek legend, the daughter born of the unwittingly incestuous union of Oedipus and his mother, Jocasta. After her father blinded himself upon discovering that Jocasta was his mother and that, also unwittingly, he had slain his father, Antigone and her sister Ismene served as Oedipus’ guides, following him from Thebes into exile until his death near Athens. Following Oedipus’ exile, his sons agreed to share the rule of Thebes, alternating in rule every year.
Australia’s Court System # The entire Administration of Justice is the responsibility of the Attorney-General and overseen by Parliament. It comprises all the agencies to provide the citizens the protection and security of the laws passed by our elected representatives, from security guards, prison guards, police, prosecutors, attorneys to judges. Any failure at any level is the responsibility of the government of the day. Prison guards, police or lawyers who abuse their privilege need to be curbed with deterring consequences.
Western democracies are addicted to Jails # Jails don’t male better citizens; they produce better criminals. Governments outsource most of their responsibilities looking for the most simplistic solutions to complex problems, pandering to the lowest of basic instincts instead of historically evidence based enlightened practices. This is a compilation of cherry-picked comments on recent disturbing trends in attempting to restore order from chaos. Enlightened leaders, like Egyptian pharaohs, Hammurabi, Solon, Plato, Shakespeare realised that prosperous, harmonious and cohesive societies emerge from equity and justice.