It has been about 15 years since I last saw my children. A prolonged separation (undertaken for what I perceived to be the greater good) led the court to conclude that too much water had flowed under the bridge and later, by the time they were re-located after a move overseas, age meant the legal options were limited to almost nil.
I tell you this not to garner either sympathy or pity for, to my mind, such would be abject, but to give myself some standing for what follows and to ward off potential accusations of heartlessness. For while I feel the wrong outcome was reached, I do not feel myself to be the victim of any injustice. There was an established process, it was followed (as far as I can tell) fairly and a decision reached. That is the alpha and omega of justice, not the provision of a desired answer.
If my children are never far from my thoughts, my divorce generally is, sufficiently distant in time that it seems like a faintly comical episode experienced by someone else. But every so often, it bubbles back into my mind.
It did so the other day when I watched Katie Amess’ press conference following the refusal of the Home Secretary to hold an inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of her father, the late MP for Southend. Ms Amess has, undoubtedly, suffered an injustice in the unnatural demise of her parent, and she has received justice for that – the perpetrator has been tried and is behind bars. But has she suffered any further injustice?
I don’t think so. As she pointed out, her father’s murder denied her the wedding they had planned but no-one can reasonably be said to have a right to any particular future experience. The world is a tangled skein of event and consequence, forever in flux. There can be no right (not least because it would be unenforceable) that the branching futures we face must branch to a single, preferred destination. We can (and we should) sympathise with Ms Amess – she was obviously deeply distressed. But while we can (and should) admit that the events of her life have been tragic, we should also refuse to accept that all of them have been unjust.
Similarly, there is no obvious injustice in the refusal of an inquiry. It may be unwise – there might be more that can be learned about the background to the event – but there is no absolute right to an inquiry into a murder, few result in further investigation after the trial. As far as we can tell, the Home Secretary has considered the issue carefully and decided it is not a good use of public resources. She may be right, she may be wrong, but she has done what justice requires, and no amount of distress changes that fact. Justice is the process, not the desired outcome.
Ms Amess’ approach is understandable. Those who suffer a tragic loss can feel a duty to the deceased not just to get them justice, but to ensure that their deaths, if needless, were not meaningless. Thus, the profusion of “X’s laws”, often drawn up in the aftermath of a crime to ensure that similar does not happen again. But there are risks here. Not only does legislation drawn up in the aftermath of a tragedy often lack the dispassionate deliberation of good law (Martyn’s law, passed in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing, requires churches to give anti-terrorism training), but what may appear to be justice to some can become injustice to others.
Consider, for example, the case of Valdo Calocane, the families of whose victims are potentially seeking a retrial after suggestions emerged that he had not taken his schizophrenia medication, looking to change his conviction for manslaughter to one of murder. Whether he took his drugs or not, on the fateful day, he was clearly not in his right mind. We can empathise with the families feeling that anything less than the severest verdict undervalues their loss and the suffering of their relatives, but given our legal history, is it right to call someone not in control of his faculties (who has already lost his liberty, probably permanently) a murderer?
This is not to say that the system is perfect. Injustice is done more frequently than we would like. But it is not done so frequently that we should assume it as our base case. For every cover-up along the lines of Hillsborough (where the police put a finger on the scale) or the Post Office (where known vulnerabilities in the system were ignored), there are more cases where a neutral referee has considered to the best of their ability the same facts as those involved and come to a different conclusion.
“Before you set out for revenge, first dig two graves” goes the old Chinese saying, and there is a similar risk for those who feel they have been denied justice. So overwhelming can the pursuit become that it dwarfs everything else, coming to provide a monopoly of meaning in individuals’ lives if they perceive that failure to achieve the justice they desire reflects a failure to love the departed enough.
But if we have duties to our nearest and dearest, one of them is to live our lives the best we can, to become the best people we can. The belief in injustice where there may be none mitigates against this. For a start, it is a force multiplier for victimhood. Not only has one suffered the injury, but the injustice as well. One can feel doubly cursed.
Furthermore, if righting a perceived wrong becomes one’s entire raison d’etre, it can blind one to all the other areas in which one can still flourish. Justice being done though the heavens fall can lead them to fall on the pursuer every bit as much as the perpetrator. For while loss can seem overwhelming, there is never a vacuum of experience, no end of passions one can explore, or events in which one can delight. Perhaps not those one expected, but no less real for that.
My own travails led to a lengthy if ultimately temporary flirtation with Stoicism. And if I no longer adhere to the philosophy, some sticks with me. So let us close with some Marcus Aurelius (as Emperor, more a dispenser of justice than a victim of it), “Why see more misfortune in the event than good fortune in your ability to deal with it?”
Stewart Slater works in Finance. He invites you to join him at his website.
This piece was first published in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.
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A good piece. Life is a farce containing both joy and tragedy, ending for most in ignominious death, soon – so very soon – to be forgotten. That said, who does not thrill to the story of Wyatt Earp pursuing the murderers of his brother? Who does not have some sympathy for Clytemnestra murdering her husband for killing their daughter? Life is too short to hold back. Who cares if you are wrong? Who is ever right? So what if your revenge is empty? So is everything else
Very measured article, putting perspective into the current tendency to demand enquiries because the facts, trials and justice delivered don’t meet the expectations of those affected – who seem to believe ‘closure’ requires further raking over of everything in the hope of finding something new. The need for enquiries surely only exists where there are strong suggestions of a cover up (and increasingly where the sentence imposed is questionable for its leniency or severity).
I would like to know what that building is that heads this article ? It doesn’t appear to have any direct relationship with justice. Unless the figures represent characters that have a relationship.
I suspect it’s AI generated, although it does look very much like a building in Brussels that stands out as OTT, even by Mussolini’s standards, and presumably was built on Belgian Congo receipts.