Justice – Week 3
Where I reflect on the connotations of fairness - from aesthetics to blurry lines.
What is Justice? On this third round of engagement, I tapped into old habits, and started with a dictionary search. ‘Treating people fairly’ was a recurring first line. What is fair treatment then? The same source put it as ‘treating people with justice’. Faced with a circular definition, I took alternative semantic paths, meditating on secondary meanings.
First loop. Justice is fair, i.e., conventionally pretty. A sense of harmony pervades the concept. The just action is well-proportioned, and pleasant to behold, if a little beige. Justice, then, may fall into the realm of good design. It’s a balancing mechanism, so that the various parts of a society stay proportionate.
Provocation. Judges are best compared with designers, looking for the core problem to solve, and adapting form to function. Justice requires imagination, proposing a set of actions that, once performed, will return a system to balance. From the tool-box that is the legal code, they create a form that will accomplish a restorative function.
Story. Over the past weeks, a friend’s friend has been dealing with HR. Another staff had been bullying them. HR took the claim seriously, but kept asking ‘what do you want from the process’? Friend’s friend had no clear answer. Digging down, their fantasy might have been that the bully would just disappear. The matter is still unresolved. None on the people involved had the creative imagination to find a form allowing the situation to resolve.
Reflection. Many parts of the legal system are agonistic. Attorneys and barristers enter the court to win. Solicitors defend their clients through contracts and negotiations. There is a martial quality to those professions. Not so judges. They’re not in it to win, but to make a thing of beauty. Like all creators, they must accept the constraints of their medium – in their case, a strict inherited set of rules – but within those boundaries, their freedom is complete.
Meditation. I often ponder on the nexus of power and freedom. Over plates of daal and Lahori chicken, I had a long animated conversation with a friend on the topic. Soon, we came to realise that each of us has a default understanding of freedom, as freedom-from or freedom-to: reject the yoke or arbitrary rules and other power-grabbing efforts vs concern for the commons that enable creative action. I also realise how biased I am in favour of the second. I hear a lot of calls to raise executive freedom – reduce rules and red tape, so decisions can be made faster and action taken. Not to mention Musk and MAGA. Meanwhile, I fear for the fraying fabric of the world. Roads made unsafe by SUVs, a late summer heatwave that robs me of sleep, eroding norms of common decency, and the general loss of shared reality. Against this background, I come to see justice as the cornerstone of freedom-to.
In the Goddess, fairness is a mark of lasting fertility.
**
Interlude: Who should be responsible for the side-effects of degrading circumstances?
I read the manuscript of a friend’s new novel. It’s an extraordinary book. We were due to catch up after a second reading. I was looking forward to it. But there was a heatwave. A week of successive hot nights, no AC, I slept badly, and had to manage lower brainpower. He asks for a time. I push back to later. Delayed feedback for him, delayed gratitude boost for me. In the face of global turmoil, this is such a minor disruption. And yet, beyond headlines and shocking news, I like to stop on those myriads of micro-decisions, no doubt echoing across Melbourne and Australia, eroding our diligence and mutual predictability. Heatwaves like this are no major bushfires. Nor is there one entity to blame for it. It’s climate change overlaying Melbourne weather, affecting us in small ways. Yet it compounds, like inflation, to subtly degrade our lives. More uncertainty, more arbitrations to make. Of course, I could optimise my professional life for income, and book air-conditioned hotel room on hot nights, but is that the just solution?
Through the week, I read about SUVs making our roads more dangerous, and feel a tinge of anger. Kill a cyclist with a gun, and you lose your freedom. Kill them with a car, and you might lose your licence. Yet again, I understand the urge to join the game. If everyone opted for smaller cars made of carbon fibre, we would increase safety for bikes and pedestriants, and save enormous amounts on gas, not to mention climate impact. E-bikes would do that even more. But those options reduce collective risk at the expense of individual drivers, and their children in the backseat. So we go the opposite way, buying a bigger car to protect ourselves from bigger cars – and resist attempts to legislate against them. People should have the right to choose their vehicle, but is that the just solution?
Or should justice act as an antidote against arms races and other tragedies of the commons?
**
Second loop. Justice is approximate, and limited in its ambition. It aims for ‘fairly’ good, neither excellent nor perfect. More: when in doubt, it would rather fall short of the mark. ‘Just’ a latte carries overtones of restraint. Let’s not order the chocolate muffin and hazelnut syrup shot. Justice tempers our demands, and is happy to fudge things if needed.
Provocation. All action needs a grip on the world. The various elements of reality must be somehow connected, so that pulling on one will bring others closer. Unless things are webbed in some form, we can’t achieve anything. Justice is the glue that holds a shared reality together. By seeking facts, applying rules, and balancing systems, it keeps our world together. In doing that, it does not aim for sharp and clear delineations, but viscosity.
Story. As part of a commitment to get out of the house more, I joined a workshop on creative bureaucracy. Public servants and designer types getting together around pictures and Lego blocks. Beside memories of a three-year gig in Primary Industries, that event reminded me that the public service is both one and many. As a whole, it exists to support the government, the state and the community. It’s also multiple branches and agencies, each with their teams and leaders fighting for funding and attention. Not only that, but the whole structure evolves, affecting people and teams as functions merge and split along with the latest politics and trends. Back then, I was furious when my job ended after three years. My performance was excellent, but a new government came in with budget cuts, and there would be no renewal of any fixed-term contracts. Looking back, I can see fairness in that decision. A large body whose primary task is maintaining public trust should not make exceptions in the name of work well done, but accept a measure of fudging at the edges. For a structure that must evolve, it’s fair to value tenure over performance. And I missed a cultural cue. Had I been more gracious, or strategic, I could have remained in the gel-like mush of contractors and consultants coating that enormous shape-shifting structure.
Reflection. When talking about DEI, the wise like to frame it as a pathway to better decision making. Diversity brings richer perspectives and greater resilience. That is true – but there is a different aspect of the question. Not every decision should be made on the basis of optimising for success and efficiency. Systems also need resilience and redundancy. There is an executive advantage to by-passing diversity. A team united by shared experiences and cultural references will work more smoothly. Less effort is needed to translate across value systems or modes of communication, let alone dealing with physiological differences and layers of trauma. And if you can bring together only the more privileged people – those who received more attention from parents and educators, and spent their life with relatable leadership role models – why wouldn’t you? Except, that’s free-riding on the system. DEI might have a cost for each organisation or group that embraces it. For the broader collective, however, benefits are clear. DEI meshes the world together, increasing coherence and stability.
Meditation. Inclusion demands lubrication. Holding people with different worldviews as part of the same structure – whether team, neighbourhood, or society – requires some sort of oil to reduce friction, as differently shaped individuals and communities rub together. This may be the role of justice, not to resolve all conflicts in a grand final judgement, but ease the pain of living together. Make otherwise unbearable situations fairly good, just enough. To do this needs a certain vagueness, a blurring of sharp lines under a soft coating, a sfumatura.
Justice is typically depicted holding a balance and sword, that’s fair. It also wears a Mona Lisa smile.