Do you pledge allegiance to the flag? Did you ever recite the Pledge of Allegiance? Can you recall the words from this mainstay of the school day in America? If so, you just may recall the closing words: “with liberty and justice for all.” Even if the closing words of the Pledge of Allegiance sometimes get lost in the fog, doubtlessly you recall the name of the Cabinet Department devoted to myriad issues related to law enforcement. The Department of Justice. Even those who men and women who upon the bench doling out the ultimate word on American law are referred to not as judges, but Justices. Which brings us the words spoken on national television immediately following the acquittal of accused filicide, Casey Anthony, as well as a leading member of the team that convinced 12 people that O.J. Simpson was not guilty of murder: “Well, if you want justice, don’t look to the criminal law system. That’s not its job .”
Justice is not the job of the criminal law system in America.
Which quite naturally begs the question: just what is the job of the criminal system in America? Personal experience indicates that Mr. Dershowitz might just possibly believe that job is to confuse gullible jurors. Regardless of his personal conviction on the issue, Alan Dershowitz might just want to visit a little web site you can find here: www.justice.gov. Justice.gov is not some tricky portal to a naughty web site; it is the official web site of a little agency that is known, as previously indicated and without any apparent sense of its own utterly misapprehended consideration of the central point of its existence, as the U.S. Dept. of Justice.
Isn’t it funny how the only educated people without an overarching axe to grind who go around claiming that the U.S. court system is not about justice are those who find themselves in the uncomfortable position of trying to explain why someone who seems to the outside world to be guilty well beyond a shadow of doubt is acquitted by a jury. You have to wonder what sort of universe a man like Alan Dershowitz lives in. You also wonder how he sleeps at night having put a vicious killer ( allegedly, wink-wink ) like O.J. Simpson back onto the street where, as might be expected, he committed another violent crime that an entirely different jury didn’t dismiss as just another case of the Man keeping a rich and famous person down. (Because rich and famous criminals are always getting unfairly severe punishment at the hands of the Justice– er , I mean non-justice–system in American.)
Here are some other fascinating bits of Americana with which Alan Dershowitz appears to be unfamiliar:
“The most sacred of the duties of a government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” –Thomas Jefferson: Note in Destutt de Tracy, “Political Economy,” 1816. ME 14:465.
“Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political, I deem [one of] the essential principles of our Government, and consequently [one of] those which ought to shape its administration.” –Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:321.
We call the head of the Executive Branch of the United States government the President of the United States, but I can’t seem to recall what title is given to the head of the Judicial Branch of the United States government. Let’s see…what is it…oh yeah, that’s right, t he Chief Justice of the United States. Hey, wait a minute, the three branches of government in the United States are the Executive, Legislative, and, get ready for it, the Judicial. A word deriving from the same root as justice!
So let’s see if we have this right. The legal system in America is referred to by terms referencing justice and the Cabinet Department overseeing that system is called the Justice Department. Every single day of the school year millions of Americans are pledge their allegiance to America in part because they are indoctrinated into believing that the legal system here ensures justice for everyone. All signs point to the court system in America not just being about finding justice, but as being predicated only upon finding justice. So, if the American court system isn’t about justice, then what exactly it is about? Fortunately, Mr. Dershowitz has enlightened us with his brilliant mind so we don’t even need to wonder anymore.
Alan Dershowitz : “Its [the court system in America] job is not to produce a just result. Its job is to produce a legally correct result.”
Okay, then, now we know what the court system in America is actually about. So with this enlighten ment upon us, let’s set to work. We shall rename the Dept. of Justice the Department of Legally Correct Results. And from now on we refer to the top court official in America as the Chief Moderator of Legally Correct Results of the United States. And I can’t wait to hear kids in America reciting the Pledge of Allegiance that has been revised to correct our previously misinformed version.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and a legally correct result for all .”
Sheer poetry.
