The word "justice" is on everyone's lips nowadays, and maysignify almost anything. We hear the cry "Peace and Justice!" fromfolk who would destroy existing societies with fire and sword. Otherfolk fancy that perfect justice might readily be obtained by certainfinancial rearrangements -- as if anything in this world ever could beperfected. One thinks of the observation of William James: "So longas one poor cockroach suffers the pangs of unrequited love, this worldwill not be a moral world." At the end of the twentieth century, theliberal mentality demands justice for roaches, too.

All confusion about the meaning of the word "justice"notwithstanding, the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannicacontains no article under the heading "Justice." Yet there is asuccinct article about justices of the peace, of whose number I oncewas one, before the state of Michigan swept away that high office. Mylecture today may be regarded as the attempt of a fool, rushing inwhere the angelic Britannica fears to tread. Yet possibly the natureof justice may be apprehended by a mere quondam justice of the peace: for the fundamental purpose of law is to keep the peace. "Justice isthe ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nationstogether," said Daniel Webster at the funeral of Justice Joseph Story,in 1845; and so say I today.

I propose in this series of four lectures to discuss first thesignification of this word "justice"; in my second lecture, to examinenatural law; in my third, to deal with criminal justice; in myconcluding lecture, to quarrel with certain notions of justice thathave been much puffed up during recent years. In the twenty-firstcentury of the Christian era, will justice signify anything more thanthe state's rigorous enforcement of its edicts? Such questions I hopeto raise in your minds.

Nowadays, near the close of the twentieth century, moral andpolitical disorders bring grave confusion about the meanings of oldwords. As T. S. Eliot wrote in "Burnt Norton" -- Words strain,

Crack and sometimes break, under the burden, Under the tension, slip, slide, perish, Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place, Will not stay still. Shrieking voices Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering, Always assail them.

Conspicuous among such venerable words, in our era often abusedand misrepresented, is this necessary word justice. Today I amattempting to purify the dialect of the tribe -- to borrow anotherphrase from my old friend Eliot, who endeavored lifelong to rescuewords from the clutch of the vulgarizer or of the ideologue.

Permit me first to offer preliminary descriptions or definitionsof this word justice. Jeremy Taylor, in the middle of the seventeenthcentury, wrote that there exist two kinds of justice. The one iscommutative justice, or reciprocal justice, expressed in Scripturethus: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, even so do tothem." In Taylor's words, "This is the measure... of that justicewhich supposes exchange of things profitable for things profitable,that as I supply your need, you may supply mine; as I do a benefit toyou, I may receive one by you.... "

The other kind is distributive justice, expressed in this passagefrom Romans: "Render to all their dues; tribute to whom tribute isdue, custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honor to whom honor;owe no man anything but to love one another." Upon this Taylorcomments, "This justice is distinguished from the first, because theobligation depends not upon contract or express bargain, but passesupon us by some command of God, or of our superior, by nature or bygrace, by piety or religion, by trust or by office, according to thatcommandment, 'As every man hath received the gift, so let him ministerthe same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace ofGod.'"

But perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, I proceed too fast; I shallhave more to say a little later about the Christian concept ofjustice. Just now a little about the classical idea of justice. Theclassical definition, which comes to us through Plato, Aristotle,Saint Ambrose, and Saint Augustine of Hippo, is expressed in a singlephrase: suum cuique, or "to each his own." As this is put inJustinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, "Justice is a habit whereby a manrenders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will." Aristotle instructs us that the prevalence of injustice makes clearthe meaning of justice. Also Aristotle remarks that it is unjust totreat unequal things equally -- a principle to which I shall return inmy later lectures. Of the virtue called justice, Saint Augustinedeclares, "Justice is that ordering of the soul by virtue of which itcomes to pass that we are no man's servant, but servants of Godalone."

Upon such ancient postulates, classical or Christian, rests ourwhole elaborate edifice of law here in these United States -- eventhough few Americans know anything about the science of jurisprudence. For public order is founded upon moral order, and moral order arisesfrom religion -- a point upon which I mean to touch later in this talkof mine. If these venerable postulates are flouted or denied -- asthey have been denied by the Marxists in the present century, and weredenied by sophists in Plato's time -- then arbitrary power thrustsjustice aside, and "they shall take who have the power, and they shallkeep who can."

All these brief definitions require explanation. But for themoment I pass on to the common understanding, the common sense, of themeaning of justice. All of us here present, I suppose, entertain somenotion of what justice signifies. From what source do we obtain sucha concept? Why, very commonly, from observation of a just man or ajust woman. We begin by admiring someone -- he may be some famousjudge, or he may be an obscure neighbor -- who accords to every personhe encounters that person's due. Just men, in short, establish thenorm of justice. When I began to write my book The Conservative Mind,I discovered that the abstraction "conservatism" amounts to a generalterm descriptive of the beliefs and actions of certain eminent men andwomen whom we call "conservative" because they have endeavored toprotect and nurture the Permanent Things in human existence. So it iswith justice: in large part, we learn the meaning of justice byacquaintance with just persons.

In the ancient world, the most just of men was Solon, Athens'lawgiver, poet, and hero. As Solon wrote of his reform of theAthenian constitution --

Such power I gave the people as might do, Abridged not what they had, nor lavished new; Those that were great in wealth and high in place My counsel likewise kept from all disgrace. Before them both I kept my shield of might, And let not either touch the other's right.

To each class, that is, Solon gave its due, and so preserved thepeace: that is social justice.

But we need not turn to the pages of Plutarch to discover justmen: they are not an extinct species, though perhaps an endangeredone. I think of my grandfather, Frank Pierce, a bank-manager inPlymouth, twenty miles north of Detroit. He was the leading man ofLower Town (now called Old Town), near the railroad yards -- notbecause he was either rich or charismatic, but because he was just. Justice, of course, is one of the cardinal virtues; and like the othervirtues, justice is said to be its own reward -- which is well, thevirtue of justice seldom earning material rewards. When a member ofthe town council, my grandfather refused to supply water free ofcharge to the town's principal industrial plant, on the grounds thatif the factory couldn't pay water bills, who could? For that offense,the firm's president swore he would have Pierce discharged by thebank; but the bank's president happening also to be a just man, mygrandfather's livelihood was not swept away. My grandfather's counselwas sought by everyone in the Lower Town who needed advice; and hiskindliness even moved him, on occasion, to extend interest-freepersonal loans, from his own pocket, to young married couples whocould not meet the requirements for loans from the bank. (His salarywas two hundred dollars a month.) I do not mean that he wasindiscriminately sentimental; not at all. On the several occasionswhen robbers invaded his branch bank, he successfully repelled them,at great risk: for the just man defends vigorously whatever isentrusted to his charge, and sets his face against the lawless. Hewas just to children, too: taking me on long walks, during which wetalked of everything under the sun, but rapping sharply on the dining-room table when I waxed impudent at meals -- I immediately abashed andrepentant. By watching this kindly paterfamilias, and listening towhat he said, I came to apprehend justice quite early. For FrankPierce gave every man his due, without fear or favor.

In every society, from the most primitive to the most decadent,there are found some persons, like my grandfather, whom everyonerecognizes as just. (Even bank-robbers and kidnappers -- for he waskidnapped once by desperados -- remarked that Frank Pierce was a justman.) From what source do such just men and women derive their habitsor principles of justice?

Are they familiar with jurisprudential theories? Only rarely: even most judges on the bench nowadays are not well grounded in thephilosophy of law. My grandfather, who possessed a substantiallibrary -- perhaps the only library in Plymouth's Lower Town -- readhistory, but not philosophy or law.

Are their concepts of justice learnt in church? Not so,ordinarily. My grandfather never attended church: he came from afamily that began as Pilgrims to Massachusetts and gradually movedthrough all the American stages of the dissidence of dissent. Henever read the Bible at home. He inherited Christian morals, but notChristian faith in the transcendent.

Do they create for themselves a rough-and-ready utilitarianscheme for the administering of justice, founded principally upontheir private experience of the human condition? Only infrequently, Ithink; for most of them would subscribe to the maxim of BenjaminFranklin, "Experience is a hard master, but fools will have no other."

Well, then, how do just men and women apprehend the meaning ofjustice? From tradition, I maintain: from habits and beliefs thathave long persisted within family and within local community. Aristophanes, contradicting Socrates, argued that virtue cannot betaught in schools or by tutors: rather, virtue inheres in oldfamilies. I believe that to be especially true of the cardinal virtuecalled justice. Or this tradition of justice, families andcommunities aside, may become known through private reading, perhaps: anyone who attentively reads the great Victorian novelists, say,cannot well escape absorbing, even if unaware of his acquisition,principles of personal and social justice. More obvious, if more rarenowadays, is the influence of the Greek and Roman classics towardforming an affection for justice. Until well into the nineteenthcentury, Cicero was studied in every decent school; and this passagefrom that statesman-philosopher implanted an apprehension of thenature of justice:

Law is the highest reason, implanted in nature, which commands what ought to be done and forbids the opposite. This reason, when firmly fixed and fully developed in the human mind, is law. And so they believe that law is intelligence, whose natural function it is to command right conduct and forbid wrongdoing. They think that this quality has derived its name in Greek from the idea of granting to every man his own, and in our language I believe it has been named from the idea of choosing.

In short, there exists a literary tradition expounding the ideaof justice. The most recent popular example of this tradition is tobe found in an appendix to C. S. Lewis's little book The Abolitionof Man. Therein Lewis sets side by side, drawn from various cultures,illustrations of the Tao, or Natural Law. He groups these precepts orinjunctions under eight headings: the law of general beneficence; thelaw of special beneficence; duties to parents, elders, ancestors;duties to children and posterity; the law of justice; the law of goodfaith and veracity; the law of mercy; the law of magnanimity. Everywhere in the world, in every age, Lewis is saying, wise men andwomen have perceived the nature of justice and expressed that naturein proverb, maxim, and injunction.

At this point one may inquire, "Are you implying that just menand women find in religious doctrines -- Hebraic, Christian, Moslem,Hindu, Buddhist -- the fountains of justice?" Yes, I am so reasoning. The sanction for justice will be found, ultimately, in religiousinsights as to the human condition, and particularly in Revelation. Our so-called "Western" concepts of justice are derived from theDecalogue, Platonic religious philosophy, and the teachings of theChrist. Somewhere there must exist an authority for beliefs aboutjustice; and the authority of merely human, and therefore fallible,courts of law is insufficient to command popular assent and obedience.

It does not follow, however, that all just men and womenrecognize the ultimate source of ideas about justice, or appeal tothat ultimate source. My grandfather never read a line that SaintThomas Aquinas wrote, though his understanding of justice accordedwell enough with what Aquinas expresses so convincingly in the Summa. To my grandfather the justice-concepts of the Hebraic and classicaland medieval cultures were transmitted through British and Americanmoral, legal, and literary traditions, and through long custom andhabit within his family and within the small-town American communitieswhere he had lived. If pressed as to why he held a certainunderstanding of the word "justice" -- indeed, he once compulsorilyengaged in a dialogue on that subject with a rather Nietzscheandesperado intent on persuading my grandfather to open his bank's safe-- I suppose that Frank Pierce would have replied, "Because good menalways have so believed." Securus judicat orbis terrarum, bonos nonesse qui se dividunt ab orbe terrarum in quacunque parte terrarum,Saint Augustine of Hippo instructs us -- "The calm judgment of theworld is that those men cannot be good who, in any part of the world,cut themselves off from the rest of the world." The word justiceimplies obligation to others, or to an Other.

Thus far I have been describing the concept of justice thatprevailed in the Western world down to the closing years of theeighteenth century. Behind the phrase "to each his own" lay thebeliefs that divine wisdom has conferred upon man a distinct nature;that human nature is constant; that the idea of justice is implantedin the human consciousness by a transcendent power; and that thegeneral rule by which we endeavor to do justice is this: "to eachman, the things that are his own."

What is meant by this famous phrase? To put the matter verysuccinctly, the doctrine of suum cuique affirms that every man,minding his own business, should receive the rewards which areappropriate to his work and duties. It takes for granted a society ofdiversity, with various classes and interests. It implies bothresponsibility toward others and personal freedom. It has been astrong protection for private property, on a small scale or a great;and a reinforcement, for Jews and Christians, of the TenthCommandment. Through the Roman law, this doctrine of justice passedinto the legal codes of the European continent, and even into Englishand American law.

Injustice, according to this doctrine, occurs when men try toundertake things for which they are not fitted, and to claim rewardsto which they are not entitled, and to deny to other men what reallybelongs to those other men. As Plato puts it, in The Republic, quiteas an unjust man is a being whose reason, will, and appetite are atwar one with another, so an unjust society is a state afflicted by"meddlesomeness, and interference, and the rising up of a part of thesoul against the whole, an assertion of unlawful authority, which ismade by a rebellious subject against a true prince, of whom he is thenatural vassal -- what is all this confusion and delusion butinjustice, and intemperance and cowardice and ignorance, and everyform of vice?"

Edmund Burke re-expressed this doctrine of "to each his own"when, in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, he wrote of truenatural rights: "Men have a right to the fruits of their industry,and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a rightto the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment andimprovement of their offspring, to instruction in life, and toconsolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, withouttrespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he hasa right to all which society, with all its combinations of skill andforce, can do in his favor."

And yet in Burke's own time, there arose a very different idea ofjustice, the Utilitarian concept, expounded by Jeremy Bentham. FromBentham's jurisprudence there is descended the powerful present-dayschool of legal thought that we call legal positivism or legalrealism. Positivistic jurisprudence arose in alliance withnineteenth-century nationalism and with scientific mechanism andmaterialism. To the legal positivist or realist, laws are thecommands of human beings merely. There exists, for the positivist, nonecessary connections between law and morals, or between law as it isand law as it ought to be. The positivists' legal system is a closed,logical system without need for referring to social aims, policies, ormoral standards. So-called "moral judgments," to the positivists, are"value judgments" merely: and value judgments cannot be establishedor defended by rational argument. This positivistic understanding ofjustice and law looms large in American courts today.

But in this lecture I do not have time to analyze the strengthsand weaknesses of legal positivism. For the present, I do no morethan to point out that nineteenth- and twentieth-century positivismstands in harsh opposition to both the classical and the Christianunderstanding of justice and law. In Catholic universities, at least,some defense still is offered of the Augustinian virtue of justice andthe venerable theory of natural law.

It is my purpose in today's remarks to state the classical andthe Christian concept of justice, as opposed to the positivists'denial of any source for justice except the commands of the sovereignstate. And I will touch glancingly upon the connections amongreligion, justice, and law. (Justice and law are not identical,though they may be closely related: in a good commonwealth, law is anattempt to maintain standards of justice, so far as that may beachieved in a bent world.)

All law is derived from the religious understanding -- that is,all law in the traditional societies of the West; law in totaliststates is another matter entirely. Moses came down from Horeb and didjustice upon criminous Israelites: the prophet as lawgiver. Solonreformed the laws of Draco: the religious poet as lawgiver. When lawis divorced from the moral sanction of religious convictions,presently the law is corrupted by passion, prejudice, privateinterest, and misguided sentimentality.

The church is concerned with the inner order: the order of thesoul. The state is concerned with the outer order: the order of thecommonwealth. Between state and church, nevertheless, relationshipsare ineluctable. Among these relationships is an understanding ofjustice.

Such relationships took shape in the West so early as the fifthcentury of the Christian era. We perceive them in the connectionsbetween Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, and his friend Boniface, Count ofAfrica. In theory, all Christians of the West believe in separationof church and state -- though sometimes that principle has been morehonored in the breach than in the observance.

The church recognizes the necessary end of the state, and sosubmits to the state's laws. Because of human sinfulness, the Fathersof the Church taught, the state is ordained of God. As best it can,the state restrains the three chief forms of lust: cupidity, the lustfor possessions; the libido dominandi, the lust for power; and sexuallust, the abuse of the gift of procreation. When the state isenfeebled, these lusts work the ruin of the person and the republic.

So it is that the church, even in Roman imperial times, hastaught obedience to civil magistrates. Saint Augustine reasoned thatthe good citizen, the believing Christian, should obey every commandof the state, save one: an order to worship false gods and to serveSatan.

Yet church and state have different ends, though both upholdjustice. There runs through the history of Christianity the doctrineof the two swords: the church's sword of faith, the state's sword ofsecular justice.

Knowing that this earthly existence is not the be-all and end-all, the church holds that perfect justice is in the power of Godalone, beyond the confines of time and space. In this world herebelow, we mete out justice as best we may. Sometimes we err in ouradministering of justice; it cannot well be otherwise; we are notperfect or perfectible creatures.

To apprehend the church's stand on mundane justice, it isdesirable to make distinctions between crime and sin. A crime is anact or omission which the law punishes on behalf of the state, whetherbecause that act or omission is expressly forbidden by statute, orbecause it is so injurious to the public as to require punishment onthe ground of public policy.

A sin is a transgression against moral law, with that law'sdivine sanctions. It is God, not the State, who punishes or forgivessins.

Not all sins are crimes. We have it on the authority of SaintPaul that the greatest of the theological virtues is charity. Therefore uncharitableness is a great sin; yet lack of charity is notan offense at law. A man may be all his life snarling, sneering,contemptuous, envious, abominable in his language toward his wife, hischildren, and others to whom he owes obligations -- that is, perfectlyuncharitable; yet he will run no risk of being haled before the bar ofcriminal justice. The uncharitable may be dealt with at the LastJudgment. But mundane courts of law do not touch the sinner unlesshis sins result in violence or fraud or substantial damage to others. The state is unconcerned with sins unless they lead to breaches of thepeace, or menace the social order. This separation of functionaccords with the doctrine of the two swords.

Quite as the state -- that is, the constitutional state -- doesnot lay down religious dogmata in recent times, so the church does notdecree the laws of mundane justice, as expressed through courts oflaw. When the church has endeavored to impose its doctrines throughthe operation of the state's criminal law, the church has erred.

I have been speaking of orthodox Christian doctrine, interwovenwith principles of law in America, Britain, and many other countries-- interwoven, that is, until recent decades. But great confusion hasfallen upon us in these years near the end of the century. Increasingly, the state -- aye, the democratic state, too -- separatesitself from the religious understanding of the human condition. And agood many churchmen abandon Christian realism for a sentimentalhumanitarianism.

Let me remind you of the true signification of this word"humanitarianism." Properly defined -- and this is the definition onestill finds in the Oxford English Dictionary -- humanitarianism is thedoctrine that Jesus of Nazareth possessed a human nature merely, notbeing divine; and, by extension, the doctrine that mankind may becomeperfect without divine aid. A humanitarian is a person totallysecularized in his convictions. Yet erroneously many people use"humanitarian" as a term of commendation. "He was a greathumanitarian," they say of Albert Schweitzer. That charitable andheroic man, a professing Christian, would have rejected indignantlythat label.

Now what has this distinction between humanitarianism and charityto do with justice? The point is this: the humanitarian denies theexistence of sin, declaring that what we call "sins" are not moralmatters at all, resulting instead from circumstance, faulty rearing,or social oppression. In the view of the humanitarian, sins -- andcrimes, too -- are the work of "society"; and sinners and criminalsare victims, rather than unjust offenders. Such reasoning is theconsequence of holding that man and society may be perfected throughmere alteration of social conditions, without the intervention ofdivine grace.

The humanitarian frequently proclaims his abhorrence of severepunishments -- perhaps of any punishments. Why? First, because ofhis illusion that no human being possesses the ability to make moralchoices. Second, because of his horror of inflicting pain. He leavesno ultimate justice to God, because he fancies that no God exists. The mere preservation of one's comfortable earthly life is hisobsession, he fancying that man is not made for eternity.

On the other hand, the humanitarian fulminates against those whodisagree with his principles. Thus there occurs the phenomenon called"the humanitarian with the guillotine." (The recent French filmcalled Danton sufficiently illustrates this ferocious love of allhumankind.) As Edmund Burke put it, speaking of the humanitarianJacobins, men who today snatch the worst criminals from the hands ofjustice tomorrow may approve the slaughter of whole classes. Humanitarian apologies in our own time for butchery by communistrevolutionaries sufficiently suggest the persistence of this curiousintolerant humanitarianism. The ideologue need merely proclaim thathis object is universal happiness here below, and he is approveduncritically by the humanitarian. As Solovyev wrote, the banners ofthe Anti-Christ will bear the legend, "Feed men, and then ask them ofvirtue."

In this disordered age, when it seems as if the fountains of thegreat deep had been broken up, our urgent need is to restore a generalunderstanding of the classical and Christian teaching about justice. Without just men and women, egoism and appetite bring down acivilization. Without strong administration of justice by the state,we all become so many Cains, every man's hand against every otherman's. The humanitarian fancies himself zealous for the life impulse;in reality, he would surrender us to the death impulse. Thehumanitarian's visions issue from between the delusory gates of ivory;justice issues from between the gates of horn.

Public instruction that ignores both our classical patrimony andour religious patrimony may fail to rear up just men and women. Positivist jurisprudence that denies any moral order and any religioussanction for justice may end in a general flouting of all law. Weprate of "peace and justice" in a dissolving culture, withoutapprehending tolerably the words we employ. "Shrieking voices/Scolding, mocking, or merely chattering,/ Always assail them." Theseare the voices of the ideologue, the neurotic, and the nihilist,pulling down the old understanding of Justice, "to each his own."

"Justice is a certain rectitude of mind, whereby a man does whathe ought to do in the circumstances confronting him." So ThomasAquinas instructs us. At every college and university, the doctors ofthe schools ought to inquire of themselves, "Do we impart suchrectitude of mind? And if we do not, will there be tolerable privateor public order in the twenty-first century?"

© 1995 Persimmon IT, Inc.