I’ve noticed a worrying trend recently in the US (though it’s creping to our side of the Atlantic), in which politicians law enforcement officers and other official spokespersons talk glibly about “bringing criminals to justice.”
This is impossible, and they should be forcibly prevented from saying it.
What they should talk about is “bringing criminals to trial”.
Trial, Not “justice”. The two words do not mean the same thing at all, and they should not be used as if they did.
A trial is a physical entity. Justice is an abstract moral ideal. You can’t “bring people to mercy”.
(In the same vein, you can’t have “a war on terror” any more than you can have “a war on any other extreme emotion”).
“Trial” and “Justice” are not interchangeable – maybe they should be, and maybe in an ideal world they would be, but this is not an ideal world and the former is not an automatically synonym for the latter.
But it implies that every trial will be fair, and that justice will be done in every case.
Oh, really? Then how come we get so many retrials because of miscarriages of justice?
About Me
- Frances will do
- London, England, United Kingdom
- I'm severely visually impaired [so be gentle with my typos!] and have an inoperable injury to my lower spine: apart from that, I'm as miserable as the next person! That's not my real star-sign on my profile, but my dad died on my birthday in 2001, so I now share his
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