Quotes About Justice

Nothing raises the national temperature more than a VACANCY sign hanging from the colonnaded front of the Supreme Court.

No one should fear to undertake any task in the name of our Saviour, if it is just and if the intention is purely for His holy service.

True insight comes from standing in solidarity with victims.

The best vantage point for clarifying one's moral responsibility when harm has occurred is in the dirt and blood alongside the wounded party, not at the safe distance of a detached jurist debating the details of the relevant legislation.

But the distinctive concern of biblical justice is not to punish sinners, but to restore shalom by clarifying and dealing with the damage caused by wrongdoing. Punishment was a tool for helping to achieve this.

Justice flows from God's own being and designates the way God intends the world to be. But things have fallen into disorder; the shalom of creation has been ruptured. God responds by seeking to restore the world to the way it ought to be.

When Jesus concludes the parable by asking the lawyer, "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the one who fell among robbers?" (v. 36), he is indicating that the question, "Who is my neighbor?" is really a victim's question, which can only be answered from a victim's point of view.

Nothing is said about the need to catch and punish the offenders (most muggers never get caught anyway); all emphasis is placed on the need to restore and heal the victim.

We are called to play the Good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway.

Biblical hope - that confident expectation of a better future - is rooted in the knowledge of God's justice and faithfulness. Because God is the source and champion of justice, and because God is utterly reliable, there is always hope for positive change.

No political system or economic order can ever be regarded as the full, or even as an adequate, realization of justice. All human social structures and centers of power are denied ultimate significance. Every human attempt to create justice, when measured against the perfect justice of God's coming kingdom, is inescapably partial and limited.

Justice is not a static ideal; it is not the maintenance of some steady state in society. The accent in biblical justice falls on positive action, the exercising of power to resist the oppressor and set the oppressed free. This is why Amos pictures justice as a thundering river that than as in the Western tradition, a neatly balanced set of scales [Amos 5:21-24].

Contrary to what many people think today, punishment as such is not what satisfies the demands of justice. Justice is satisfied by repentance, restoration, and renewal. Punishment serves as a mechanism for helping to promote such restoration.

The law has no compassion. And justice is administered without compassion.

The events of the day inspired me to become a lawyer.

As soon as men decide that all means are permitted to fight an evil, then their good becomes indistinguishable from the evil that they set out to destroy.

Law describes the way things would work if men were angels.

Every American deserves to live in freedom, to have his or her privacy respected and a chance to go as far as their ability and effort will take them - regardless of race, gender, ethnicity or economic circumstances.

That was the grand bargain with evil. No wrong ever got righted, any more than a hangman's rope was ever unknotted and used as a child's swing.

A judge without impartiality is like a priest without faith. Good faith in the judicial system is underscored by a belief in impartiality.

Each age recreates its own justice system and selects the judges and other personnel to run it. And in each age, the status, reputation, and standing of the judges is reinvented to suite the purposes of the day.

A people on fire has no time to fan other people's flames.

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.

Den hatte der Major jetzt freilich ganz vergessen, er berief sich nicht auf ihn, er nannte nicht innerlich seinen Namen, er zitierte den René nicht, wie wir den Anton Kuh in einer Fußnote. Würden alle Urheber-Rechts-Verletzungen im Leben ebenso verfolgt wie in der Literatur, der Welt gesamtes Gerichtswesen reichte nicht aus, um die Prozesse abzuwickeln, die ständig reziproken Anleihe-Verhältnisse auf dem Markt unserer Vorstellungen zu klären.