Quotes About Justice

legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice--that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.

We cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

The excessive use of force creates legitimacy problems, and force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.

You don't manage a social wrong. You should be ending it.

This is called the "principle of legitimacy," and legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice—that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can't treat one group differently from another.

power has an important limitation. It has to be seen as legitimate, or else its use has the opposite of its intended effect.

But what actually matters are the hundreds of small things that the powerful do—or don't do—to establish their legitimacy, like sleeping in the bed of an innocent man you just shot accidentally and scattering your belongings around his house.

Maybe when a woman shows up in a courtroom wearing a niqab, the correct response isn't to dismiss her case—it's to require that everyone wear a veil

And when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.6

If more than two percent of the neighborhood goes to prison, Clear concluded, the effect on crime starts to reverse.

when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash.

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." — Matthew 25:29

Human Rights Watch: "Nationwide, the rate of drug admissions to state prison for black men is thirteen times greater than the rate for white men. In ten states black men are sent to state prison on drug charges at rates that are 26 to 57 times greater than those of white men in the same state. In Illinois, for example, the state with the highest rate of black male drug offender admissions to prison, a black man is 57 times more likely to be sent to prison on drug charges than a white man.

force without legitimacy leads to defiance, not submission.

What they did is not "right," just as it is not "right" to send children up against police dogs. But we need to remember that our definition of what is right is, as often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others.

We feel obliged to tell you that there are among us a certain number of Jews. But, we make no distinction between Jews and non-Jews. It is contrary to the Gospel teaching. If our comrades, whose only fault is to be born in another religion, received the order to let themselves be deported, or even examined, they would disobey the order received, and we would try to hide them as best we could. We have Jews. You're not getting them.

we cling to the idea that success is a simple function of individual merit and that the world in which we all grow up and the rules we choose to write as a society don't matter at all.

that power has an important limitation. It has to be seen as legitimate, or else its use has the opposite of its intended effect.

Wealthy people get special insider deals, and if you and I lived in a country where the tax system was so blatantly illegitimate—where nothing seemed fair, and where our voices weren't heard, and where the rules changed from one day to the next—we wouldn't pay our taxes either.

For unto everyone that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance. But from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

If we were more thoughtful as a society, if we were willing to engage in some soul searching about how we approach and make sense of strangers Sandra Bland would not have ended up dead in a Texas jail cell.

This is the first of the ideas to keep in mind when considering the death of Sandra Bland. We think we want our guardians to be alert to every suspicion. We blame them when they default to truth. When we try to send people like Graham Spanier to jail, we send a message to all of those in positions of authority about the way we want them to make sense of strangers—without stopping to consider the consequences of sending that message.

to assess the character of a stranger. And the criminal justice system assumes, as Chamberlain did, that those kinds of difficult decisions are better made when the judge and the judged meet each other first.

You can't hate the roots of a tree and not hate the tree.