1Darth VaderLegal Studies 250Fall 2004: Paper 1The Deliverance of Justice,And MoneyAmong the services people expect from the law are the deliverances of justice andrepayment, and as our institutionalized structure of dispute resolution, the legal system is oftenthe best and only means to meet these expectations. Although law has both the capacity and themoral obligation to provide for these expectations, it may not always—or even often—do so.Nevertheless, the legal arena remains the proper forum for the response to these demands forjustice and repayment, and if the law sometimes fails to function correctly, it is the legal systemthat must change to operate more effectively rather than the petitions of those using the system.There are many ways to define justice, and many individuals may disagree as to whethera certain event or outcome is truly just. For example, some may consider justice as being definedonly by a universal morality; the laws of man would be considered irrelevant. This definition,however, does not reflect the expectations of most people when thinking about or participating inthe legal system. For this purpose, justice may more usefully and accurately be defined as theimpartial application of codified law legislated in the constitutionally defined manner by theaccepted authorities and following procedures similarly laid out by pre-existing law. Deliveringthis is within the capacity of law as a system.Repayment is outwardly less complex than justice and can be defined simply as thefurnishing of a debt that is owed. In the legal sense, to say that law can provide repayment means2that the legal system can oblige an offending party to provide funds or assets which a victimizedparty deserves, whether that property or equivalent property was stolen or damaged, or incompensation for other injuries. Also, the debt repaid can be non-tangible, such as the mereplacement of blame in an official setting. As with justice, the deliverance of this type ofrepayment is expected of the law by many and is within law’s capacity. Capacity, as defined inrelation to the reified concept of a legal system, is the ability of legality to generate legal actionand produce results.1In the 1979 case Brown v. Texas, a man who refused to identify himself to the policeeventually had his conviction—which was for a violation of a Texas statute requiringidentification to be shown upon lawful request—overturned on the grounds that the applicationof the statute violated the 4th Amendment of the federal Constitution.2 Justice is shown to bewithin law’s capacity by this example because the proper courts conducted the trial process withthe correct procedures in place, and the proceedings involved the application of various writtenstatutes, the outcome of which caused a legal action to be taken. In this case, the conclusion wasa change in the acceptable application of a law and presumably the cancellation of theappellants’ sentences.One might point to an earlier, superficially opposite U.S. Supreme Court decisioninvolving similar issues as an example of the Judicial Branch’s failure to provide justice, namelyTerry v. State of Ohio, in which suspects were searched for behaving suspiciously.3 However, theappellants in this case received the same recognition of their rights to due process as the 1 Patricia Ewick, Susan S. Silbey, The Common Place of Law (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998),91.2 “Brown v. Texas, 99 S.Ct. 2637 (1979)” in Before the Law, ed. John J. Bonsignore, Ethan Katsh, et al (Boston: TheHoughton Mifflin Company, 2002), 279-281.3 “Terry v. State of Ohio 392 U.S. 1 (1968)” in Before the Law, ed. John J. Bonsignore, Ethan Katsh, et al (Boston:The Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 273-2783appellants in Brown v. Texas later would. In addition, the details of the case differed in that thepolice officer that conducted the searches had specific expertise, enabling him to more logicallyjustify the searches.4There are many notable instances and trends in which the courts have failed to providejustice, but rather than prove that justice is outside the realm of law’s capacity, theseexamples—often tragic—serve to reinforce the idea that justice is expected from law, and therecan be disastrous consequences when it is not delivered. For example, both law enforcement andthe courts failed the victims of the Greensboro Massacre in 1979, when local police and FBIofficials allowed the Ku Klux Klan and Nazis to attack a peaceful demonstration and kill fiveunarmed people on videotape without receiving any criminal convictions (a civil conviction wasprocured, however).5 This event is outrageous both because of the horrific acts of the killers andbecause justice failed to be provided so blatantly. People do expect and should expect justicefrom the law.Another possible argument against law providing justice may be found in the 1987 U.S.Supreme Court case McCleskey v. Kemp, wherein it is argued—essentially—that since the deathpenalty is racially biased, the conviction of a defendant of the statistically disadvantaged race inunjust.6 This indictment of the death penalty calls the social context of crime and law intoquestion, but although it may imply that justice is not delivered in all cases, it does not refute thefact that justice is within the capacity of law to deliver, even if that delivery does not alwaysfunction. 4 “Terry v. State of Ohio 392 U.S. 1 (1968)” in Before the Law, ed. John J. Bonsignore, Ethan Katsh, et al (Boston:The Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 2735 Sally Bermanzohn, Through Survivors' Eyes: From the Sixties to the Greensboro Massacre (Nashville: VanderbiltUniversity Press, 2003), 265.6 Bryan Stevenson. “The Hanging Judges” in Before the Law, ed. John J. Bonsignore, Ethan Katsh, et al (Boston:The Houghton Mifflin Company, 2002), 65.4Repayment is often associated with monetary awards in tort cases, and this is certainly anarea in which people can, should, and do turn to the law for repayment. However, average tortcases are not commonly known. Rather, as demonstrated in class discussion, there is a commonand largely unfounded belief that tort cases are mostly extreme and provide too much money tothe party bringing the case.For example, the 2000 award of $145 Billion in a Florida class action suit