If one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected - those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! - and listens to their testimony.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- True justice is measured by how a country treats its most vulnerable people, not its officials. Listening to the unprotected reveals the reality of legal systems.
- In plain terms
- Check how a country treats its most vulnerable to understand its justice system.
- What can you take from it?
- Listen to the unprotected to see how justice really works.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who is unprotected in your society?
- How is justice administered?
Another view
Official metrics may provide broader data than individual testimonies.
More from James Baldwin
Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
Permalink to quote #33 People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become, and they pay for it, very simply, by the lives they lead.
Permalink to quote #35 It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who ha…
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