![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThis is based on the end of parshat Emor, Lev 24:10-23.
This week's parsha lays out some basic principles of law. We're
told that murder and blasphemy are capital offenses, and that when
one commits a crime against someone else, the same thing is done to
him -- wound for wound, eye for eye, and so on. (Life for life isn't
in this passage, though it comes up elsewhere.)
Another principle from this week's parsha is: one law for everybody. Last week's parsha told us not to favor the rich or the poor in judgement, and parshat Shoftim this summer will have plenty more to say about this. It all boils down to this: we're all equal in the eyes of the court. This seems like an idea we can all get behind; in fact, it's often a rallying cry when we (quite rightly, IMO) speak out about how the poor and non-white are sometimes treated by our courts. But I think sometimes we don't want to face all of the other implications of this principle.
"One law for all" means that all murderers should be sentenced under the same guidelines. But lots of Pittsburghers want special vengeance for our three slain police officers. I've heard people who are normally opposed to the death penalty say we should make an exception in this case. I cringe over this crime too; it's especially wrenching when those who protect us are attacked for doing that job. But are some victims really more valuable than others, and does that make some murderers more worthy of severe punishment than others? We see this when the victim is a child too; is not the adult victim just as dead? Other factors might influence the sentence, but "one law for all" calls for the same sentence for the same crime, regardless of who the victim is.
At the other end of the spectrum, many people want to change the rules for the eleven-year-old who killed his father's girlfriend recently. That he killed her appears not to be in question, so what the jury has to decide is if he did it willfully. If he did, why is his age relevant? And if he didn't, why would his age matter? "One law for all" means murder is murder whether the killer is 11, 40, or 90.
Sometimes, as with the police officers, we want to set aside "one law for all" out of anger. More often, it seems to me, we want to set it aside out of pity, as with the eleven-year-old killer. But when we bend the rules in favor of the poor, weak, or juvenile, what we are really doing is bending the rules against everyone else. Good intentions do not ease the resulting injustice.
This week there were news reports of a pregnant Briton who was facing a death sentence for drug trafficking in Laos. (The penalty has since been reduced.) We've heard quite an outcry against the sentence because she's a woman, or pregnant, or a westerner. We've heard this sort of thing before too, when westerners face shari'a courts in Islamic countries or corporal punishment in Singapore. But it's rare to hear such outcries when the accused are just "regular people" in their home countries. We hear it now for women in Islamic countries, I think because Americans have become more attuned to it in the last eight years, but I think this is the exception. Before this week I didn't even know that Laos had the death penalty. And Singapore still has corporal punishment (as do other countries); when's the last time you heard anyone object to it?
I am not saying we should not be outraged over the Laos situation. We should. But our outrage should have nothing to do with who the accused is. We should be outraged that a victimless crime, drug trafficking, carries a possible death sentence. We should be equally outraged if the person facing the firing squad is Laotian, or Saudi, or Canadian. If the law is really that this is a capital offense, then the British woman deserves no special consideration. If she deserves consideration because that penalty is unthinkable, then everyone facing it deserves that same consideration. That's what "one law for all" means.
"One law for all" applies in other contexts too, not just capital cases. It means we don't reward illegal immigrants with the trappings of citizenship while legal immigrants wait in line; the word "illegal" is important here. It means we don't grant some criminals amnesty so they'll testify against their collaborators, and if we don't need their testimony, they're out of luck. It means we don't send the 17-year-old rapist to a juvenile detention center for six months while his 18-year-old accomplice goes to jail for 30 years. It means we don't pursue corruption charges against lawmakers from one party while turning a blind eye to those from another.
But where is mercy in all of this? Surely none of us wants strict justice; that's scary. The list of offenses in the torah that can lead to death or excommunication is long, and who among us hasn't treaded close to that line at some point? (Blasphemy? Shabbat desecration? Need I go on?) Is that what we want?
The rabbis understood this problem too, and this is probably part of why they legislated the death penalty and "eye for eye" out of existence and instituted fines instead, preserving fair compensation but removing physical punishment. While we're commanded, right after the flood, to set up courts of justice, human courts are inherently flawed so it is wise to limit the damage they can do. But, also because human courts are flawed, I don't think we can be trusted to make judgements about who deserves special mercy and who does not. And that, I think, is why we're told "one law for all" here. If we think the law is too severe, don't apply it selectively -- fix the law!
There is a role for mercy, to be sure. We must show kindness and mercy to our fellow human beings, in everything from giving tzedakah to speaking kindly to giving the benefit of the doubt. We should cultivate these traits when dealing with each other. And we can beseech God, who knows truth we cannot know, for mercy. But what we cannot do is pervert a system of human justice to achieve our goals of mercy. We must find other ways -- and if those other ways benefit everyone and not just special cases, we will have accomplished what the torah teaches us this week.
For the non-locals: police officers, 11-year-old.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-11 02:09 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-05-12 03:55 am (UTC)