There’s a justice crisis.  Judges wear robes, speak solemnly, and invoke procedure—but they don’t understand justice.  They know rulings, precedent, and codes.  Justice isn’t found in any of that.  Justice isn’t what courts say it is.  Justice is what is. That distinction matters more than most are willing to admit.

What most judges administer is institutional order, not justice.  They claim to uphold rights, but rights are handed down by legislatures.  Those are permissions—not rights.  Real rights aren’t granted.  They’re discovered.  Justice can’t be created by committee.  It either is, or it isn’t.

There are two views of justice: the artificial and the real.  The artificial is built—constructed by lawmakers and interpreted by courts.  The real is revealed—seen through reason and conscience.  Judges cling to the first because it gives them power.  That power rests on nothing but the consent of those too confused to question it.

Positive justice bends with time and trends.  One era’s virtue becomes another’s vice.  The law shifts, and with it, the court’s idea of right and wrong.  True justice doesn’t change.  Theft is theft, whether legal or not.  Murder doesn’t become right because it’s ordered by a government.  And rights don’t disappear because a law says they do.

Judges rarely question the law itself.  They ask whether it’s been followed, not whether it’s just.  That’s the trap.  In following the letter, they abandon the law.  They enforce injustice because they believe obedience is the highest good.  Obedience to injustice is complicity.

Real justice isn’t complicated.  It doesn’t require years of schooling or shelves of legal volumes.  It requires reason and moral clarity.  It sees the individual, not the system.  It respects consent, not command.  It punishes true harm, not disobedience to rules.

The modern courtroom is a stage.  The performance is ritual, and the outcome is predetermined by statutes and precedent.  Justice, when it appears, does to maintain appearances.  Even then, it’s undone on appeal.  The judges don’t see this.  They think the system is justice.  The system is just power with paperwork.

Justice can’t be found in institutions that deny it.  It won’t be restored by legal reform or procedural tweaks.  It must be reclaimed—by individuals who refuse to accept the lie that legality and justice are the same.  They’re not, not even close.

Reference

Heinrich Rommen; The Natural Law