Justice and Law: The One Hundred Year Rule

Abstract

The author suggests a rule of thumb to use in the debate over law versus justice: laws are transient creations of man, while justice is eternal. The lack of women’s suffrage, wide-spread racial segregation, and other facts of daily life a hundred years ago were perfectly legal but are now viewed as intolerably unjust anachronisms of history. The author hopes that a hundred years from now the death penalty, economic inequality, homelessness and other social problems existing under our current legal system will similarly be viewed as historically unfathomable offenses against justice.