{"id":2578,"date":"2013-07-13T01:42:32","date_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost\/?p=2578"},"modified":"2013-07-13T01:42:32","modified_gmt":"2013-07-13T01:42:32","slug":"11-the-balance-of-justice-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/01-works-of-sri-aurobindo\/03-cwsa\/12-essays-divine-and-human\/11-the-balance-of-justice-vol-12-essays-divine-and-human","title":{"rendered":"-11_The Balance of Justice.html"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Balance of Justice <\/b><\/span><\/font>
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The European Court of Justice is a curious and instructive institution. Europe, even while vaunting a monopoly of civilisation, cherishes and preens herself in some remarkable relics of barbarism. In mediaeval times, with the scientific thoroughness and efficiency which she shares with the Mongolian, she organised
\ntorture as the most reliable source of evidence and the ordeal of battle as the surest guide to judicial truth. Both ideas were
\ncharacteristically European. A later age may seem to have got rid of these luminous methods, but it is not so in reality. In
\nplace of the rack the French have invented the investigating judge and the Americans some remarkable processes, which I
\nthink they call questioning (the old name for torture) in the first, second and up to the fifth degree if not to higher stages
\nof excellence. The torture is sometimes of the mind not of the body; it is less intense, more lingering, but it leads to the same
\nresult in the end. When the tortured wretch, after protecting with lies for as long as may be his guilt or his innocence, escapes from his furious and pitiless persecutor by a true or false confession, preferring jail or the gallows to this prolongation of
\ntense misery, the French call it delicately “entering into the way of avowals”. The Holy Office in Seville could not have invented
\na more Christian and gentlemanly euphemism. The American system, is in the fifth degree, I think, to keep the miserable
\naccused fasting and sleepless and ply him with a ceaseless assault of torturing questions and suggestions until the brain reels, the
\nbody sinks, the heart is sick and hopeless and the man is ready to say anything his torturers believe or want to be the truth.
\nIt is a true Inquisition; the mediaeval name fits these modern refinements.
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The English people have often been accused as a brutal or a stupid nation; but they have a rugged humanity when their
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interests are not touched and enjoy glimpses of a rough common sense. They have besides an honourable love of publicity and do not like, for themselves at least, secret police methods.
\nThey have rejected the investigating judge and torture in the fifth degree. But their courts resemble the European. Under a
\ncivilised disguise these Courts are really the mediaeval ordeal by battle; only in place of the swords and lances of military combatants we have the tongues and technicalities of lawyers and the mutually tilting imaginations of witnesses. The victory is to the
\nskilfullest liar and the most plausible workman in falsehoods and insincerities. It is largely an elaborate pitch and toss, an
\nexhilarating gamble, a very Monte Carlo of surprising chances. But there is skill in it, too; it satisfies the intellect as well as the
\nsensations. One should rather call it a game of human Bridge which admirably combines luck and skill, or consider it as an
\nintellectual gladiatorial show. In big cases the stake is worthy of the play and the excitement, a man’s property or his life. But
\nwoe to the beaten! In a criminal case, the tortures of the jail or the terrifying drop from the gallows are in prospect, and it is
\nrather the hardihood of guilt than the trembling consciousness of innocence that shall best help him. Woe to him if he is innocent!
\nAs he stands there,\u2014for to add to the pleasurableness of his condition, the physical ache of hours of standing is considerately
\nadded to the cruel strain on his emotions,\u2014he looks eagerly not to the truth or falsehood of the evidence for or against him, but
\nto the skill with which this or that counsel handles the web of skilfully mixed truth and lies and the impression he is making
\non the judge or the jury. A true witness breaking down under a confusing cross-examination or a false witness mended by a
\njudicious re-examination may be of much better service to him than the Truth, which, our Scriptures tell us, shall prevail and not
\nfalsehood,\u2014eventually perhaps and in the things of the truth, but not in the things of falsehood, not in a court of Justice, not
\nin the witness box. There the last thing the innocent man against whom circumstances have turned, dare tell is the truth; it would
\neither damn him completely by fatally helping the prosecution or it is so simple and innocent as to convince the infallible human
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reason of its pitiful falsity. The truth! Has not the Law expressly
\nbuilt up a hedge of technicalities to keep out the truth?
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As one looks on, one begins to understand the passion of
\nthe Roman poet’s eulogy of the defence counsel, praesidium<\/i> maestis reis<\/i>, the bulwark of the sorrowful accused. For in this
\nstrange civilised gambling with human dice where it is so often impossible to be certain about guilt or innocence, one’s sympathies naturally go to the sufferer, the scapegoat of a callous society, who may be moving to a long period of torturing and
\nunmerited slavery or an undeserved death on the gallows. But if one could eliminate this element of human pity, it would be
\na real intellectual pleasure to watch the queer barbarous battle, appraise the methods of the chief players, admire, in whatever
\nclimes, the elusiveness and fine casualness of Indian perjury or the robust manly cheery downrightness of Saxon cross-swearing.
\nIf the Courts convince us of our common humanity by making all men liars, they yet preserve a relishable unlikeness in likeness. And I think that even theology or metaphysics does not give such admirable chances for subtlety as the Law, nor even
\nAsiatic Research or ethnology favour so much the growth of that admirable scientific faculty which deduces a whole animal out of
\nsome other animal’s bone. If the thing proved is generally wrong, it is always ingenious; and after all in all these five sciences, or
\nare they not rather arts?\u2014it is not the thing that is true but the thing that is desired which must be established. This is perhaps
\nwhy the Europeans think the system civilised, but as a semi-civilised Oriental, one would prefer less room for subtlety and
\nmore for truth. <\/span>\n\t\t\t<\/p>\n

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On the whole, if anyone were to complain that modern civilisation eliminates danger and excitement out of human life, we could well answer the morbid grumbler, “Come into our
\nCourts and see!” Still, praise must be given where praise is due, and let the English system once more be lauded for not
\nnormally exposing the accused to the torture of savage pursuit by a prosecuting judge or the singular revival in modern dress of
\nthe ancient “question” by the American police. Where political or other passions are not roused and bribery does not enter, the
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\n\t\t\tpoor muddled magistrate does his honest best, and where there
\nis a system of trial by jury, the blunders, whims and passions of twelve men may decide your fate less insanely than the caprices
\nof a Kazi,\u2014though even that is hardly certain. At any rate, if the dice are apt
\n\t\t\tto be loaded, it is, with the exceptions noted, not on one but on
\n\t\t\tboth sides of the gamble.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The Balance of Justice   The European Court of Justice is a curious and instructive institution. Europe, even while vaunting a monopoly of civilisation, cherishes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-12-essays-divine-and-human","wpcat-52-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2578\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worksofthemotherandsriaurobindo.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}