When you make\u00a0a comment like \u2018I believe in justice\u2019, you wouldn’t generally expect the answer: \u2018Then why do you study law?\u2019<\/p>\n
At least I didn\u2019t. Nonetheless, it initiated a wave of laughter throughout the room, not the least of which did come from myself. Nowadays, law is often regarded as a tool to achieve a personal goal. Cases before a court are not always about \u2018what\u2019s right\u2019 or \u2018who acted fairly\u2019, it\u2019s a question of who can use the law to their advantage in a way that swings the outcome of a case in their favour. It can be perceived as a game of which the rules are constantly changing and whoever can use (or work around) the rules best, wins the game.<\/p>\n
TV shows and movies about law and justice reinforce this use of the law. Any of my fellow fans of the TV series Suits<\/em> would, in my opinion, be inclined to agree. We see Harvey Specter constantly throwing around\u00a0motions and affidavits\u00a0to use the law to his client\u2019s or firm\u2019s advantage. We identify with these characters, we grow to \u2018love\u2019 them and therefore we have the tendency to root for them to achieve the outcome they’re aiming for. Even if it is not necessarily what the law intended. We hope they get out of whatever illegal thing it is they did by watching the lawyers cleverly bend or break the rules.<\/p>\n Programs like Law and Order<\/em> or Crime Scene Investigation<\/em> show the other end of this spectrum. They depict enforcers of the law that push the boundaries and sometimes cross them in order to ensure justice is served. However, if we look at this critically, they are using the law to create the justice they<\/em> think should be served, as opposed to adhering to how and why the law was actually set up.<\/p>\n And then there\u2019s the cases in which we compromise justice, because, as Nick Rice said in Law Abiding Citizen<\/em>, \u2018Some justice is better than no justice at all\u2019. In the movie, two perpetrators are being prosecuted and the one that is seen as the main actor of the crime agrees to testify against the other in order to gain immunity for the crime for himself. The argument is that it is better to ensure that only one of the perpetrators faces the consequences of his actions, than to risk both of them being exonerated. In other words, it’s better to win part of the game, than to risk\u00a0losing all together.<\/p>\n We tend to accept these forms of playing with the law because when we watch these shows or movies, we believe in the outcome that is being depicted as favourable. But does that affect the way we see the law in real life as well? Is this the way we want the law to work? Or is it just a reality we\u2019ve come to accept, because we simply don\u2019t know any better?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When you make\u00a0a comment like \u2018I believe in justice\u2019, you wouldn’t generally expect the answer: \u2018Then why do you study law?\u2019 At least I didn\u2019t. Nonetheless, it initiated a wave of laughter throughout the room, not the least of which did come from myself. Nowadays, law is often regarded as a tool to achieve a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":47617,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[136347],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/47617"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":280,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274\/revisions\/280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/lawandthehumanities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}