Introduction: Justice
Ruth Hutchinson

Comment: Be Not Deceived...
David McMillan

From the Director
David Porter

From Just Us to Justice
Duncan Morrow

Right Relationships or Justice
Brian Lennon

The Truth, the Whole Truth
Alwyn Thomson

Walking for Ministers
Graham Cheesman

Dealing with the Pain
David Bolton

The Case for Human Rights
Martin O’Brien

What’s Wrong with Rights?
Alwyn Thomson

< Past Issues Archive

RIGHT RELATIONSHIPS OR JUSTICE
The Belfast Agreement was not just, or so some argue. It let prisoners out before they had served their time. Others argue it was just because it may have helped to end the violence that was causing so much injustice. ‘Justice’ is a Catholic word. At least it seems that way. Often during the Troubles I worked on ecumenical statements with Protestants. We often called for peace. I would also want to call for justice. But some of the Protestants group would object: “That’s not a good word, let’s look for something else.” That something else was generally ‘right relationships’.

What was going on in this exchange? It was our different responses to codes. Justice was a code word for Nationalist demands. ‘Give us justice’ meant ‘Stop Diplock courts’, or ‘Ban plastic bullets’ or ‘Stop the shoot-to-kill policy’, and these were all seen as things that Nationalists would benefit from (although plastic bullets killed Loyalists too). ‘Right relationships’ was a softer term. It did not have the same connotations. At the same time I always accepted it for ecumenical statements because it is a wider concept than justice.

Justice and Rights

Let’s unpack term ‘justice’, at least in part. It is a good term, even if not the best, but there are problems with it. One of these is about the notion of rights, because justice includes rights. This century has seen a vast increase in human rights awareness and legislation. It has also seen a huge increase in abuses. The idea behind rights is that there are certain minimum things to which every person is entitled, because they are human beings. Examples are the rights to life, to bodily integrity, to food, to freedom of speech and movement, to assembly, etc. Take these away from a person and you take away something that is theirs by right. You treat them unjustly.

Or do you? Take the right to life. If you are a pacifist then it is always wrong to kill someone. But if you believe that there may be circumstances in which it may be right to kill, for example, in self-defence, then you believe it can be right to take away something — one of their fundamental rights. And you believe you can do so justly. Another example is prison. Is it good to lock up persistent offenders in order to protect society? If you think it may be, then you believe it is good to interfere with one of their fundamental rights. So the cry: “Give us justice” runs into problems if by it you mean: “Give us our rights”, because in many circumstances some people's rights conflict with others.

A further problem with rights is that when people first thought of them they thought of the rights of individuals. But the rights of groups are at least as important. The most glaring example in our present century is the Jews. It was as a people that they were subjected to the Holocaust. It did not matter what they were like as individuals, it was because they were Jews that they were murdered. One of the arguments for the existence of the state of Israel is that it is only by having their own State that the Jewish people can hope to protect the right to their life.

Again the theory runs into problems when the rights of different groups come into conflict. Kurds are a people, but they live in several different states including Turkey and Iraq. Are they entitled to their own state? If not, why not? They too have been massacred. Have they not the same entitlements as Jews? The answers to such questions are heavily influenced by power politics. Jews have been much more successful than Kurds in gaining power in business and finance especially in the US. So, whatever the merits of the Jewish case they are more likely to be successful than the Kurds. That shows another aspect that we assume in justice. It implies treating people with equality.

Justice and Equality

This has been the basis of major complaints by Nationalists in Northern Ireland over the years:

…that Nationalist identity has not been recognised to the same extent as Unionists;
…that the Irish language has not been respected;
…that Unionists were more likely to get jobs and promotion;
…that the courts and security forces treated Nationalists differently.

Whatever you think about the merits of these charges, they are all based on the idea that each citizen is entitled to equal treatment. However, that is not the way it works in any society. Rich people get better lawyers. That means they get a better defence in the courts. This is one reason why death rows in the US are full of poor people. Rich people have better access to politicians. (It is no accident that Philip Sheedy, whose sentence in the South for killing a man while drunk driving was reduced, is an architect. Had he been from a more deprived background it is unlikely his relatives would have been able to chat to a Supreme Court judge while walking in a local park.) Rich people also get better education which in turn gives them access to better jobs. To defend the idea that there should be absolute equality in society you would have to find a means to eliminated differences in wealth and education.

Some argue that what matters is not equality but rather the opportunity for equality. So some people might get rich, and that is OK as long as everyone starts from a level playing field. But of course they don’t. Children whose parents have a university qualification are much more likely to get a university qualification themselves.

Justice and Punishment

Punishment is another aspect of justice. It's what we started with in this article and it caused the greatest problems for the pro-Agreement camp during the Referendum. It was really difficult for the families of many victims to see those convicted of the murders of their loved ones being released early. They wanted to see them punished. Prison, as many saw it, was too light a punishment. It was nothing like the pain the victims were enduring because their loved ones were never going to return.

The prisoners were not let out for the sake of justice. They were let out as part of a deal. That deal was arrived at by a calculation by the different parties about how much or how little they could live with, and how much or how little their opponents could live with. As part of that calculation the prisoners were always going to get early release. It was one of the easier decisions from a political point of view the main objectors were victims and victims are not among the most powerful in society.

However, it is not enough simply to say that letting the prisoners out did not meet the demands of justice, and leave it at that. Prisoners and their representatives had some points on their side. Others were guilty besides them and were never caught. Republicans in particular referred to individual cases involving members of the security forces where no great effort was made to bring perpetrators to justice. So, if letting prisoners out early was unjust, so was the failure of the State to convict other offenders.

Restorative Justice

Since the Agreement there has been much talk of ‘restorative justice’. This puts much more emphasis on trying to set up a new and positive relationship between victim, perpetrator and society, rather than focusing only on punishing the perpetrator. Indeed one of the criticisms supporters of restorative make of conventional justice (which they often term ‘retributive justice’) is that it tends to ignore the victim. For example, suppose your house is robbed. If you tell the police, they may arrest and charge the perpetrator. They may or may not tell you they have done so. They then bring him before a court. A state solicitor or barrister will prosecute the case. You may not be called to give evidence. A jury (or in Northern Ireland a judge) may decide the verdict and then the judge decides the punishment. Again you may not be consulted. You don't get your property back. In other words, in this process, the victim almost disappears.

In a restorative justice approach more effort is put into convincing the perpetrator that what he has done is wrong. Part of this means exposing him to the suffering he has caused. One way of doing this is by getting him to meet the victim (if you are willing to meet him). Punishment very often will be community service rather than prison. How do you feel about this approach? It’s easier to answer this question if you are not a victim. But suppose you are? How do you feel about the perpetrator not going to prison? About possibly meeting him and listening to his explanation, if any, for doing what he did? About explaining to him what his crime has meant to you, the loss of a loved one, the utter fury that can follow, the despair, the loneliness?

Most people I know would not feel happy about this. They would find it very difficult to meet a perpetrator. Nonetheless, those who support restorative justice tell story after story of how both victim and perpetrators have been helped by such meetings.

Limits of Justice

Behind all I have said is the sense that justice cannot solve all our problems. In the area of rights, of equality, of punishment we run into trouble if we rely too heavily or too exclusively on justice. That is why ‘right relationships’ is a fuller term. It is also a more biblical expression. The way the term justice is often used shows no awareness of a relationship and the responsibilities that come with relationships. One of these is duties. If we have rights which others owe to us, then we also have duties to respect the rights of others. The notion of right relationships emphasises this. It fits more easily with the Biblical themes of ‘Covenant’ and ‘Shalom’. This places the stress on the community. We cannot be part of the community unless we are in respectful relationship with other members, especially those who are marginalised. We cannot be in touch with God while we ignore Lazarus sitting at our gate, even if there is no evidence that we are directly responsible for the poverty of Lazarus. (All the gospel story tells us is that Lazarus was poor, not how he became poor. He could have been an alcoholic.)

Nonetheless, I do not want to let go of the term justice. It was a supreme irony that Christians allowed Republicans to take over this term during the Troubles, given what Republicans were doing. There may be problems with aspects of justice, such as rights, equality, and punishment. But that does not mean these have no value. The danger of a term like ‘right relationships’ is that we may overlook the specific duties that are owed to individuals and to groups. People still have rights, even if it is sometimes difficult to settle disputes over conflicts of rights. Equality is still a value, otherwise the rich will think they can worship God and ignore the marginalised. Punishment remains a value in its own right, even if prison is often inappropriate.

Finally, justice has another value. One of the recurring dilemmas for Christians is how to relate to secular society, with its mixture of wheat and tares. Right relationships are a Christian ideal which will often be unattainable in ordinary life. Justice can often be a better measure of what is possible. It is important that people get their rights, even if they are not open to a relationship. That is an important principle in the parades controversy. Groups should be accorded their rights even if they are not open to relationships. (Just in case either side thinks that comment benefits them, it doesn’t, because we still need to work out what rights are due to different groups!) Nonetheless, right relationships is the wider, the deeper and the more biblical concept. Christians need to work for justice, but with their eyes on the broader concept. Further, justice itself will often not be possible outside the context of new relationships. If in the past Protestants tended to emphasise right relationships (sometimes as a way of avoiding tough justice demands), and if many Catholics emphasised justice without focussing on the need to relate to Unionists, both should now concentrate on the need to build a new relationship. It is only within the context of such a relationship, in which both Catholic and Protestant, Nationalist and Unionist, take responsibility for the future of this place, that we will be able to get any proper justice in the real world. It is only in the context of such a relationship that both Catholics and Protestants will find a proper basis for their own safety. It is the lack of such a relationship which creates the fear that makes people on both sides use violence. Put a relationship in place, take away the fear, and then justice will fall from the skies to embrace us all in the life of God.

Brian Lennon - works as a co-ordinator with Community Dialogue and is a Jesuit priest.