THE MYTH OF JUSTICE IN LAW

Some people recently asked me why is it that I don't intend to practice as a lawyer. There's amultitude of reasons why; I don't find the work to be stimulating enough (although the study of the law remains terribly interesting to me), I want to try something new, there's not much money in it, etc. However, tonight I think I've come up with another reason: I've actually lost faith in the law, at least the Western legal system, as a mechanism for achieving justice.

Some of you may know that I'm doing American Constitutional Law as my final unit. As I was reading through cases dealing with the post-Civil War amendments to the Constitution, something struck me. The majority of the judges in the Supreme Court were more concerned with upholding their conception of the federal-state relationship in a republican system of government than they were about the protection of the recently-emancipated African-Americans. For example, the Supreme Court in the "Civil Rights Cases" pronounced as unconstitutional an Act of Congress making it an offence for anyone to discriminate on the basis of race with regards to the use of public facilities such as inns and other places of public entertainment: the judges reasoned that Congress had no power to pass such an Act because the 14th Amendment, which was argued to be the clause empowering Congress to pass such an Act, only dealt with discrimination attributable to State action, and not private discrimination. In doing so, the Supreme Court effectively endorsed discriminatory action, so long as it remained a private matter.

This kind of hair-splitting arguments can also be seen in the case of Plessy v Ferguson, where the Supreme Court held that the equal treatment clause in the 14th Amendment did not impute a positive obligation to mix the two races together: the provision of separate but equal facilities is not an infringement of the 14th Amendment equal treatment clause. This decision allowed the states to relegate African-Americans to an inferior status, consistent with their then racist outlook. Thus the Amendments designed to secure the rights of the emancipated slaves were read in as strict a manner as possible, defeating their purpose.

Some may say, "The law is not about justice. It is about certainty." In relation to the Western legal system, this is true, but only to a certain extent. The law, as I see it, is not about achieving justice, nor is it about certainty, not all the time anyway. Sometimes, it is about preserving prejudices and promoting the views of the judges, regardless of the wider implications of their decision.

Somebody once wrote, "Judges are law students who mark their own exam answers". I concur completely.

Post-scriptum: the above views do not apply to Justice Harlan, whose dissenting opinion in the Civil Rights Cases and Plessy v Ferguson I whole-heartedly endorse.

The Space Between

This is an old song, by Dave Matthews Band but somehow I've always associated Nim with it. Never thought much about it, but tonight I think this line is the one that sticks in my head:

"The space between, the tears we cry, is the laughter that keeps us coming back for more".

I miss her. Terribly. The way she becomes a mad when I don't honk at a person cutting in front of my car, the way she complains that I take too much sugar with my tea, the way she takes her time to park the car (back in the days when she wasn't such a great driver, ya know. She's a great driver now, man. Honest!). But mostly, I just miss the way she smiles whenever I come along. Sometimes I don't know whether I tell her that enough.

Ahh. I have to snap out of this nostalgic, romantic spell. Right now I'm supposed to be reading, understanding and memorising the chain of events that began from the Constitutional settlement concerning the issue of slavery in the newly-formed United States in 1787 to the eventual secession of the Southern States and the forming of the Confederacy as a direct response to Abraham Lincoln's victory in the Presidential elections as a Republican, a party formed with a specific anti-slavery platform. I'm also supposed to understand and interpret the various Supreme Court decisions dealing with the issue of slavery, such as Prigg v Pennsylvania and ultimately of course Dred Scott v Sanford (the case which arguably accelerated the advent of the Civil War), and to understand the complex relations between slavery and the federal/state relationship.

Sorry. Got carried away with my US Constitutional Law musings there. If you're expecting anything funny (which usually comes right about this time in my blog entries), sorry.. I'm fresh out. I'm too tired to put out tonight, dear readers.

Erkk..

That just didn't come out right.

SCARY SHIT

Today I did some thinking (pause for the statutory round of applause on that remarkable achievement). I am so scared of getting married. There is so much out there that I have no idea about, no control over, and regardless of how much I try to prepare for it, I'll probably still be caught with my pants down (pause for the statutory cringe due to extremely vivid imagery employed). For instance, my career is not sorted out, though steps have been taken to remedy that situation. We don't know where we're going to stay after the whole wedding brouhaha has passed over, we don't know this, we don't know that, we don't know squat.

However, I've come to the realisation that, as scared as I am, and I AM scared shitless, this is something I have to do. I've found the person I love, more than any other person in this world, and I'm not going to let the chance to spend the rest of my days making her feel the same pass me by simply on account of this yellow streak running from the tip of my head all the way to my ar*e. To lose out on this opportunity of a lifetime on account of being scared is cowardly. Sure, there may be bumps ahead, hell, we've gone through enough bumps in the road even before we're married, but Hanim, being the wonderful woman she is, has gone through all that for me, for the sake of what we could become. If I am too much of a poltroon not to want to do the same for her, then any plea for clemency on my part should fall on deaf ears. Period.

Aahh, the wonders of love, the cynics may say, "You'll find out soon enough that married life isn't just a bed of roses". I agree. I agree completely. But I'd rather spend my life trying to pull out the thorns that pieced my skin than be the person laughing from a distance at my foolishness in getting into that thorny rose bush, but never being close enough themselves to stop and enjoy the scent.

Love is like a blue pillow. Most of the time it's nice and soft, but sometimes it's liable to hurt you. Badly. Really badly. But still, you can't sleep without a pillow now, can you? Well, you can, but it'd be too uncomfortable. But then again I DO know some people who like sleeping without pillows. Maybe they're just masochists.. hmm.. But I'm sure most people like sleeping with pillows. Or do they?

As a friend once said, I am the only person she knows who could have a conversation with himself, and still lose.

Current read: Sealy, Cases and Materials on Company Law

Financial status: Loaded, but pretending to be broke, so much so that I believe it myself!

DRAMA KING

If it's possible for a guy to be a drama queen (which may or may not involve some gender transmogrification), I think I am one. The smallest things can trigger my obnoxiously fragile temperament, although perhaps some things are more likely to trigger it than others. Like comments from my other half. Yes, yes, the rational side of me knows that she means only the best, but goddammit woman! Can't you see I'm not being the paragon of rationality here?

I love her, anyway.

Relationships can be hard. Especcially when you've got an insecure bugger like me to deal with. Yes, guys can be insecure too, for all the disbelieving womenfolk. Most of us are just better at hiding it I suppose. I'm working on it though... hey, come to think of it, reading through my past few entries, it's been nothing but negativity. I'm either too sensitive, too angry, too irrational, too insecure. Screw this. I'm going to say something that probably doesn't mean anything to you readers but it doesn't matter, because this blog is simply, as eloquently put by a friend, 'verbal diarrhoea' and you'd be lucky to come out of this blog smelling like yesterday's dinner. So here goes:

YOU ARE IMPERFECT! YOU NEED TO LEARN TO ACCEPT THAT STUPID FACT, AND NOT BE SO EFFING HARD ON YOUR EFFING SELF! ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS TO MAKE THE BEST WITH WHAT YOU HAVE! AND FOR Nth TIME, BE GRATEFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE, YOU PATHETIC WHINER!

Now THAT'S a pep talk. To myself of course. Not to you, dear readers. Unless you feel like taking that on board. If you do, by all means go ahead. Unless you don't want to. Then don't.

I think I need to go to my happy place now.