Truth vs. Justice

Isn't it uncanny how there is an element of truth in justice but truth does not necessarily encompass justice? One can define truth as the conformity to fact or reality – which is synonymous with declarations of righteousness and freedom from falsehoods. In all material understandings of the concept of truth, the foundational meaning lies in objectiveness of fact. On the other hand, if one had to define justice, a key element in true (or natural) justice is honesty and conformity with truth and reality. Put simply, justice is the integrity in the dealings between men. It is the strict compliance with moral obligations toward humanity and the Divine Law. It is in fact the basis upon which human rights were created. And is it not fascinating how justice and truth link when it comes to human rights?

In what instances have truth and justice been linked in the arena of international human rights? One of the most famous examples of this is the creation of Truth Reconciliation Commissions ("TRC") after a period of severe human rights violations ("HRVs") has passed and the country is moving toward rebuilding itself. South Africa, for example, used its own TRC after the Apartheid Era. This form of rebuilding a society has been juxtaposed to putting the human rights violators on trial and allowing a presumably unbiased judiciary decide the fate of those persons. However, often, the truth about those HRVs was rarely disclosed for fear of a strict sentence. TRCs were created for one purpose: to establish the truth about the HRVs that took place in that country, and then for its people to forgive that violator and for the violator to be given amnesty for telling the entire truth, thereby documenting the stories for future generations to remember. However, one of the strongest and often most fatal drawbacks of TRCs was the fact that often people wanted retribution and believed that this purpose was not justified for what they went through under the ruling of those human rights violators. They believed that those violators should suffer through the limelight and through the political system so that justice could be met.

So, thus, it would appear that justice and truth bare a significant difference, one which is worth highlighting to negate the often misconstrued notion that the two are in fact synonymous. As described above, truth is based on an objective set of facts in a notional reality. Justice, however, can be a subjective experience, often differing according to historical politics of the majority generation subsisting at the time that justice is trying to be ascertained. In other words, justice can be subjective, whereas the truth is always objective. It is when the two are both objective that a link can be created.

So, again, when can this link be created? If we had to look around the world at the various International Human Rights Conventions that have been created, with almost all countries having become signatories (and most of those signatories having ratified those Conventions into their laws), one can see a trend upon which truth and justice has been unified by a single experience (or lesson, if you will) and a single desire to prevent a reoccurrence of same in the future. For example, most countries have prohibited child labour and the involvement of children in the military for the simple reason that those signatories unanimously believe justice would be better served by taking a closer look at the truth of previous human rights violations in respect of this specific aspect and noticing the consequences arising from those abuses, namely, the use of children as soldiers, putting them in war zones, making children become miners and manufacturers, et cetera. Those consequences so happened to be so horrendous as to become overwhelmingly acknowledged and having created a desperate need to prevent its reoccurence because of the simple fact that innocence was being extorted. However, if one had to look at the Conventions in respect of torture to criminals or to suspects in order to obtain information, many generations believe that torture is the most effective means of acquiring the truth about something. Whether it is justified is often a lower priority to discovering what the truth is and to act in accordance therewith. However, there is a foundational basis upon which the majority of signatory nations have assented to the torture convention and that is because it is quite simply a violation of human rights. The fact that the violation is upon a criminal or even a suspect does not mean that their human rights have lesser weight than another human being. In the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (“UDHR”), there was no weight-scale to measure the importance of one person’s human rights against another.

Anything else?