Contemporary discourse includes much talk of justice, including “climate justice,” and “racial justice,” and dozens of others. Nearly everyone will agree that justice is a good thing, and nearly everyone will claim to desire justice.
But what is justice?
To find a useful and coherent definition of this word, the reader will want to consult the primary sources.
Perhaps one of the earliest hints of justice is found in the famous set of laws known as Hammurabi’s Code. Hammurabi was the king of Babylon around 1750 B.C., and his legal document is, in part, an example of the principle of rule of law.
The phrase “rule of law” is often used and rarely understood. It means that laws should apply to all citizens equally. For example, if a sign says “no parking here,” then, if a car is parked there, it doesn’t matter whose car it is, or who parked it there. The car should get a ticket and its owner should have to pay the fine, no matter who the owner or driver is.
The rule of law is a principle which prevents power from being abused. Without the rule of law, a person who happened to be a close personal friend of a senator or a mayor might avoid paying the fine for parking her or his car illegally, while ordinary citizens would have to pay the fine for doing the same thing; that would violate what most people intuitively consider to be justice.
While Hammurabi helped to crystalize the notion of rule of law, it was Moses who largely formed the broader concept of justice. The rule of law turns out to be merely one part of justice.
Moses lived around 1400 B.C., was born in Egypt, and led a group of escaped slaves to freedom. In the course of that journey, Moses encountered a sociological problem: to give the former slaves their liberty was a good action, but in order for them to form a society for themselves, it would be necessary for them to develop a sense of justice and social order. As former slaves, they had little leadership experience, and little experience in making value decisions on a societal level.
A set of directives called “The Mosaic Code” is not only a set of laws, but it also implies an underlying sense of values, and largely corresponds to what is now considered justice.
The Mosaic Code is not located in one place, but rather is scattered in bits and pieces across five different books. Those books are called the Torah or the Pentateuch: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.
In the book of Numbers, for instance, Moses clarifies a legal distinction between intentional murder and accidental death, and states that the value of human life exceeds the value of money, and that therefore a fine is not a suitable legal penalty for murder (cf. Number 35:9 - 35:34).
Elsewhere, Moses broadens the concept of intent beyond homicide to other actions (cf. Numbers 15:22 to 15:31). The distinction between intentional crime and accidental unintended actions has become part of the concept of justice.
Buried in the Mosaic Code are a set of ideas which define justice and the larger worldview behind justice, for example, the distinction between moral and legal, the distinction between proactive and reactive legislation, standards of evidence, standards of testimony by witnesses, the distinction between crimes against property and crimes against persons, a restriction of capital punishment, increasing the legal status of women, human life as having value and dignity, a distinction between guilt and shame, the surprising assertion that even slaves had rights which they could legally claim against their masters, the restriction and ultimately the abolition of slavery, and other concepts.
Each of these points needs to be expounded at length: they are simply listed here.
Moses also deals with the concept of privilege. He creates four classes, each of which is to receive special privileges: widows, orphans, foreigners, and the poor.
All of these points are either introduced initially by Moses, or greatly amplified by Moses from mere hints of them in Hammurabi’s Code.
In some points, Moses is the opposite of Hammurabi: Hammurabi gave legal privileges to the wealthy and powerful; Hammurabi relegated slaves to the status of mere property, whose lives were at the whim of their masters; Hammurabi gave no legal protections or status to women; Hammurabi’s laws were purely reactive, with no proactive elements.
So, while Hammurabi foreshadowed justice, it was Moses who comprehensively articulated it.
Following Moses, a series of thinkers continued to reinterpret and reapply the concepts of justice to different societies and circumstances. The history of justice is the history of texts: The Magna Carta of 1215, The Tübinger Vertrag 1514, The English Bill of Rights of 1689, The U.S. Declaration of Independence, The U.S. Bill of Rights, and others.
Justice has a long history, but any perspective on it will reveal the central role of Moses. Any modern or postmodern sense of justice, even and especially those which claim to reject Mosaic thought, will, under close examination, ultimately reveal themselves to be founded on Mosaic Law.
