At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore (Ps. 16: 11)
The king by judgment establisheth the land: But he that receiveth gifts overthroweth it” (KJV).
“The king establishes the land by justice, But he who receives bribes overthrows it.” (NKJV).
Proverbs 29:4
The Western legal tradition understood the first part of this parable very well, and has been overthrown by our neglect of the second part of it.
Justice should be the first concern of the magistrate. And by justice, we do not mean acceding to the demands of a complaining envy—as though it were somehow “unjust” for one man to have more privileges than another. No, by justice we have to mean two things.
The first is that the definition of justice must be settled by sober exegesis of the law/word of God. The painting of Justice at Lausanne illustrates this well, when it shows Lady Justice, eyes open, pointing down at an open Bible with her sword. That means that justice must not be blind when it comes to the teaching of the Word of God. But this leads to the second crucial thing, which is that Justice must be blind when it comes to certain details of particular cases that come before her. It must be a matter of complete indifference whether the accused is male, or black, or poor, or white, or rich. It must not matter. What matters is the truth, and not whether the defendant is a member of a victimized class.
One of the central reasons for our legal apostasy from this understanding of true justice is that men in authority began taking bribes secretly. Now that we have come to the point of the land being overthrown completely by their corruption, we have gotten to the point where they take the bribes openly. What once was a beautiful crystal lake has become a brown cesspool.
