Law and Justice as a Positive Ethical Social Value - Assignment Example

TRUTH IN LAW The most plausible way to get an insight in to the role truth plays in legal proceedings or whether law is nothing but whole truth is by exploring in to the values that give rise to such notions. In general terms the existence of truth in law is considered as a fallacy but that is not so, in layman terms or the general understanding people may attribute as the non-existence of truth in legal dealings but certainly that is not the case as the established legal principles are based on the premise of truth must be upheld at all costs. It might be the case that in legal procedural tangles truth seems to be lost somewhere but it is not way behind. The whole elaborate exercise is undertaken just to maintain the sanctity of human values and truth as a value. It cannot be rash and aberrant and takes its own time to skim out of the milk. It is a fact and more applicable in the field of law is that once truth starts surfacing out of the whirlpools then only it survives and dominates everything else on the horizon. It should b eunderstood that truth exists not as a false notion for formality sake but it is in actual there to support the pillars of justice and law. It exists as a value that is more strong than all the blabber and quietly does its work. In this essay we will examine the role of truth as a value in law that has long upheld the human values and the belief of the man in the Idea of Justice. Truth is the property of being true, what it is to be true. ARTICULATES OF THE CONCEPT OF JUSTICE AND TRUTH AS A VALUE : One of the marks of the natural law approach to justice is that it sees the individual as held within a framework of binding norms not of human creation. Justice in general, the name of which is basically a word of common usage, does not on its face refer us to a set of norms. Men can (and often do) judge things to be just or unjust without formulating any norms attendant on the vague notion that base their judgements; but to explain such judgements, they will always be found to resort to propositions which are tacitly, if not expressely, normative. The sentences “Justice is on A’s side”. Or “A’s cause is just”, whatever else they mean, amount to statements that – “What A claims, ought to be granted”. “Values”, as Philip Jacob and J.J. Flink have recently ventured, are the normative standards by which human beings are influenced in their choice among the alternative courses of action which they perceive”. And they add, building on related work of Talcott Parsons and others, that “(1) evaluation is an experientially and conceptually distinct component of motivation that includes both affective and cognitive elements, and (2) a value is considered as a yardstick used to measure worth rather than as worth itself. In short, some norm is asserted whenever any value is asserted; so that, indeed, compliance with a value means obedience to the norm of norms that proceed from that value. The “why” of a judgement of value has to be attributed to a norm; the “why” of a norm has to be attributed to the value which it attends. The differences between assertions of justice in general, and natural law assertions, are mainly that in the latter the assertion is always in the form of norms, and that it fixes, independently of the obeying subject, the content of the norm( and of the values that they attend, in case the value of truth); while none of this is necessarily so with assertions of justice in general. Within the wide notions of judgements of justice, moreover, it may be useful to notice a number of further distinctions, according to whether the value itself; or on the activities out of which a value arises; or on the value itself; or on the human agent who realises the value; or on the thing or state of things in which the value is realised. In the first place, the human attitudes, tendencies and motives which are relevant to ethical valuation seem to arise from :activities” which are unavoidable or rarely avoidable by human beings, common atleast to important groups in the community. Such activities, for instance, are thinking, loving , sharing, knowing and deciding who is entitled to what ; and these may also be stated abstractly as Thought, Love, mutuality, knowledge, justice abstractions which then tend to be regarded as fundamental “goods”. All this can and should be accepted for the present purpose in an entirely unpretentious sense. For obviously that in which men are most active, in the sense of personal commitment will correspond to whatthey most value. To point out, for example, that “Thought” is a kind of fundamental “good”, is only a way of identifying the activities out of which widely acknowledged values such as “Truth” have arisen and become conceptualised. Some such activity, as a “good” out of which the value arises, constitutes one articulate which may be involved in any assertion about a given value such as justice and law. The conceptualised value itself which thus arises from the activities as truth in relation to thought and knowledge, or well-being in relation to life, or mutuality in relation to sharing, is a second articulate. It represents an approved kind of level of attainment in the “good” of that activity. Even, however, when these are separated off or not involved, assertions about the value may still be complex. When a freedman of Rome was infamed for ingratitude to his patron, the infamia represented neither an activity ( non-sharing) , nor a mere negation of a value (non – mutuality) ; it referred rather to the quality of a personwho defaults in realising this value. So when a man is said to be truthful in the sense that he realised the value truth, his truthfulness is a quality which Is neither the activity nor the value itself. This quality of a person realising the value, is a third possible articulate of assertions about a value. Still a fourth refers to the thing or situation through which a person realises the value. When, for example, we say that though A was truthful, he did not give a true picture of the situation, the word true refers directly neither to the value Truth, nor to the quality of a person as measured by the value. Any or all of these different elements may be present in a general assertion about truth as a value in law. With justice, indeed, we commonly use the very same word to cover all these articulates. Justice is used for the activity from which the value is distilled, as when we speak of the administrartion of justice, or of dispensing of justice. It is also used to represent the idealisation of the activity in to a value as when we speak of the idea of justice. We also speak of a man as just meaning that he always or characteristically does justice, and this is measuring of a person against the value of truth. And finally when we say that justice reigned in the land in Solon’s time, this measuring of a thing or situation in terms of the value over times. It might be useful to adopt as some have suggested, a consistent terminology expressing these distinctions. For example we might use justice and law to refer to the good and the truthful in certain circumstances which is the activity from which in turn the value arises; the idea of justice for the value of truth itself, justness for the virtue of a man who realises the idea of law and justice; and the just for the quality of a situation or conduct or rule in which the idea of justice is realised . And it is perhaps necessary to add that, of course, the qualities of things or situations in which justice is realised may often co-exist with the above quality of persons in those responsible for the things or situations. It can be added as a permissible genarality that the value of truth in law and justice is of the kind that are usually identifiable by the presence of most of its characteristics. It is believed that men best recognise justice by the absence of it, justice can still only be conceived as a value that men affirmatively seek. Clearly, too, justice or law is an ethical value, a value by which men judge the conduct of reasonable beings including putative beings, allowing us to speak of the justness of God, of angels, of inhabitants, of other planets who may be rational, that is, behaviour directed by the will of the actor in the legal process. The adjective just may be found to characterise either the actor or the conduct or both. Furthermore, though a different view may be taken from a different philosphical standpoint, this work will proceed from the main Aristotelian position that justice is a social value; that is, it pertains to that conduct which takes place in the context of inter-personal relations. From this discussion we can say that law and justice is a positive ethical social value. There has been considerable discussion also as to whether justice is a simple or primitive value in terms of truth, not further reducible in to component values. The only fruitful way to pursue such a question, in a work of the present kind, is to allow what answer there may be to emerge from whatever else can be said about law, justice and truth. BIBLIOGRAPHY Sen, Amartya. Idea of Justice. Penguin Books. West,Robin. Caring for Justice. Newyork University Press. Tripathi.BN, Starting on Jurisprudence. Universal Publications. Flink,Jacob. Value Decision. Avy Publications. Blackshield. Pensiero Umano. Hartmann,N. Positive Jurisprudence. Tammelo, Justice and Doubt. ALA Runes,DD. Dictionary of philosphy. Moore,GE. Principal Ethics Read More