Thoughts on Justice

Editor's Note:  The following is a response to :Nash, Robert J. Liberating Scholarly Writing: The Power of Personal Narrative. New York: Teachers College Press, 2004.


Nash was a surprise, relief and a challenge. The surprise was the time I spent rethinking the push I give to undergraduates - APA format, third person, objective, scholarly, etc. In the end, I decided you still need to learn the prevailing academic as well as editorial styles. On the other hand, Nash was a relief in that I don’t know how writing can be objective. Each word, each reference, the research, the thesis, all of it is a choice. If the writer is making the choices those choices are biased to the writer. Yes, we write neutral 3rd person properly formatted stuff. But we are still making huge, consequential choices within those guidelines. Another surprise - Nash is making me argue, albeit thinly, for postmodernism.

The choices are even more apparent when you publish. Don’t we defend our dissertation? What are we defending if not our choices? Words are the little decisions that we made along the way. The words stretch into larger decisions - sentences, thoughts; perhaps it’s all a matter of perspective and opinion. The challenge Nash expressed to me was to come out from behind the curtain of metaphor and analogy and say it straight. Express it from me, not shielded by APA format and couched in academicesee. This challenge occurred as soon as he mention Richard Kimble.

For me, Nash hit the trifecta - Kimble, Sheppard and Jean Val Jean. Nash used them as examples of his search to remake himself. However, my thoughts turned to Justice. I watched The Fugitive as a child. It was very scary - an innocent, good man could be pursued relentlessly by the Law. Even then, I wondered how the Law could be allowed to be so powerful, yet wrong.

A few years later, in Junior High School, I was exposed to Sheppard. I tried out for the debate team (yep, our Junior High has a debate team and there were “try outs). I was given the task of research and defending Sheppard. After weeks of research I was not sure if he was guilty or innocent. But, my job was to defend him, and I did, and I won. I walked away thinking that the Law, as powerful as it was, couldn’t always make a decision - right or wrong. Now, Justice (or the Law) was all powerful, could be wrong and it also couldn’t decide. Either Sheppard is evil incarnate or he is one of the most victimized people on the planet: Justice is blind, deaf and dumb.

On to being a High School Freshman and Les Miserables. Jean Val Jean being pursued through the sewers of Paris over a loaf of bread! Is Justice this petty? The moment I read the passages of the pursuit through the sewer, I thought of my father. He had been a police officer for over thirty years. One night, when I was nine or so, he came home from the second Watts Riot. He was in his motorcycle police officer’s uniform - tall, young, strong, with the helmet and the high shinny boots; and, he smelled of smoke. He smelled like what a city smells like when it burns itself down.

He sat at the kitchen table and talked with my mother. Me, I hovered in the background. like every child that wants to hear the adults - close enough to hear but not to be seen. I only remember one thing, he said, “How do you arrest someone when they just want bread for their family.” My father felt like Javert should have felt. Duty bound yet seriously conflicted. Returning to Jean Val Jean - Is Justice all powerful, mistaken, blind, deaf, dumb and now petty? So, how did I do a quarter of century in municipal law enforcement?

How do you have a man die in your arms and then relentless pursue his murderer only to find that when Justice is done and the murder is in jail the murdered is still dead? This happened to me. This wasn’t Justice; it didn’t bring the man back; it didn’t provide the mythical closure for his family. At best, when a police officer arrests someone they might be preventing the next injustice.

This small story is what Nash showed me. This is my search for the meaning in Justice, Ethics and Truth. This is what influences my research and writing. My question is - will my search be better served through Nash’s vehicle of personal narrative writing or should I “just keep swimming” with the academics?