Justice, not expedience, must be the guiding light. The orator must fix his eye on the polestar of justice, and plough straight thither. The moment he glances toward expediency, he falls from his high estate.
Interpretation
Justice should guide decision-making rather than convenience or expedience.
In this quote, John Peter Altgeld emphasizes the importance of justice as the foundational principle for action and oratory. He warns that when one prioritizes expediency or convenience over true justice, they compromise their integrity and moral standing, leading to a downfall from their noble goals and ideals.
In practice
During a public speech advocating for civil rights, this quote could be used to emphasize the importance of prioritizing justice over political convenience.
You ask whether a woman should be paid the same wages as man when she does the same work? To this, there can be but one answer. If she does the same quantity and quality of work under the same conditions as a man, simple justice requires that she should be paid the same. wages. To deny her this is to deny her justice.
The doctrine that might makes right has covered the earth with misery. While it crushes the weak, it also destroys the strong. Every deceit, every cruelty, every wrong, reaches back sooner or later and crushes its author. Justice is moral health, bringing happiness, wrong is moral disease, bringing mortal death.
One of the things that pains me is we have so tragically underestimated the trauma, the hardship we create in this country when we treat people unfairly, when we incarcerate them unfairly, when we condemn them unfairly.
The jury system has come to stand for all we mean by English justice. The scrutiny of 12 honest jurors provides defendants and plaintiffs alike a safeguard from arbitrary perversion of the law.
In the US the overwhelming majority of those executed are psychotic, alcoholic, drug addicted or mentally unstable. They frequently are raised in an impoverished and abusive environment. Seldom are people with money or prestige convicted of capital offenses, even more seldom are they executed.
I cannot see any of these death penalty cases where there hasn't been a violation on the ground of either poverty or race. If we can ever get that straightened out, it will help. But, of course, the real answer to it is to do away with the death penalty.
In the area of economic justice, we still have a long way to go. We have too many people who are discriminated against just because they happen to be black or they happen to be a woman or some other minority.
I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice, there is no easy way to get it.
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