Opinion Will Norway choose justice or vengeance?
Or perhaps,both because for all our polite pretences,justice is often about satisfying the need for payback
Norway,a nation far removed from the wickedness of the world,is now facing one of its greatest moral challenges: What to do with Anders Behring Breivik,the man who has confessed to massacring 76 people,many of them children. Norway does not allow for capital punishment,and the longest prison sentence a killer can usually receive there is 21 years. A country of such otherwise good fortune and peaceful intention is now unprepared legally and morally to deal with such a monstrous atrocity.
The United States,unfortunately,is much more familiar with this problem. Americans have spent several recent weeks in a vengeful fury over the acquittal of Casey Anthony,who partied for an entire month while her 2-year-old daughter,Caylee,was supposedly missing but might have actually been murdered by Anthony. Many believe that Caylee was denied justice; her mother,meanwhile,has been released from prison and remains hidden in an undisclosed location,largely to protect her from vigilante justice.
The inadequacy of legal justice is one thing,its outright failure is quite another. But in both cases the attraction of a nonlegal alternative is a powerful one. Are these vengeful feelings morally appropriate? The answer is yes because the actual difference between vengeance and justice is not as great as people think. Its difficult to have honest conversations about revenge. Seeing someone receive his just deserts often feels righteous and richly deserved,and yet society regards vengeance as barbaric. Governments warn citizens not to take justice into their own hands,insisting that the state alone has the duty and right to punish wrongdoers pursuant to the social contract.
As a result,most people hesitate to frame their anguish in terms of revenge. Some are more forthright,proclaiming a moral duty to avenge,especially when the law fails and breaches its part of the social contract.
Next month,Michael Woodmansee,who in 1975 gruesomely murdered Jason Foreman,a 5-year-old,is scheduled to be released from prison after serving only 28 years of a 40-year sentence. John Foreman,the boys father,now faces the prospect of bumping into his sons murderer in their small town. Foreman said,If this man is released anywhere in my vicinity,or if I can find him after the fact,I do intend to kill this man. Such statements of unvarnished revenge make many uncomfortable. But how different is revenge from justice,really? Every legal system,however dispassionate and procedural,must still pass the gut test of seeming morally just; and revenge must always be just and proportionate. That is what the biblical phrase eye for an eye means. Justice requires that no less than an eye can be taken in retaliation for a lost eye,but no more than an eye either.
In art and culture,everyone roots for the avenger,and audiences will settle for nothing less than a proper payback . Recent studies in neuroscience and evolutionary psychology have claimed that human beings are hard-wired for vengeance.
Many believe that in such cases,capital punishment is appropriate because it comes closest to avenging victims. Norwegians may be contemplating this very idea. Polls suggest that most people around the world support the death penalty,especially for wrongdoers deemed the worst of the worst. Certainly Breivik qualifies for that distinction. Legal systems should punish the guilty commensurate with their crimes and recognise a moral duty to satisfy the needs of victims to feel avenged. Allowing the guilty to walk free because of procedural errors or because of the ambiguities of reasonable doubt, as in the case of Casey Anthony invites vigilante justice. Neither justice nor revenge is negotiable.
Getting even is not complicated arithmetic. A just outcome in Norway,however,given the number of young lives taken,will doubtless be unsatisfying. Casey Anthony watchers will resign themselves to accepting the jurys verdict and await the next celebrity trial. And John Foreman,the aggrieved father with the anguish of a debt still unpaid,is left to count the days.
Thane Rosenbaum is the author of The Myth of Moral Justice
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