The basis for our system of justice, (amply borrowed from the French, who had studied the Greeks, who must have heard a story or two about Solomon), is empirical evidence, presented beyond a reasonable doubt. The questionable wisdom behind such a vague litmus test, most certainly took into account the fallibility of human observation, perception and nature, as numerous studies show that we tend to see what we want to see and, over time, restructure memory, often far from reality.

Lawyering, (the perpetration of a profession widely scorned, at least since Shakespearean times), has always been less about justice than the manipulation of perception to skew real or imagined circumstance to cast doubt on an opponent’s thesis. Truth, honesty, right and wrong are minor players in this drama, and the shameful disparity of punishment for those who cannot afford a premium manipulator versus the dastardly baddies who are ten-ways lawyered-up, tears at the very fabric of our society.

My ideas about proscribed consequence for knowingly causing others harm are inappropriately medieval, but my sense of crime and punishment couldn’t be more removed from the daily freak show of American law enforcement. Too many tried and jailed offenders in our Guinness-Record prison population, whose lives and the lives of their families are forever tainted, are mostly guilty of the cosmic selection of their birth, ethnicity, poverty and pervasive hopelessness. Bearing witness to this unapologetic double standard, where Wall Streeters bring down the world’s economy, politicians steal and lie, bad cops kill and corporations pollute with virtual immunity, makes it difficult to separate our jurisprudence from the unconscionable, sentencing to torture, stoning and beheading in cultures we tend to label barbaric.

During important political campaigns, (noticed any lately?), candidates like to trot out their outrage at the injustice of justice in America, but those sound bites are seldom sincere. The solution, however, is pretty simple. If you are…just refrain from being black or Hispanic or poor and life will get markedly better for you.