Monday, December 10, 2007

“Just” means “placing something or someone in its proper place”, placing wrong people in the group of wrong people and placing right people in the group of right people. Legal justice is usually measured through various legal articles and paragraphs, so that how long a criminal should be punished is determined based on the articles of Criminal Code. However, legal justice should be distinguished from sense of justice. Justice based on Criminal Code doesn’t necessarily guarantee sense of justice.

A chicken thief can be imprisoned for six months, meanwhile a corrupter abusing 100 million rupiahs, equal to price of about twenty thousand chickens, can avoid traps of legal articles, since he is skilful in manipulating those legal articles. Character of justice is balance, so that symbol of a legal institution is a balance. Balance is character of the nature created by the Most Just God. If mankind damage the balance of the nature, then disasters will strike them. Similarly, unjust rulers will have impacts in forms of disasters striking their citizens. Opposite of just is despotic (zalim)

Zalim comes for Arabic dzolama - yadzlimu – dzulmun - dzulumat- dzalim-madzlum whose basic meaning is dark. A despotic person is a person whose behaviours like those of a person in darkness who doesn’t or can’t place someone or something in his/its proper place, for example punishing innocent people, abusing state money, taking other’s wife although he had had his own wife. In daily.