One of my section mates from 1L went to Seoul, Korea this summer for
the Korea Summer Program. Having been fascinated with Korean culture
and society, he has asked me further questions on Korea from time to
time after his return to the States. Because I spent most of my
childhood in Korea, I was always able to give him satisfying answers
instantly. However, one day, he asked me a question that I could not
readily answer – why can’t Korea and Japan get along?

Japan invaded Korea in 1910 and dominated Korea for 35 years. During
the Japanese occupation, a great deal of atrocities took place.
Korean girls and women were kidnapped and sent to Japanese military
camps as comfort women. These ladies were forced to sleep with
approximately 30-40 Japanese soldiers a day. Koreans were
experimented on in a secret military medical experimentation unit
called “Unit 731.” They were subjected to vivisection without
anesthesia. Their limbs were amputated and parts of their brain,
lung, liver, etc. were removed. Weapons were tested on Koreans to
figure out how the weapons could kill humans most efficiently. These
are only few of the many, many atrocities that Japanese committed
against Koreans during the Japanese colonial period.

Japan apologized to Korea after they withdrew their military forces
from Korea. Fifty-five years have passed since. Yet Koreans still
shudder when the Japanese colonial period is brought up. A lot of
Korean people, including the survivors of the Japanese colonial period
and the young people who were born after the colonial period like
myself, have animus against Japan. Why is it that Koreans are unable
to forgive Japan, put the past behind them and move on?

It is because appropriate acknowledgment has not been made. It is
because sincere apology has not been given. In Professor Rosenbaum’s
class, we have learned that appropriate acknowledgement and apology
should be made in order for the victims to be restored and move on.
Most importantly, the apology should not be perfunctory. It should be
sincere. It should be more than just saying “I am sorry.” If the
perpetrators are sincerely sorry for what they have done, their
actions should also reflect their remorse.

Although the Japanese government had said “I am sorry” to the victims
of the war crimes many times, their actions thereafter have been quite
contradictory. One of the most criticized events is the Japanese
Prime Minister’s annual visit to Yasukuni Shrine. Yasukuni Jinja is a
Shinto shrine to war dead who served the Emperor of Japan during wars
from 1867-1951. Of the 2,466,532 people contained in the shrine’s
Book of Souls, 1,068 were convicted of war crimes by a post World War
II court. Korea has protested against various visits to the shrine by
Japanese Prime Ministers, because it appears that they are
unapologetic about the events of World War II. How can they
commemorate the war criminals who have committed such heinous
atrocities?

Another much criticized issue is the distortion of Japanese history
records. The Japanese government has systematically distorted their
historical records and conveniently omitted their atrocities
(including setting up military brothels full of Korean comfort women)
from history textbooks, in the hope of whitewashing their actions
during World War II. The Japanese children nowadays grow up, not
knowing that their country was once the perpetrator of the World War
II.

Merely a week ago, the Japanese government showed another unapologetic
behavior that left the Koreans feeling dumbstruck, appalled, and hurt.
The comfort women who have survived the Japanese colonial period have
been protesting in front of the Japanese Embassy in Seoul, Korea for
the last ten years, asking for an appropriate remedy. On December 24,
just before Christmas day, the Japanese government finally responded
that it will reward the comfort women with appropriate remedy, which
will be JPY 99 (equivalent to USD 1) per person. The comfort women
wailed at this ridiculous result and protested against the Japanese
government fiercely. The Japanese government responded by saying that
if we take into account the monetary value back then, JPY 99 is indeed
an appropriate award amount. I could only laugh at Japan’s shameless
behavior.

In class, we learned that acknowledgments and apologies are extremely
valuable. They are both remedial and compensatory to the injured
party. When appropriate acknowledgment and apology is made by the
perpetrator, the spirit of the injured party will be healed. However,
if appropriate acknowledgment and apology is not made by the
perpetrator, the injured party’s spirit will be harmed further and his
animus towards the perpetrator will be aggravated.

How can Korea forgive Japan, put the past behind them, and move on
when Japan fail to show sincere remorse and apology (that is
uncontradicted by its actions) time after time? After all that Japan
has done to Korea during the Japanese colonial period and thereafter,
I don’t think it is too much that many Koreans still have certain
animus against Japan.

By Malissa Eng

In Norman Jewison’s 1979 movie, “And Justice for All,” Al Pacino plays
defense attorney Arthur Kirkland.  Unlike most attorneys, his main
concern isn’t with winning cases.  He is much more interested in his
clients and the stories they have to tell.  Through the movie, we
learn the extent of corruption within Maryland’s judicial system and
the noble steps that Kirkland takes to make moral changes within the
system.

The movie begins with Kirkland in jail for contempt of court after
punching Judge Fleming.  The Judge, abiding by a Maryland statute,
refused to look at evidence that proved Kirkland’s client innocent
because it was submitted three days too late.  Kirkland’s client asks
him why it should matter if it was a difference of three days or three
years if everyone is already convinced of his innocence.  The truth is
that the legal system loves distinctions.  It loves efficiency. And it
loves resolution.  While these other values might interfere with the
search for truth, this is how the current system operates.  By
punching the Judge, Kirkland was rebelling against the inherent
unfairness sometimes found within our system.  His client eventually
loses all hope for justice, starts taking hostages in prison, and is
shot by a member of the SWAT team.

In another of Kirkland’s cases, he represents a client who was
involved in an armed robbery.  He promises him that he will only face
probation for his crime.  However, Kirkland is unable to represent his
client during the sentencing phase and asks another lawyer to fill in
for him.  This lawyer fails to give new information to the judge, and
the client instead receives jail time.  This client, really counting
on probation, hangs himself soon after sentencing.  When Kirkland
hears this, he goes crazy and confronts the other lawyer.  He smashes
his car’s windows and screams at him.  Kirkland understands the
importance of a lawyer’s job–that people’s lives are at stake and
that lawyers often fail to see the human element involved.

After these difficult cases, Kirkland is asked to represent Judge
Fleming for allegedly raping and assaulting a young woman.  Although
everyone knows Kirkland and the Judge greatly dislike one another,
Kirkland is told to put his personal feelings aside.  We discussed in
class how lawyers are trained to be disinterested, to zealously
advocate on behalf of clients despite their personal feelings.  Here,
Kirkland really has no other choice than to take the case.  He’s being
blackmailed by higher authority to represent the Judge or face
disbarment.

Although inadmissible at court, Kirkland had the Judge take a
polygraph test.  When the Judge passed, Kirkland felt that defending
him was the right thing to do.  Shortly before trial, however,
Kirkland discovered that the test results were doctored and that an
eyewitness for the defense was lying.  In fact, the Judge confessed to
Kirkland that he had raped and assaulted the victim and would do it
again.  It is especially interesting because Kirkland knew the
prosecution’s case was weak and that he could probably win if he
wanted.  After all, the Judge was highly-respected in the community,
the defense had numerous witnesses, and the prosecution’s only
evidence lied in the victim’s own testimony.  But in a very memorable
opening statement, Kirkland tore his client to pieces.  Once he knew
the truth–that the Judge actually performed the despicable
actions–Kirkland couldn’t bring himself to convince people otherwise.
For him, truth was more important than a legal victory.  Although
there certainly wasn’t “justice for all” within the movie, Kirkland’s
opening statement provided a step in the right direction.

By Jodie Shihadeh

In the true spirit of winter break, I’ve been catching up on seeing
all the quintessential “mom” movies — those movies you wouldn’t
“mind” seeing if you “had” to go with your mom or other similar
parental figure. What appears as an excuse to spend time together is
really a sneaky opportunity for you to see those movies you secretly
want to see but would never suggest to see with your friends. This is
how I recently came to watch the film, “It’s Complicated,” featuring
Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin, and Steve Martin.

The film’s plot fits the “mom-movie” profile perfectly. It depicts
Streep’s character finding personal revelation and emotional growth
through her clumsy yet entertaining dual love affairs — one with her
dashing ex-husband (Baldwin) and the other with shy, slightly nerdy,
new guy (Martin). Cute men, cute plot, cute houses and children. What
better way to recover from finals?

Ironically, the plot’s underlying theme also fits the Culture Forum
blog profile just as perfectly. At the risk of revealing some story
spoilers, Streep’s character gets the ultimate moral revenge. She has
a love affair with her ex-husband, who is currently married to the
woman he originally cheated on Streep’s character with 10 years prior.
The second wife got what she had coming, right? And who better to
deliver the message than the woman originally scorned. Talk about
karmic retribution!

According to the moral justice themes we discussed in class, what
could be sweeter for Streep? Beautiful house, beautiful ex-husband/new
lover, beautiful revenge. Streep’s character is completely confused
though. Her character fits within the perfect mold of Sigmund Freud’s
notion of civilization, also discussed in class. She is the model
citizen. She (presumably) always arrives to engagements on time, if
not early. She rarely has sex, at least until Alec Baldwin comes into
the picture. And she would never, ever, even think about having an
affair. Again, until Alec Baldwin comes into the picture.
The beginning of the film is all about Streep’s character’s struggle
with whether to exact the ultimate revenge on the woman who hammered
the final nail in the coffin of Streep’s marriage. Obviously whatever
legal resolution was achieved through the divorce proceedings didn’t
quash all of the emotions that surrounded the relationship. There was
a spiritual harm and craving that wasn’t rectified.

The interesting aspect of the film is that friends (and therapist!) of
Streep’s character all agree that she should have this affair with her
ex-husband. Very interesting community response to prospects of moral
revenge. Just like the news article we discussed in class about the
woman making her cheating husband stand on the street corner with a
sign proclaiming him to be a cheater, Streep’s character engaging in
adultery with her ex-husband might have been the only way she could
feel really whole after everything that had happened between them. Her
friends and therapist also seem to agree that a little ex-husband
adultery might be the perfect spiritual remedy for her ailing soul.
How funny that, had it been any other woman or any other man, the
friends and therapist would probably not hesitate to object to
Streep’s situation. But because of the spiritual harm these two people
had inflicted on Streep’s character, somehow that makes her adultery
permissible.

Cutting to the chase, at the end of the movie, when Streep’s character
ultimately resolves the unanswered question about whether Baldwin’s
character and she could mend their relationship, there is a sense of
peace between the two characters that hadn’t existed before. Streep’s
and Baldwin’s characters attain a sophistication and maturity after
their adulterous romp that the legal divorce sure couldn’t deliver.
Perhaps, and most likely, divorce proceedings in the legal system
never give people the spiritual closure they need. Maybe pure moral
revenge is the garnish to legal proceedings. I’m not sure what the
answer is. I just hope the opportunity for adultery doesn’t present
itself with Alec Baldwin. Otherwise things really could get
complicated.

Why is it that, given the long arm of the law, animals consistently
get the short end of the stick?  When we talk about morality and the
law, the first thing that comes to mind for me is the gaping hole the
law has left for the majority of the earth’s living creatures.  But
are animals members of the moral community?  The law is continually
expanding to cover subjugated classes, but has failed to do so with
respect to animals.  Science now tells us that animals are indeed
sentient—they have feelings and they know pain.  They impact our lives
in myriad ways.  And yet there is no place for them in the law.
Society tends to think of itself as advancing, yet the way we treat
animals is an anachronism.  Actually, even that is unfairly biased in
favor of society; today—since the advent of factory farming,—animals
are treated worse than ever.  One disturbing example of our general
attitudes towards animals involves an art display in Denmark that
consisted of goldfish in blenders.  The blenders were plugged in, and
the goldfish could be pureed at the viewer’s whim.  No laws offered
protection for the goldfish, and several goldfish were blended to
death.  This raises ethical questions about our society and the
failure of law to account for this.  It is about time the law and our
concomitant attitudes towards animals evolve.  I’m not suggesting that
everyone become a vegan or vegetarian and abstain from all use and
ownership of animals.  My present objective is merely to dispel the
myth that there are laws that protect the animals that we own or use
in so many ways from cruelty and needless suffering.  There aren’t.

There are some laws that purport to protect animals insomuch as they
are considered property.  This “property paradigm” is problematic in
many ways.  For one thing, it is dishonest.  It accounts for harm to
owners of animals as a result of harming an animal, but ignores the
harm to the animal itself.  This is fundamentally wrong.  What about
animals that are abused by the owner himself, or abused animals that
have no owner?  The notion of animals as property under the law is a
Pandora’s box of legal loopholes and slippery slopes that are
unfortunately used unfavorably towards animals.  More importantly,
these laws typically exclude farmed animals.

Animals farmed for food comprise over 98% of the earth’s animals.
That effectively means that all other animals on this earth—including
animals in the jungles and forests, animals in zoos, companion animals
such as cats, dogs, and horses, animals in circuses, animals we kill
for skin and fur, animals we hold in captivity for laboratory
testing—all of these animals are statistically insignificant.  In the
U.S. alone over 10 billion animals are slaughtered every year for
food.  Yet, these factory “farmed” animals—the ones who need legal
protection the most—are largely exempted from legal protections.  The
legal framework then, is essentially illusory.  If you went to visit a
country in which only 2% of the inhabitants were living above the
poverty line, you would likely say that the country is impoverished,
because 98% of the population is effectively the whole country.
Similarly, if animal law excludes 98% of the earth’s animals, it is
safe to say that animals do not have legal protection—the logical
conclusion is that if animal law does not apply to 98% of animals,
animal law is nonexistent.  That there are laws that ostensibly
protect the remaining 2% of the animals is beside the point, and they
are largely ineffective in any case.

The sheer amount of farmed animals and concomitant cruelty is entirely
discomforting.  This begs the question, how has it come to be that 98%
of the earth’s animals have disappeared from the law in the U.S.?  One
of the reasons that farmed animals have disappeared from the law is
that people do not like to think about how animals are raised and
killed.  I think most people simply find it too difficult and
inconvenient to confront the moral questions that are raised by eating
meat, and would sooner not know how their food ends up on their
plates.  This is troubling because the law seems to deem insignificant
the only statistically significant group of animals; and the public
remains largely uninformed that these animals are entirely
unprotected; thus there is no dialogue about it.  Those who lobby for
even small improvements in the system, such as increasing the size of
a gestation crate so that the pig can actually turn around at some
point in its lifetime, are deemed radical activists, and the response
is overwhelmingly defensive.  Yet it seems that most people find their
pets, and companion-types of animals in general, significant enough to
warrant some protections—again, the statistically insignificant group
of animals—and yet, because they choose not to think about “farmed”
animals—again, the only animals that are statistically
significant—those animals are completely stripped of the most basic
legal protections.  I would submit that this would not be so if the
public was informed of the fact that there are no legal protections
for these animals and what actually goes on in slaughterhouses is
beyond the reaches of the law.  If the law only protects those animals
that are statistically insignificant, it seems to follow then that the
law is largely insignificant as well.

Another reason that legal protection for farmed animals is illusory is
because judicial deference to the industry erects an impossible
barrier.  Courts allow the ones who have the greatest interest in
maintaining practices that value the economic bottom line over animal
welfare to define what constitutes an “acceptable” practice and thus
what is “cruel.”  If the farming community came up with a new,
unfathomably cruel way of farming an animal, there is nothing anyone
other than the legislature can do or say to put an end to it.  As long
as a certain percentage of farmers are doing it, it is accepted.
Pennsylvania selling horses for meat is a particularly distressing
example; especially the fact that the message effectively says that if
enough people do it, it will be okay since it will rise to the level
of “common” or “customary.”   This calls to mind the reasonable man
test, and how immoral practices that are commonly accepted will
ultimately lower the legal moral bar.  It is extremely troubling that
the industry itself is allowed to define the criminality of its own
conduct.  This would seem unimaginable in any other industry.  What
does this say about our legal system, when the legislature has the
ability to render judges, juries, and groups charged with protecting
animal welfare entirely irrelevant?   What does this say about our
society?  It says that the political trumps the legal, and the legal
trumps the moral.  It seems that these practices are commonly accepted
because there is no public debate and very little public awareness
about the practices which most people would probably never partake in
themselves, but gladly enjoy the products of when it is done by
someone else.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that increased awareness would cause
all of society to become vegan; the practices I refer to are not
consumption or use of animals in general, but the inhumane ways in
which the animals we eat are treated, from birth to death, and the
needless suffering and pain in between.  Animals no longer live on
farms as we were taught as children; the farming industry has
transformed into a factory slaughter system.  It is shocking that a
country as advanced as the U.S. in every other area has fostered an
institutionalized cruelty that demands a view of animals that is so
retro, it can only be described as Cartesian.  This view of animals
has literally reduced them to machines.  For example, hens confined to
egg laying cages, unable to ever move their wings, are reduced to
nothing more than egg-laying machines.  This image calls to mind the
antiquated Cartesian view that animals are “automatons,” or
“machines.”  It is ironic to me how backwards our view towards animals
has become, that the original line Descartes drew between humans and
animals was “sentience,” and yet it seems that it is the humans who
have become so desensitized, so non-feeling, that we are able to throw
away in dumpsters  live animals who can still feel pain.  This happens
every day when hens eggs are hatched to obtain more egg-laying hens,
and the egg contains a male baby chick.  Since they cannot lay eggs,
they are discarded in dumpsters or are chopped up alive and used as
live fertilizer.  We think that we are advancing as a society because
we are able to come up with new technologies which make it easier and
cheaper to turn animals into dinner, but we are not advancing.  We are
destroying the integrity of entire species of farmed animals as we
know it.  We come up with scientific ways to streamline the process
that we think we should be proud of—but can a featherless chicken even
be called a chicken anymore?  Animals are literally stripped naked of
any legal protections in the U.S.—a chicken literally doesn’t even
have a right to its feathers anymore.  This view is holding back our
moral progress as a society.   The European Union has begun to enforce
legislation protecting farmed animals, but the U.S. is lightyears
behind.  The E.U. and the rest of the world also consume far less meat
and poultry than the U.S.  The U.S. must move towards the European
approach now if it is to maintain its superpower status.  This is
evidence that the rest of the world is rapidly advancing ahead of the
U.S. in other areas as well.  If I cannot implore you on a moral level
to educate yourself about how your food ends up on your plate and the
lack of legal protection for the animals involved, perhaps this will
strike a competitive chord in some.  I leave you with a quote by
Gandhi that is called to mind:  “The greatness of a nation and its
moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

By Renato Petocchi

Many who graduate from colleges around the country find themselves unable to transition into the working world successfully. It isn’t surprising then that many who graduate from law school find themselves without any actual knowledge of what it means to be a lawyer and face the same problem.
Among the many problems with law school is the concept of the curve. Specifically, all first year grades and some second year grades are curved. This results in a situation where you can be right but still be wrong (because you are “less right” than a better answer from somebody else). Theoretically, this system could also leave some with virtually no legal knowledge whatsoever depending on the sum of the abilities of the students in the class. If everyone in the class doesn’t know a topic, then none are penalized for their ignorance.
Perhaps legal education’s greatest problem is from the lack of practical experience it imparts on students. In my own experience, I found myself unprepared to perform the tasks required of me in my summer work at a small firm. “You have to be prepared to do everything” an associate told me, and I realized I really didn’t know how to do anything. I had only written a few briefs and memos my first year, and research was not my strong suit because only one class required any research at all. Within the classroom, students are taught with the case method, which only teaches them how to analyze the law, but not how to practice it.
Virtually all knowledge about what it means to be a lawyer comes from outside the classroom by way of internships or summer jobs. Law students should not be limited to honing their craft only in the brief summer months between semesters. Also, given the current job climate, these opportunities are becoming increasingly scarce, so where must our students turn now? Should we allow law students with little experience to represent clients simply because they have passed the bar exam?
The answer to these questions is quite simple: why not make internships a requirement, or require students to perform apprenticeships with practicing attorneys in areas of the law they are interested in? With such a requirement, law students could continue their regular classes, but perhaps have one day a week dedicated to working in their field of interest. Numerous studies have shown that lawyers suffer from great job dissatisfaction. They have levels of depression and substance abuse well above other professions. Requiring internships may provide a solution by allowing law students to enter their fields with their eyes open. They will know what to expect from their employers, and what is expected from them in their work. Additionally, they can find out what area of the law appeals to their skill sets and interests. Requiring law students to perform internships will make happier, more dedicated lawyers, employers, and clients.

By Diana Uhimov

The lyrics “when the truth is found to be lies, and all the joy within
you dies, don’t you want somebody to love, don’t you need somebody to
love…” drown out a teenagers Hebrew lecture as he listens to the
Jefferson Airplane song, Somebody to Love, on his walkman during
class, in the Coen Brothers’ 2009 film A Serious Man. The film
centers around the protagonist, Larry’s search for answers about why,
despite always doing the “right thing,” his life suddenly seems to be
falling apart. Larry, a physics professor who had been living his
life as if everything was as certain as the mathematical equations he
taught to his students, fails to realize that his relationship with
his wife has disintegrated, and he barely knows his own children.
When his wife decides to leave him for another man, he goes to a
lawyer who, unequipped to acknowledge Larry’s true grief, suggests
that he go talk with a Rabbi. After seeing numerous Rabbis, Larry’s
questions are left unanswered. They tell him that maybe these are
expressions of God’s will and that he should gain a new perspective,
and learn about how things really are.

It turns out that after all this time while being a generally good
person and following the rules, Larry became a mediocre, mechanical,
uninspiring person. We can’t really blame him though. These traits
are exactly what our society promotes, as epitomized in the reasonable
man standard in the U.S. legal system. Our system judges a human
being’s conduct based on what the average, rational person would do.
The reasonable person test fails any moral criteria because it doesn’t
lead to virtue and is incapable of subjectivity, but instead judges
individuals based on external values of the majority. This type of
group thinking can be extremely dangerous as it prohibits individual
thinking. When there is no room for individual thought and dissent, a
permissive environment for atrocity is created. During The Holocaust,
Nazis took orders unquestioningly, and were able to detach from the
horror of their conduct and sleep at night because they were part of a
group where such conduct was acceptable.

By conforming to the reasonable man standard, Larry was detached from
the spiritual realm. Thus, he did not form meaningful connections
with his wife or his children. He avoided the truth—that his son was
a pothead, that his daughter had an unhealthy obsession with her
appearance, and that his wife was seeing someone else—in hopes that by
disacknowledging the truth, it will just disappear. Larry found out
the hard way that truths cannot be buried because they will eventually
come back in a worse way, like in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, where
burying the truth created a toxic society and once he found out the
truth, Oedipus could no longer bear to see the world and poked out his
own eyes as an acknowledgment of the horror of killing his own father.
This is what the Rabbis were telling him when they said that he must
learn how things really are. Regardless of whether or why God may
have willed for him to undergo these events, the only thing he can do
is to know the truth. The power of truth is symbolized by the South
African Truth and Reconciliation Committees where the blacks who had
been wronged sought historical justice over retributive justice
because they felt that if their story was told to the world, they
could move on. In a moral system, truth would be valued above
efficiency and procedural rules. We are choking our victims by
marginalizing their truth and this is reflected in peoples’ private
lives. A Serious Man portrays this perfectly when the property lawyer
comes in to give Larry the legal solution to his neighbor encroaching
on his property and then drops dead just before giving him the answer.
The Jefferson Airplane lyrics that we hear throughout the movie
remind us that no matter how hurtful the truth may be, the only way to
move on is to live a moral and spiritual life by acknowledging it.

Posted by Michael Kanatake

Who sympathizes with a serial killer?  In Showtime’s hit television
drama series Dexter, the audience does just that.  The series centers
on Dexter Morgan, a serial killer who works for the Miami Metro Police
Department as a blood spatter analyst.  Dexter is a sociopath.  He is
unable to feel any type of human emotion except for when he kills his
victims.  His inability to experience emotions is due to a traumatic
childhood event as he witnessed the brutal murder of his mother and
was locked in a shipping container for three days with his mother’s
body.  Harry Morgan, the police officer who rescued Dexter from the
bloody shipping container, adopted Dexter and realized early on that
Dexter had sociopathic tendencies.  Harry understood that because of
Dexter’s past, he would become a serial killer and thus teaches Dexter
a set of rules and principles that Dexter should abide by in order to
avoid killing innocent people and getting arrested.  Harry teaches
Dexter to only kill criminals who slip through the cracks of our legal
system so that Dexter’s bloodthirsty cravings can somehow result in a
public good.  He teaches him to create a façade, a false personality
that will prevent those who surround him from learning his truth.

The result is a hollow and empty man.  Dexter simply cannot feel or
experience anything human and can only temporarily fill the gaping
voids in his life by killing rapists and murderers in a cold and
sadistic fashion.  What is strange is that as an audience member, you
find yourself rooting for Dexter, hoping he doesn’t get caught.
Through Dexter’s back-story, you understand Dexter’s idiosyncrasies
and realize he is simply a man trying to get by in a society within
which he does not fit.  Yet our legal system could never account for a
man like Dexter.  Because our legal system is unable to account for
the back-story of the individuals being tried, a person like Dexter
would quickly be discarded as a psycho serial killer who needs to be
executed.

Now I am in no way condoning Dexter’s actions in the TV series as
killing individuals is always unjustified in my eyes.  Yet the show
does highlight the importance of back-story and how opinions of
individuals can change once such individuals are afforded the
opportunity to tell their story.  If the back-story of a fictional
serial killer can result in feelings of sympathy towards that serial
killer, then our legal system is undeniably ignorant for failing to
introduce back-stories into our courthouses in any meaningful
capacity.

For the first time this semester, I can finally button my bottom blazer button and strut alongside Thane. We agree on something; the truth about truth and reconciliation commissions is that they don’t work. These commissions have failed in numerous post-conflict transitional countries — namely, El Salvador, Chile, Haiti, Peru, and, most recently, Northern Ireland (they can’t even get their TRC off the ground). The reason for these failures is quite simple: the truth alone is insufficient to achieve restorative justice. Victims need vindication, they need moral revenge, and they need retribution.

In 1996, the Haitian National Commission of Truth and Justice drafted a confidential list of alleged perpetrators who took part in the oppressive regime led by Raoul Cedras from 1991-93. After this list leaked to a Haitian newspaper, the government feared the publication of the list not only would force those named to go into hiding or flee Haiti to evade punishment, but would also encourage victim reprisals. The Haitian government was forced to abandon the truth-alone model and sought an alternative approach.

Similarly, in 1991, the Commission of Truth of El Salvador initially decided to “name and shame” those allegedly responsible for serious acts of violence occurring between 1980-91 in its final TRC report. This decision to reveal the names of alleged perpetrators, however, troubled former Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani. He warned that he could not guarantee the safety of witnesses if the report were published.

What’s the commonality between these two TRC failures? Both the Haitian and Salvadoran government recognized that empty, immune confessions were insufficient to satisfy victims’ desires for revenge, punishment, and retribution. There was a universal acceptance of the idea that once the truth was revealed, those victims seeking revenge would get it. After all, they needed it.

So, the difficulty remains in striking the right balance between purging the truth and delivering punishment. The Special Court for Sierra Leone’s recent trial of former Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, has accomplished this quite well. Dozens of victims and witnesses of his reign have been afforded a platform to look the dictator in the eye and tell their story. Stories of Taylor eating victim’s livers, forcing women to dispose of the bodies of their own children, and violent rapes were all presented this summer. Taylor, too, has told his side of the story, and all of this has been made available to the public through http://www.charlestaylortrial.org. The site contains daily trial updates, blog posts, FAQ’s, live video streams of the trial, and even layman’s definitions of legal terms.

The SCSL really knows how to deliver justice. Through truth and transparency, victims have been given a platform to be heard, they have been given the opportunity to hear the dictator speak, and they will soon be delivered the verdict in the trial of Charles Taylor.

If I were a victim of Charles Taylor’s reign, this is the justice I would want — truth + punishment. Truth alone cannot fill the void in the victim’s soul. Call me a retributivist or label me lex talionis, but if Charles Taylor ate my slain father’s liver as a weekday entree, my appetite for justice would call for more than an empty, immune confession. I’ll take the words from his heart for the truth and his head for the punishment.

+ Matt Buchwach

By J. Copeland

Michael Scott, regional manager of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch (The Office on NBC), refuses to let professionalism or the ‘9 to 5’ attitude distort his moral judgment. Ok, he might lack the social skills and cultural refinement we expect from our superiors, but he has some redeeming qualities. For Mr. Scott there is no distinction between what is business and what is personal, there is only right and wrong.

Throughout his tenure as regional manager Michael has had trouble making the most routine of business decisions. His relative incompetence is partly to blame, but on the other hand it is always more than ‘just business’ to him. He doesn’t seem able or willing to reduce his co-workers to some objective performance measure or see them as soulless revenue generators. While Michael is stuck in moral crisis mode, others watch in puzzlement as to why he just can’t fire the lowest earner or accept the inevitable demise of Dunder Mifflin.

On one particular occasion Michael was instructed to prepare a presentation introducing his branch to the new chief financial officer of the company. Naturally, a business manager would compile a presentation full of pie charts and bar graphs mapping revenues, expenses, and other financial indicators. Of course, the thought of doing any of this never crossed Michael’s mind. Instead, Michael put together a short film including short bios on each of his employees. This left the new CFO scratching his head, how could insight into the personality of his employees be of any financial significance to Dunder Miffilin?

The average person operates under separate moral standards depending on his or her context. Michael does not check his conscious at the door; he applies the same moral guidelines to every aspect of his life. He is riddled by guilt after infiltrating a local ‘mom & pop’ paper store for its client list when upper management praises his effort. He is despondent over the fate of his employees when corporate threatened to close his branch and drives to the CFO’s to save their jobs (though they were all kind of bummed when the branch was saved).

It seems like every episode Michael is sent reeling by what most would consider ordinary business activity. His employees and superiors constantly remind him that it is ‘only business’ and implore him not to engage things on an emotional level. But, Michael refuses to play by the rules of the professional world that operate to distance one’s ‘moral mindset’.

A particularly illustrative episode took Michael to business school in the role of a guest speaker for one of Ryan’s (his ‘protégé’) classes. By the end Michael feels deeply hurt by his “cool, great looking best friend” who had the gall to give a well reasoned and researched presentation that concluded with Dunder Mifflin’s imminent obsolescence. Ryan predictably responds that it was ‘just business’ and Michael scolds him saying that, “Business is always personal! It’s the most personal thing in the world.” In short, the employees of Dunder Mifflin’s Scranton branch don’t know how lucky they are to work underneath Michael Scott. That’s what she said.

By: Aaron Retter

In the movie Scarface, Tony Montana, a poor Cuban native, built a million dollar drug empire in South Florida. We like and hate Montana. We like him because, well, because he takes care of business. But we hate him because he is too impulsive.

In class we discussed that professionalization permits one to detach from one’s moral bearings. For instance, assassins sleep peacefully at night because they divest themselves from their depraved behavior. What one does from 9-5—their profession—is an isolated pursuit independent of one’s morality and conscious. This theme is important because it has helped to explain the way in which serial murderers, and even those who participate in genocide, live with themselves. As mentioned in numerous posts, Furtwangler’s music helped Nazis to escape to a beautiful place in order that they would not confront the reality of their actions. In a century that has seen five genocides, professionalization has certainly helped people live with themselves.

The Sopranos is a perfect example of the effects of professionalization. A mobster, Tony Soprano, has two “occupations.” He kills and robs during the day. And he tends to his family at night. It’s amazing that he can so easily murder others 9-5, but at night he is a family man; a guy from the suburbs, a guy who still must take out the garbage.

However, Tony Montana is a bit more complex. Although he is a savage killer, his profession had not entirely divorced him from his conscience. There is a scene in the movie where Montana is in hot pursuit of a car. The car has an explosive device attached to it, and in the car is an international dignitary who is about to speak in the UN. His speech will threaten Montana and his partner’s drug business. Montana is following the car in order to detonate the bomb at the right moment to kill the dignitary.

Yet inside the car Montana sees the dignitary’s two children in the backseat. Montana knows that all of his drug partners are counting on him to detonate the bomb, which will essentially save their drug business. But Montana cannot do it. He knows that not killing this person will ruin his career, but he just can’t do it. He says, something to the effect of, I kill many people, and do lots of crazy stuff, but I don’t kill children. That’s not what I do. (Interestingly, because he is disgusted that one of the partners riding next to him in the car is so excited to blow up the car with the children, Montana kills him.)

Certainly Tony Montana is a killer. But he, unlike others, still lives with his conscience during his day job—somewhat.