It’s another day, not in Lake Woebegone, but in New Jersey, where I, as a lawyer, will represent yet another immigrant seeking some measure of safety for her son from perils back home in her country. Under U.S. immigration law, a child is included in a parent’s application for protection, but this is a case where the child is the one who needs the protections. Parents do not derive from their children.
Family members can obtain protection if they were harmed for certain reasons, but here only the child was harmed, not the mother. Here, we have to ask, what is justice? Is it something that goes beyond laws and regulations?
Certainly, most of us think that a law should embody justice, but what happens when it does not? When a law is narrower than our concept of justice in a particular case? How then do we respond? We face this issue not just in terms of migrants and asylum seekers here in the United States, but in our everyday lives. What is justice?
Prayer for the Day
Taken up from the nations and gathered from all countries,
We come home to you, O God, as we pray for healing;
Grant us a new Spirit and remove from us our hearts of stone,
So we may be your people understanding your call to justice,
Always praising you and serving you as our God,
For you are the God of all nations and peoples.
In the name of the One who came to give us hearts of faith,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
We need to put justice back in charge, and to do that we need to put compassion back in the service of law and law in the service of humanity. We need the rule of justice, not just the rule of law.
- Rosalie Silberman Abella, former justice, Supreme Court of Canada
The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just.
- Abraham Lincoln, President (1809-1865)
You shall appoint judges and officials throughout your tribes,
In all your towns that the Lord your God is giving you,
And they shall render just decisions for the people.
You must not distort justice; you must not show partiality…
Justice, and only justice shall you pursue…
Deuteronomy 16: 18-20