Is Justice of Wisdom?



Let us imagine a baby sitting in a large dark brown oak chair before a magnificent oak table, so colossal and dense as to make the baby seem twenty times smaller than it actually is. The baby sits in the middle of a large courtroom filled with wooden benches and people in suits. It is noisy at first with the shuffling of shoes and the cascading of the voices of the attendees, but quiets very quickly as eight people in black robes, stone faced and concentrated on the congregation ten feat before them, enter and elegantly take their seats; they could have done it blindfolded. The distance between them, though, seems far longer, stretching for miles, separating the wise and the fools.
To the baby's left sit four old wise men, their gaunt and worn faces hanging gracefully over stockpiles of letters and words. Their eyes and brows are wrinkled, making the impression on one that the men had always had some writing in front of them. To the baby's right sits four old women, the wisest of their peers, also hunched over grazing the mountains of paper. The courtroom is hot and the smell of perspiration and hot heads fills the room. As the case proceeds all try to contain the appropriate air about themselves, but it is getting hard, people's deepest principles are being scrutinized and leered into. It is a hard day; Justice is being served.
The heat has risen to a sweltering mass which engulfs all attendees, the vote is split. Four of the Justices have voted nay, four yea, it is up to the baby to decide. Called upon to cast his vote the baby looks around with neutrality and gazes at the four men, then the four women. His face is still, showing no discernible emotion, which with the audience so on edge, exactly what they are not looking for. Voices are heard sporadically throughout the benches; "Is he smiling?" "Is he going to cry?" "What will be his reply?" Some even questioned if he was going to say something. One man cried, "This cannot be! He has not paid any attention all day!"
It was true. Through most of the proceedings the baby dozed off, nestling its head between the arm and the back of the chair. For intermittent periods of approximately twenty to twenty-five minutes the baby cried, being silenced after both it's diaper was changed, to be exact, twelve times, and when he was fed from his mother's bosom. His mother had been escorted in by a three-maned police team. She had been quickly notified after the female members of the court realized the baby might desire some milk, and that was the reason he was making such a ruckus.
Previously he had been generally ignored by the crowd, but now all eyes in the courtroom were dead set on him. He was fond of the attention and giggled, but was stopped when one of the justices leaned over and said "Don't be a buffoon, you must cast your vote. This is not a laughing matter."
The baby stared wide eyed at him. The justices face grew redder and redder until he screamed "You dimwitted, egg headed fool! Cast your vote! We will be stuck here all day!"
The baby relieved himself.
The Justice grew pale at sight of such indignation. His lower lip quivered and his arm twitched. A woman towards the back screamed "You had better not!" The justice looked up at his arm, he could see his fist out of the corner of his eye. He immediately retracted his fist and put his head down. The embarrassment he was now suffering was visible in his face, red and boyish looking, he looked around the courtroom as if searching for words to appear above the heads of individuals in the audience.
"How did he get here?"
That was a good question. This was the child's first case, having been bequeathed his position a mere three weeks prior to the case. In the great country where this court existed, the president makes choices that effect a great many things. The President had gotten into a habit of reading before he went to bed every night. For one hour, exactly, he would read books that his wife had bought him at garage sales and flea markets.
The stack of books on his night table at the time of the baby's appointment were all purchased at an estate sale of a very old politician. The old statesman had fought for years to bring statesmanship back to the people of his beloved nation, hoping that through true and loving government that he would bring the people justice. The battles were long and he grew very tired, slowly removing himself from everything that he had once created. He gave up. There was going to be no justice. He packed his things up and went to live in his old manor with his wife and books. The doctors had said he died of cancer, but his last words were said to have been; "Beware they'll kill all of us someday."
The books were filled with words about love, power, and justice. Justice had become an object of great interest to the President at the time, previous to this juncture he had shown little interest in actually studying justice. He knew the right words when he was running for office.
Slowly moving through these books, twenty to thirty pages a night, he started to have questions. He wondered why his fellow countrymen thought so highly of justice but implemented nothing which remotely paralleled the words in these books. Is there no true understanding of Justice? Do my fellow leaders strive to achieve it, remotely and within their own perceptions, undermining one another's justice, and thus the greater justice? Do they even desire to do Justice to one another, or do their interests and understanding of justice skew to a self-serving and predaceous nature? He was wrought with questions that he carried with him for days on end, not being able to take any action in office; what was right and what was wrong?
Suddenly the opportunity had been presented to him; An ancient Justice had just died leaving one of the seats on the nation's highest court. It was up to him to designate who was going to be the new Justice. Lines of men came flowed outside of his office. Men of great years and learning, staunch, with what would appear to most as just faces.
Men moved in and out of the office, each man having exchanged but a few words with the president. The president saw through their veneer. The justice that they wore on their faces was not justice, but self-assured intellectual superiority. He knew that these men would be no greater than any of the current leaders that surrounded him, so he gave them the time that any man deserves and left them to their life.
After many of these interactions, he left to go for a walk. Walking down the avenue in the shadow of great oak trees he came across a mother strolling with her baby. He glanced at the baby, thinking for a second about how adorable it was. His thoughts could have stopped there, but they did not. He realized, his face filling with elation, that before him lied his solution. He felt like a scientist finally finding the correct compound for his experiment. He would be making history.
The president quickly motioned for his security gaurds to leave him for a second to talk with the woman.
"Hello, how do you do today?"
"Fine", she replied. "Yourself?"
"I need your baby!" he blurted out. The excitement had over taken him, tossing his diplomatic nature to the sharks. "What?! You want my child? Who are you to say such wild things?"
"Well ma'am" He began to say as he regained his confidence, after all he was one of the most important leaders in the world. "I am the president. I would like to appoint your child to be a Justice."
"A Justice!" She said, as naive excitement filled her.
"One of our Justices has recently died, of old age of course, nothing too serious. I need to replace the Justice, and I thought that a baby was an ideal candidate."
"How?! My baby?"
"Well yours was the first I saw. I had been in serious need of a candidate without of all of the preconceived notions and learned Justice that all of my other Justices have. They are old and set in their ways, not making them truly suitable to decide what true Justice is. As we grow older we come to think of right and wrong in black and white, able to see the gray but quickly disregarding it as folly. I need a mind that has been untainted, one that hasn't been warped by this world. I don't know if your baby knows of any Justice. Maybe it's all made up as we grow up, but I have to see. Would you do that for me?"
The woman was hesitant, looking at the baby whose eyes stayed on the tall regal man standing before it, then back at the president. Her eyes shifted at least a dozen times before she finally silently nodded. "Will you take good care of him?" She asked. "Of course ma'am, we will make sure everything is taken care of. The Justices do go home you know."
"Of course" She replied as she softly patted the head of the smiling baby.
In the courtroom the same Judge, who had been told the story of how the baby had gotten his position, starred at the baby. He thought to himself "How can the president, the most important man in the world, play games like this in my courthouse! I worked so hard to get this and this baby gets the benefit of circumstance, it's not fair! It's not Just!" He quickly noticed that the court's eyes were on him mumbling to himself and immediately straightened himself out and looked back at the baby. "Well now that we've been given the story as to explain your appearance here, could you please cast your vote. It really is of the utmost importance. You're vote could change the Justice system."
The baby looked at the Judge wide eyed and giggled.