Article August 9, 2004 Issue

JUSTICE beyond revenge

By Maude Sutherland-Harned

The vengeful and primitive justice being meted out in several Middle Eastern countries, involving videotaped executions, brings to mind something the English Renaissance philosopher Francis Bacon wrote early in the 17th century: "Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to weed it out."

Fast forward to 21st-century Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I live, and where the headquarters of the International Centre for Healing and the Law—a fledgling organization underwritten by the respected Fetzer Institute—is gaining worldwide attention. And for good reason, it seems to me.

A kind of sane justice is sorely needed everywhere. Not your gardenvariety justice—at worst, a form of legalized retribution; at best, an often one-sided victory that leaves even the victor feeling hollow and untriumphant. But something with the heart to which Bacon's justice inclined. Something like what motivates a fellow Kalamazooan, a lawyer, whose practice at times includes bringing together those who have committed crimes, with those against whom the crime has been committed, in hopes of eliciting an exchange of apology and forgiveness — fertile ground from which may spring the possibility for each party to move forward.