[aeturnum]

>The man who pulls the lever that breaks your neck will be a dispassionate man.

>And that dispassion is the very essence of justice.

>For justice delivered without dispassion is always in danger of not being justice.

Based on the reporting I've read on the internal cultures of police departments and the wider "law enforcement" community (federal law enforcement, prison administration, etc) I am pretty skeptical that "justice" is dispassionate. Instead, I think these groups wrap themselves in a myth of dispassion while they place thumbs (and larger things) on the scale in a way that reflects their personal beliefs and biases.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

It should probably be noted that the hangman proves to be quite passionate before the film is through.

[mariodiana]

Maybe the essence of justice is its effect, and by effect we're not talking about its effect on the accused but on the rest of society.

The political science class I took back in college (over 20 years ago now) began with the Oresteia trilogy, by Aeschylus. The issue there is between "frontier justice" (actually, blood feuds) and civil justice (justice of the polis). The message there is that there can be no civilization unless the people of a society sublimate their (intrinsic?) passion for frontier justice towards civil justice.

The myth, as you call it, is there to bind us as a society — as any myth does.

I don't know what movie is being referred to above, but the idea from that passage doesn't originate with the movie.

[chmod600]

Justice is a process. It's much easier to agree on a process than the right outcome in a specific case. So society agrees on some reasonable process -- judges, juries, lawyers, and witnesses -- ahead of any specific crime.

When the process is followed in a specific case, people can accept it even if they don't like the outcome, because they had a hand in the process that produced the outcome. Over time you can improve the process. That's justice.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

The Hateful Eight.

Really long (it's more of a stage play), but like most of Tarantino's films, the dialogue is stellar.

[karmanyaahm]

I think rrrrrrrrrrrryan is talking about the ideal scenario, in the real world there will always be some biases.