Just or Unjust?

Just or Unjust?

By: John Kazerooni 

Once, in a distant galaxy, on a beautiful planet, in a powerful country, there lived a civilization proud of its laws. Their cities were orderly, their courts respected, and their people believed that justice was the pillar that held their country and their world together.

The founders of that civilization were wise. They understood something simple yet profound: time changes, people change, and even the best laws may one day fail to serve fairness. They believed that no rule could foresee every circumstance. No law could perfectly measure the weight of human life.

So they created their laws carefully. Yet they added one extraordinary provision. They granted their leader (the president) the power to soften the law when it became unjust—to forgive when punishment or rigid justice no longer served fairness, and to correct the rigidity of written words with the wisdom of mercy.

For many years, this power was used with humility. It healed wounds the law could not see. It restored peace when punishment might have deepened division. The people trusted it because it was used rarely and with care.

Justice breathed.

But time, as it always does, tested them.

Years passed. Generations changed. Slowly, something subtle began to shift. Power grew more attractive than responsibility. Leaders discovered that mercy could be turned into privilege. What had once been a tool for justice became a ladder for influence and injustice.

Corruption crept quietly into the halls of authority.

Justice became negotiable. Honesty lost its voice. Cheating became strength. Adultery lost its shame. Accountability faded like an old memory. Those with power learned how to bend mercy toward their allies, while the ordinary citizen still carried the full weight of the law.

Criminals walked free—not because justice required forgiveness, but because power demanded protection from their corrupted leaders.

The word just slowly changed its meaning.

What once protected fairness now protected privilege.

What once healed injustice now sometimes created it.

And the people—at first—said nothing. Some were afraid. Some were distracted. Some were busy. Some simply closed their eyes and hoped the darkness would pass on its own.

But corruption has a strange nature.

It grows best in silence.

One day the people began to understand a difficult truth: injustice had not grown powerful only because of the leaders. It had grown powerful because society had looked away.

And so they opened their eyes.

They remembered the purpose of the law. They remembered why mercy had been created. They remembered that justice does not belong to rulers—it belongs to the conscience of a people.

They stood, not with violence, but with awakening.

Slowly, patiently, they reclaimed the meaning of fairness.

And here we are, perhaps not so far from that distant planet after all.

Every society eventually faces the same delicate dilemma: how to balance justice with mercy, power with responsibility, authority with humility.

Mercy can heal injustice. But mercy can also hide it.

Power can protect fairness. But power can also protect itself.

The difference often lies not in the law, but in the character of those who hold it—and in the vigilance of those who live under it.

When mercy is guided by wisdom, it restores dignity and corrects the imperfections of rigid rules. But when mercy serves power instead of justice, it quietly erodes trust and fairness.

And when trust begins to fade, a society slowly loses the very foundation upon which its laws were built.

Perhaps the most important lesson from that distant civilization is simple.

Justice does not live in books of law.

It lives in the conscience of a people.

When citizens remain awake—when they question power, demand honesty, and refuse to close their eyes—justice has a chance to survive.

But when society grows comfortable with silence, injustice finds a place to grow.

Every generation must decide which path it will follow.

Because every society, sooner or later, faces the same question:

Is what we see truly just?

Or have we slowly learned to call injustice by a different name?

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