BRUTALITY OF A LEGAL SENTENCE

Abstract

Violence is an act we conveniently compartmentalize to remain in certain arenas of social life. We have developed a legal system wherein the popular thought is that it is, in many ways, a mechanism to fight violence and provide ‘justice’ for the victims of violence. However, this whole worldview of the legal system falls apart when we think in terms that Robert Cover has so eloquently introduced in his path-breaking essay, Violence of the Word.  The very idea of what ‘justice’ entails can be legitimately asked and this is the very task Cover has undertaken by illustrating how violence takes place in unexpected places. Law is a mechanism people turn to when violence has already occurred, but Cover depicts how violence occurs once this process has been set in motion. “Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence.” 

In this essay, Cover talks about the violence involved in the act of legal interpretation, ultimately stating that law and violence are intimately connected and cannot be separated. This practice of legal interpretation is rather incomplete without its accompanying violence to the point wherein it depends upon this social practice of violence for its efficacy. The connection between law and violence is a theme that has been grappled with by many other philosophers, three important ones being Walter Benjamin, Micheal Foucault and Jacques Derrida. Benjamin, in his Critique of Violence, attempts to deconstruct the relationship between violence, law and justice and states that both natural law and positive law agree that violence as a means can be justified if it is in accordance with the law.