Over Shabbat I read Rav Nahum Rabinowitz’s (zt”l) article “The Way of Torah.” There’s a lot to say about it, but one bit struck me as important for thinking about our present moment. (This is my explanation; a key quote can be found below.)
The essay moves from discussing the importance of free choice in Judaism to the necessity of enforcement and compulsion civil society, and from there to thinking about religion and state. In the process, he argues that the government’s right to compel obedience and punish wrongdoing A. is based on the unanimous consent of the governed and B. is directed toward achieving justice.
Moreover, these two elements are inextricably linked. The justice of the governing must be apparent to the governed, or it quickly loses its legitimacy. It’s not enough for a government or authority to be elected by proper procedure, and simply being transparent about government actions is insufficient. Governing shouldn’t just be technically valid, it should also be good, and visibly so.
In this sense, it is already a failure of government (and associated institutions) if it gives the impression of discrimination and injustice. A government institution’s very validity depends not just on being written into law, but on its actions all being clearly directed toward what all those whose consent it assumes would consider just and good.
To speak directly, when we’ve reached the point when so many people see the police as a corrupt and discriminatory institution, it has already failed and lost its validity–not because it is necessarily evil, but because its validity derives from the people seeing it as a tool for justice.
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“…the king selected by the nation, given its confidence, and placed on the throne of justice must act in a manner that makes his justice apparent to all and must not discriminate, in any of his decrees, between high and low. Otherwise, his rulings will lack all force.” –Rav Nahum Rabinowitz, “The Way of Torah,” The Edah Journal 3:1, 24
Novel Formulations 