ay be helpful at this point to arrive at a workable definition of injustice. From Lao Tsu to Henry David Thoreau, many of the world's great thinkers have scoffed at the notion that we should expect justice from the law. In his essay "Civil Disobedience," Thoreau writes, "law has never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." Such sentiments were surely in the hearts of many residents of Los Angeles the night of April 29, 1992.
Yet to equate injustice with the law may be taking Thoreau's idea too far. After all, even Thoreau acknowledged at least the practical need for law and order, calling for "not at once no government, but at once a better government." Thoreau would prefer that we respect the "right" rather than the law, and that each one of us make the decision as to what is right. Like Thoreau, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville maintains a somewhat rabid distrust of the majority in American society. He suspects it of tyranny:
A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority by liable to the same reproach?
Yet upon what else but should democracy be based, if not majority? A majority, American or otherwise, is only tyrannical as long as the individuals (taken individually) that comprise the majority act, vote and deliberate as tyrants.
In a courtroom setting, Americans are perhaps more likely to resemble knaves and fools than tyrants, especially when playing the parts of jurors. By far the most common "knavish" fault of jurors is prejudice. Most individuals, raised in culturally hermetic environments, are susceptible to the sundry allures of bias, the origin and cau...