Is It “Justice”? The Danger of Confusing the Death of Osama Bin Laden with an Act of Justice
When President Obama announced the death of Osama Bin Laden, he repeatedly invoked the concept of justice. As the president himself put it most succinctly, “Justice has been done.”
It is impossible to argue that the killing of Osama Bin Laden was not “justifiable,” or even “just,” and I might even be inclined to accept it as a form of “justice.” But to use that term to describe what happened last weekend in Abbottabad, Pakistan, is to invite confusion we cannot as a nation afford.
To describe an act as “justice” is not merely to claim that the act was legitimate; it is to claim that it is legitimate in a particular way. For instance, we say that our legal system dispenses “justice,” because when someone is punished, it is done according to a set of prescribed rules and procedures that have their origin in the sovereign will of the people. We actually have a different word for describing when private parties act on their own initiative to punish criminals: vigilantism.