Timeliness is necessary to the achievement of justice.
The Need for Institutions How do we imagine justice being dispensed in ancient times? Robert Alter notes in his translation of the Hebrew Bible that the language used to describe the characteristics of a good judge (God-fearing, truthful, haters of bribes) is similar for “the recruitment of judges [that] occurs in both Hittite and Egyptian documents dating from the late second millennium B.C.E.”[1] This widespread …
We wrote earlier about Thomas More, The Man for All Seasons, and famous for standing by his principles against Henry VIII to the point of being beheaded in 1535. In the 17th century the revolutionary John Cooke met a similar end: he was hung, drawn and quartered in 1660 by Charles II as a regicide for acting as Charles I’s prosecutor. Both saw and acted …
Sir Thomas More, the hero of A Man for All Seasons, is also a hero in the lesser known history of timely justice. In his two and a half years as Chancellor of England he worked with an alacrity that eliminated the backlog left behind by the 14-year chancellorship of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey. This achievement gave rise to a rhyme: When More some time had …
Continue reading Timeliness Requires More than Great Leaders
