Daniel Cameron, true justice is not numb to emotion. It would never 'justify' tragedy

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron said last week that his job was not to decide whether Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy. “The answer to that question is undoubtedly yes,” he told us.

Minutes later, however, he insisted that “the use of force by Mattingly and Cosgrove was justified,” and that “this justification bars us from pursuing criminal charges in Ms. Breonna Taylor’s death.”

We should be grateful for the clarity of his words. They reveal that the legal system as it stands generates tragedy rather than justice. Even the attorney general now agrees with what Black Lives Matter activists have been telling us for a long time: When the system functions exactly according to plan, it does not recognize the intrinsic value of Black life. When we go by the book, it is easier to hold police officers accountable for sending bullets through walls than for sending them through Black bodies.

More:The 'very troubling' questions AG Cameron isn't answering on the Breonna Taylor decision

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly’s attorney picked up on this message too, insisting that Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy, while maintaining in the same breath that “these officers did not act in a reckless or unprofessional manner.” Here again the statement is clear: The system at its most professional spells tragedy for Black people.

Strange, then, to hear this system described as a system of “justice.” Cameron suggested that his investigation was seeking truth and justice. And he implied that justice can only be found through a dispassionate attention to the facts. He warned us not to be motivated by “emotion,” which may lead us away from justice.

But activists have also been seeking justice. And their quest has been full of anguish and anger and grief. What Cameron was doing in his speech is what the status quo has been doing for as long as it has recognized legitimate challenges to the current order. He was trying to invalidate the challenge. He implied that if your vision of justice is critical of what the system defines as justice, then by definition it cannot be valid. You must be too emotional.

Also:Key takeaways from AG Daniel Cameron's investigation on the Breonna Taylor case

Among other problems, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of justice at work here. According to many philosophical and religious traditions, justice transcends the status quo. It means something much more profound than going by the book. It is a vision of things and persons receiving their proper due. If you prioritize the stability of the system over the dignity of every person, you are not seeking justice. Because a human being is owed recognition according to her immeasurable dignity. And that dignity is flagrantly disavowed by the narration of her death as “tragic, but justified.” True justice would never “justify” this outcome. Rather than going by the book, justice allows us to question the book itself.

From this wider perspective, the expression of emotion on the part of those who mourn the death of Breonna Taylor is not a distraction from justice. Justice is not indifferent to tragedy as the natural outcome of our legal system. Just as liberation theologians tell us that in the midst of suffering, God is not neutral, so philosophers tell us that in the face of misery, justice is not numb.

What Daniel Cameron was really defending, both with his investigation and with his statement last week, was not justice, but order. Representatives of the status quo habitually identify order with justice because this posture criminalizes any demand for change. It implies that if you are opposed to the order of the day, you are opposed to justice and a danger to society.

Sadly, this posture has taken root with a vengeance within the Louisville Metro Police Department itself. Just read the departmental communications that were recently made public. Maj. Hallahan, the 5th Division commander just relieved of her duty, sent an email to officers under her command that called protesters “punks” in the same sentence in which she insisted that police officers are superior in “character, morals, and ethics.” She implied that, simply by representing “order,” police officers are on the side of morality and justice. Sgt. Mattingly’s email to his fellow officers called the actions leading to Breonna Taylor’s death “moral and ethical,” and lamented that in our society “the good guys are demonized, and criminals are canonized.”

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This dehumanizing view of citizens who protest the current legal system is the natural outcome of mistaking order for justice. We must call it out for the moral rot that it is. In the coming days, when you hear defenders of “law and order” criticizing protesters, refer them to the attorney general, who admitted that our order produces tragedy. Remind them that to be a person is to be owed the affirmation of one’s immeasurable value. And remind them that any system in which “tragic, but justified” is an accepted refrain may be a system of laws, but it sure as hell isn’t a system of justice.      

Justin D. Klassen is an associate professor of Theology at Bellarmine University.