by Fitzroy Morrissey, The Critic
When the divine law appears to clash with our sense of justice, can it truly be considered divine?
In Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, 12 passengers come together to avenge the murder of three-year-old Daisy Armstrong. In the film adaptation featuring David Suchet (easily the best version, with apologies to Albert Finney and Kenneth Branagh), Poirot denounces this act of “kangaroo justice”: “You have no right to take the law into your own hands!” he tells the conspirators. “We looked to the law for justice,” says Daisy’s grandmother in their defence, “and the law let us down.” No, replies Poirot: “The rule of law, it must be held high, and if it falls, you pick it up and hold it even higher.”
As Jonathan Brown observes in this learned and engaging book, the film’s denouement brilliantly captures the perennial tension between substantive and procedural justice. This tension had already been recognised by Aristotle. Considering the relationship between legal justice and equity (epieikeia — the word used by Paul for the “gentleness” of Christ), Aristotle explains that difficulties arise because the law deals in general terms, whilst actual legal cases are specific. Equity, therefore, is a “rectification of law insofar as law is defective on account of its generality”.
The tension between equity and law, Brown points out, is felt particularly acutely in Islam, where law — the Sharia — is believed to be divine, perfect and comprehensive. When the divine law appears to clash with our sense of justice — as Islamic family law does in the view of Muslim feminists, for instance — can it truly be considered divine?