In the selection "The Myth of Justice," Michael Dorris attacks the American idea of
justice. Dorris, a highly acclaimed Native American writer, has received awards ranging
from the National Book Critics Circle award to awards from the National Endowment for
the Arts. After his death in 1997, he is now one of the most celebrated Native American
writers of his generation. Our culture's idea of justice conflicts with Dorris's idea that
there is no moral system that repays the innocent for what they have wrongly suffered.
In the excerpt, Dorris is in constant questioning of how one can substantiate that
there is true justice. He often looks for material evidence, but almost always comes up
short-handed. He refers to justice as a palliative myth in the beginning. He explains that
this myth makes existence bearable for our society. Religion is not what gets us through
the day, it is our conception of justice. We look for justice after death, believing if we do
not receive it during life we will receive it after. As Dorris says, "Someday our prince
"This is an impulse of ours that begets common assumptions," Dorris explains.
We are said to allow these assumptions to be guides in our life, "we function as if they're
absolute, we allow them to define us." When these assumptions are wrong, we are
expected to be confounded that justice did not triumph. We expect it to be a mistake
brought on by our own system, the human-created system.
Dorris argues that all of this is only based on faith with no factual substance. The
only thing factual is the comment that justice can be bought. If one names the right price,
they just might be able to buy themselves justice. It is not like what we expected, we are
not all fair in front of the law. Nothing is equal, but yet we believe it be impartial. Our
expectations are in tune with possibility, but it...