Over the next few years you will hear a lot about justice. You will hear about law and justice, about theories of justice, about the duty of justice, about justice and justification, about due process and justice, about equality and justice, about the possibility of justice, and even perhaps about the gift of justice. You will hear about how justice came to the law of Contracts by way of promissory estoppel, to Torts by way of products liability decisions, to Civil Procedure by way of class actions, to Property Law by way of public trust easements, to Constitutional Law by way of Brown against Board, or to any and all of these by way of economic efficiency, or natural law, or simply by the grace of black-robbed gods like Stevens or Scalia. What you are not likely to hear is something closer to the mark, namely, that those in law typically have no real concern with, or an actual conception of, justice. It is too much of a bother, and an unlawful one at that.
Law is no guarantor of justice, if there is such a thing.
The poetic imagination, by contrast, probably better approximates justice, even if there is no such thing. So if you value justice, practice poetry when you practice law. Or better still, just practice poetry. What I am about to say will seem even more nihilistic, despite my wish to the contrary. But that is the price one must pay in attempting to abandon at least some degree of hypocrisy.