Why the World Should Not Be Fair

Virginia Anne Church, J.D., Ph.D.

Judge Justice had always believed the world should be fair, and justice (or mercy) must
triumph. This was his slogan, in fact, during his election campaign. The first day on the
Bench, Judge Justice discovered a problem with that concept. After two days on the
bench he, being a rather open-minded, realistic sort of person, discovered that there was,
literally, no such thing as fair!
Martin and Marjorie had been married for 10 years and had four children, two under four
years of age. The couple had many problems, money among them. They decided to get a
divorce in Judge Justice's no-fault state.
Martin commuted long hours to work in Center City. He earned $125 a week. Marjorie
had never worked and had not completed high school. None of the children were over
eight years old. Her, and their, living expenses ran $125 per week. Martin, having left
Marjorie, now had living expenses of his own. Neither had parents able to care for the
kids.
The Judge's problem was the usual `simple' one of deciding how much money to give
Marjorie and for how long. He had only to be `fair.'
But was it so simple? How do you decide what is fair? "Well," he thought, "dividing the
income and assets in half, that would be fair."
It developed the couple owned nothing but bills and the second-hand furniture, providing
just enough beds and chairs to provide the wife and children with minimal living
facilities.
"Besides," Marjorie's lawyer pointed out reasonably enough, "how could the judge even
consider expecting five people to live on the same amount as one personfair?"
Judge Justice hadn't thought of it that way. "Well then," he said (he really wanted awfully
badly to be `fair'), "Well, then we'll do it mathematically. Nothing could be fairer than
that!" And so, he announced that he would give Marjorie 5/6 and Martin 1/6-$109.10 to
Marjorie-and, let's see-$21.82 to Martin each week. At this, Martin's lawyer rose to his
feet bellowing..."That's not fair!" When he had calmed down a little, he explained...

"Martin makes all the money. He can't live on $21.82 a week. That wouldn't even rent
him a room, much less buy him food and clothes, operate his car. If he has no car, he can't
get to work. The family will earn nothing!"
And so it wentfor hours. "Fair" kept eluding the good Judge Justice. At the end of that
first day, under the press of other business, he went ahead and made his first `unfair'
decision.
The sad plight of the would-be-fair Judge is not really a fairy tale. It happens all the time
all over the world, and especially in America where we have what amounts to a cultural
hand-up about being `fair'! That `fair' cannot be determinedexcept from a particular
view or bias never seems to be considered by people demanding it.
In 1973, I gave a simple rating scale questionnaire to a group of dedicated family law
attorneys gathered in national enclave in Washington. The test required that the lawyers
rate each of Albert Ellis' "common rational beliefs" on a five-point scale from "certainly
true" to "never true." To check out my own speculation that even those who dealt most
closely with the administration of justice would not realize `there was no fair'... and that
Justice was merely a construct which was in no way absolute...I added to the bottom of
Ellis' list a 12th "irrational belief":
That the world (and especially other people) should be fair, and that justice (or
mercy) must triumph!
Interestingly (especially to the many anti-lawyer laymen with whom I associate), almost
everyone in the room marked that particular belief as "certainly true." The judges in the
room all did so.
Yet, each of them had first-hand knowledge that there was no such thing as fair. They
lived with it every day. Maxie Maultsby has said, without fear of refutation"What
should happen does happen"meaning that whatever happens only does so after all of the
objective pre-requisites for it happening have occurred. Had they not so occurred, then
something else would have happened instead of what did.
Yet, people continue to speak of `fairness' and justice as if it could be accomplished in
every case if people would only do as they should do!
Think about it. When we say the world should be fair. Don't we really mean `fair to us'or
`to our side'? The best way to ferret this out is usually to suggest the winner in a lawsuit
divide the gain with the loser, or, even more radical, that the loser voluntarily pay the
costs of the winner's action against him. (That happens frequently enough by order, but
never to my knowledge, voluntarily and not even without a great deal of consternation
and screams of `unfair'!) So, we really seem to mean "other people should be fair to me"?
Usually. Of course, there are those who really do believe the world, and especially they,
themselves, should do what is just even when it works against them. But they are

operating on a `biblical' belief the Bible never really promised"if you do unto others
fairly, they will also do so unto you fairly." How do I know that is what they think? Well,
of course, I don't know. But I can infer it from long years of professional experience with
such people's outrage and resentment when they are not, in fact, treated fairly in return!
My experience both as a lawyer and as a rational therapist has led me to observe that
people only become angry about violations of their own irrational beliefs, not about
things they have no firm belief about.
"O.K., then," someone usually says in my group when I introduce Belief #12. "What
about those people who really are fair, even though they are always getting it in the
neck?"
"Oh, I agree," I say. "My father, for instance, always fed the parking meter whatever time
he was overparked before he drove offeven when there was no cop in sight. Now, that's
fair. Render unto Caesar, etc."
"That's not fairthat's stupid!" many people will declare. "There's no need to be that kind
of fair." "Well"I try again
"How about the mother who has $100 and three children to divide it between. The eldest
child has been lying around not working and smoking pot all summer. The middle child,
on the other hand, has worked down town as a delivery boy, making $100 a week in tips.
The youngest child has remained at home, caring for the house, watching the children of
her mother's sister, and generally tying herself down serving the family.
What's the mother to do? Justice would require an equal division...three children...$33.33
each. Mercy or equity might recommend another division...and practicality of who
needed money, who had access to making it, and for might be quite different. My point is,
of course, that whatever the mother did, she could be accused, (and correctly from each
point of view), of making an `unfair' decision."
The justice lovers normally want justice softened to `mercy' when it is directed at them,
and kept to strict justice when directed at those who have injured them. A rapist who has
`ravished' a young girl (meaning he had sexual intercourse with her against her wishes)
should be killed according to justice (the laws in our state). If the girl was your young
daughter who you believe (and want everyone else to believe) is a virgin, you will likely
feel quite justified in demanding the penalty, especially if statistics show there is too
much of this attacking going on and people are not `safe in the local streets.' If, on the
other hand, the young rapist is your sonthe chances are you'll be screaming `mitigating
circumstances'the young girl was unchaste, she tantalized or seduced him, he's never
done any such thing before. You would likely say and believe `she must have brought it
on herself'`the law is too strict, too harsh'`justice must be tempered with mercy.'
When all the verbiage is removed you come down to the unavoidable truth: two
people's ideas of fair are, as usual, quite different...justice for one, mercy for the

other. In one case the man lives to repent (or not to) and in the other he dies (whether or
not he repents).
Justice is a harsh concept: an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Publicly, we no
longer believe in that kind of justice. Or if we do, we will be daily disappointed and
enraged (as, indeed many of us are!) Mercy, on the other hand is, indeed, like the "gentle
dew that droppeth down from heaven." It is just as hard to catch and hold.
The reason these are not merely interesting observations on human behavior, rather than a
proposed #12 irrational belief, is just this common acceptance that things should be a way
we all can tell (after a little reflection or in vivo testing) they cannot, in fact, be.
If the world were to be `fair,' it could only be accomplished by legislating what is `fair,'
and then requiring everyone to follow that rule without exception. We don't want that! We
want, I venture to suggest, something quite different. We want and prefer actions toward
us and toward others that, as near as possible are in keeping with out best interests first,
and their best interests (unless they strongly invade ours) a close second. We want to
weigh and judge each situation on its own merits, and then we want to do an imperfect
best. This best will be based on the situation as we understand it at the time we are
making the decision. That is what we and our Courts do most of the time when trying to
arrive at `fair,' so that is likely to be a practical approach.

Why should we give up the notion that `fair' can actually be determined and
achieved? First, because it can't be! Setting an impossible goal as one we must achieve
leads to poor emotional consequences. We will be likely to upset ourselves unreasonably,
to gnash our teeth (bad for the enamel as well as for the neck and jaw muscles), give
ourselves headaches, ulcers, hypertension, and colitis...and for what? Because we choose
to hold this `impossible dream' favored by Don Quixote and Diogenes as a fool's quest so
long ago.
We can, however, idealistically continue to `prefer' more `fair' behavior than
`unfair' behavior. We can strongly prefer and seek to achieve this. The whole system
for the administration of justice is dedicated to so doing. These are worthy ends. But, we
would better give up the notion of absolutes...absolute justice...absolute mercy and
absolute fairness! These do not exist. They are beyond the grasp or even reckoning of
fallible human beings. What we can do is do the best we can to consider our own and
other people's best interests, and to behave rationally in accordance with them. That is
enough of a chore without requiring magical infallible behavior of us all. Man is not
God, and Unfairness is reality. Therefore, the World should not be fair, and indeed that
is a true factobjectively determinedfor it is not.

Virginia Anne Church, J.D., Ph.D., an authority in Rational Legal Counseling, is

presently Dean of Lewis University School of Law in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.