Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Injustice within Argos

The presence of injustice within a legal system as in Argos by no means permits a person to take the law into their own hands. While this appears to seem strange to say as an outsider who is staring at an aparent injustice, we must remember that we are comparing the justice system in Argos to ones we are familiar with when we make these value judgements. If we look at an example within our society, this argument may make more sense. If we look at a common place court practice of the trial penalty in US courts some may say that this is an apparent injustice. A trial penalty may result when an individual wishes to have a trial instead of plea out. The penalty is that cases that go to trial lead to stiffer sentences. Some say this is an injustice because the Constitution states that all citizens have a right to trail. If this is considered an injustice, which many do, then we would be saying that if you got a stronger punishment due to a trial, you can break out of prison because of this injustice. This is obviously not okay by almost any persons standard. When looking at Argos' legal system and injustices we have to evaluate them in the context that they are intended to be enforced in. This is just one example why I see that injustice does not grant the right to take actions into your own hands.

2 comments:

  1. I have to disagree with this post because I don't believe that in either Agamemnon or the Libation Bearers, it seems pretty clear there is no real established justice system, and it appears that there is a "eye for an eye" mentality in Argos.

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  2. I agree. There is no restablished justice system in Argos that seems to be enforced. Regardless of how we see and handle things today, there is nothing in the play that really indicates that an eye for an eye is a bad thing. If anything, it indicates that it IS the best thing to do.

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