OP-ED: FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT CAELUM

(Latin for “Let Justice Be Done Though the Heavens Fall”)



By Jack Mosel

Contributing Editor


The phrase “let justice be done though the heavens fall” is probably best known to our readers as being spoken by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison during his 1967 trial of Clay Shaw for the murder of President John F. Kennedy (these words are also inscribed on Garrison’s tombstone).

But these words are as old as the scriptures, and the notion has been around for thousands of years. Fiat justitia ruat caelum is a Latin legal phrase, translating to “Let justice be done, though the sky may fall.” The maxim signifies the belief that justice must be realized regardless of consequences.

Although this legal argument has been used in court cases to justify overturning the conviction of Haywood Patterson in the Scottsboro Boys trial to the abolition of slavery in England, perhaps Immanuel Kant said it best in 1795: “Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it.”

So, why am I invoking this age-old legal maxim now, you might ask?

I am not talking about the issue of justice for JFK, or even RFK (though there is still much work to be done on both of those fronts). I am not addressing this editorial to RFK Jr., Caroline Kennedy, or any member of the Kennedy family specifically, although I wish they would lend us their voices. I am talking about our outgoing President and his entire administration, who look as if they will skate merrily back to the slimepits from whence they came without so much as a slap on the wrists for their numerous impeachable offenses, crimes against the Constitution of the United States, and indeed, against all humanity.

To promote real democracy as being worthwhile and un-reproachable even in the most dire of circumstances, we must take back our country from zealots and self-appointed dictators, evidenced from the crimes we have endured from the past eight years of dictoral rein from the Bush/Cheney legacy period… (Unquestionably) our darkest hours.

But simply electing a new president does not fix the problem. Nor will it make the past go away or be forgotten.

It is undoubtedly painful and almost embarrassing to me to describe my opinion and my country’s activities from repeated abuse over the last eight years on its own people and on its own rule of law. Many might feel that we should let bygone’s be bygone’s and let the Obama Administration get busy with getting all the mess back on track. I agree in theory, but the problem is… the extent of the carnage that was created (that which we know about) was so outrageous and so over the top, that I feel special mechanisms must be in place to re-visit these crimes and without prejudice, investigate and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law, all the puppet’s and their masters’ in this hostile takeover, hit and run administration’s drive by, that has left our Constitution, our integrity, our economy and for many of our most patriotic lives in ruin. And that’s not even getting into the American soldiers who have lost their lives in Bush’s war for oil, nor does it account for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in the middle east.




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