Relocating To Elfland

I have noted with interest the spate of recent films dealing with vigilante justice (two of the more memorable being Boondock Saints and The Brave One). Last year another contribution arrived in Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen. It is a hard film to watch, from the opening scene, and there is a lot of rough language; but it is a movie with a message (underscored by the sheer implausibility of its storyline), and thanks to compelling performances from Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler (no surprise!), the question at the heart of the film simply will not be denied. 

What I find powerful in these vigilante films, despite their deplorable glamorization at times of personal vengeance, is their rejection in the strongest possible terms of “legal positivism.” Legal positivism is the view that, roughly speaking, law is as law does. Law exists or it does not exist, but the existence of law has nothing to do with its merits or demerits (judged by some standard external to itself). Lon Fuller says that, in positivism, “law is defined as ‘the existence of public order’ without asking what kind of order is meant or how it is brought about. Again, the distinguishing mark of law is said to lie in a means, namely ‘force,’ that is typically employed to effectuate its aims” (The Morality of Law, rev. ed., p. 118). 

By contrast, a basic tenet of vigilante justice is that the “justice” offered by an existing legal system just isn’t good enough – in fact, doesn’t qualify as justice at all. Whether the vigilante impulse is a righteous alternative is not my point here; what interests me is the argument for holding legal systems accountable to something outside themselves. Put simply, there must be a moral standard to which human systems of justice are held accountable; or put yet another way, there must be a genuinely transcendent moral norm, so that might in itself does not make right. 

This transcendent moral norm is frequently identified by invocations of divine justice (e.g., the tagline in Boondock Saints, “Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done”). In Law Abiding Citizen, Clyde Shelton says to prosecutor Nick Rice, “I’m gonna pull the whole thing down. I’m gonna bring the whole *&^%$# diseased, corrupt temple down on your head. It’s gonna be Biblical.” Later in the film, he disguises himself as a janitor under the telling name “Nomos.” Higher law, higher nomos – even divine nomos – is the central issue of the film. 

But of course this accountability to a transcendent standard, demanded by the vigilante, must in the end return on his own pate. In Shelton’s arraignment, he demands of the judge, “Whatever happened to right and wrong?” Good question. Later he says to Rice, “Justice should be harsh, Nick, but especially for those who denied it to others.” Fine, but is there such a thing as an unjust response to injustice? Later, he utters these telling words: “Everyone must be held accountable for their actions.” And this is the reason his methods cannot, in the end, prevail. At the end of the film, in the final scene in Shelton’s cell, everything comes full circle as Rice says to him, “We’re all held accountable, Clyde. That includes you.” 

The anger in vigilante films is refreshing. It shows the refusal of the human spirit to surrender to positivistic views of justice and morality. It shows that our hearts cry out for a standard beyond and above us all. That standard (though most of the films barely hint at it, at best) is the law of God in whose hand is the life-breath of every living thing and whose are all our ways. 

Law Abiding Citizen ends with Grand Funk Railroad’s “Sin’s a Good Man’s Brother”: 

     Some folks need an education
     Don’t give up or we’ll lose the nation
     You say we need a revolution?
     It seems to be the only solution 

Indeed we do need a revolution. But let us make it one grounded in the law of God, administered according to methods He prescribes. Let us leave off taking the law into our own hands, whether in organized legal systems or in personal vendettas, and let us kiss the scepter of God in order that we may learn at His feet the ways of righteousness, justice, equity, and peace.