Violence and the Word by Robert Cover

I found Robert Covers Violence and the Word to be interesting but a little dry for me. It definitely had a unique perspective on what violence is, so I appreciated that. It was also a very straightforward read, to me I found it easier to read and interpret over Camu Reflections’ of the Guillotine.

In Violence of the Word, violence is not described as that street corner fight that you've witnesses after school neither the gun shooting massacres we read in the paper that occur at schools across the nation. He says this; "Interpretations in law also constitute justifications for violence which has already occurred or which is about to occur. When interpreters have finished their work, they frequently leave behind victims whose lives have been torn apart by these organized, social practices of violence"(Cover 1601). So Violence of legal acts are organized and social according to Cover.

It doesn’t seem that Cover is just talking about sentences of capital punishment as we focused on in Camus essay. He says "A judge articulates her understanding of a text, and as a result, somebody loses his freedom, his property, his children, even his life" (Cover 1601). This is usually true, when someone goes to jail most likely they will lose any worldly possessions you once has, social services will probably take their children if they had any and the way they once lived their life will be gone and changed forever even after they leave jail. Also depending on the crime they committed most jobs of public service run CORI/SORI checks so the job market pool that most people have to draw from just shrunk dramatically. If we look at the violence of legal acts the way Cover describes you can see how it is violent and destructive to someone’s life.

Is society disappointed when a Judge doesn’t rule in a violent act for a criminal? Think of the Casey Anthony’s case.  I chose this case for example because it remains to be talked about on the news today in the new year of 2012. It seems with the countless protesters that people are very disappointed that the Judges legal interpretation did not lead to "more violent sentencing". Even if she did escape the wrath of legal violence will she not endure the violence of the American media system? People’s family have moved after large cases as such as this one to an area where they were not known.

I agree with most of the things that Covers discusses in his essay. In a class that I took in a prior semester I had to analyze a lot of hate crime cases that took place within that last twenty years. It was interesting to see how these cases turned out. You have to wonder if the law supplies any justice at all to some individual in those cases. When you stand before a judge you want to hope and think that this is going to be a human to human interaction. The truth is that the judge is going to interpret the case with reference to legal texts. So its not a very humanized interaction. I would hope that the law would punish according to those who are truly innocent and those that are guilty and need to serve time.