Tolstoy's View--Law and Government

Law and government have existed in society since the times of the Ancient Egyptians in 3000 BCE. Professions of law have been held and respected since then. Government has changed and evolved throughout the years, but it still continuously causes the same problems of war and hatred.

My name is Leo Tolstoy. I grew up in an extremely wealthy and well-respected family. I studied law and languages in school, but found my courses to be boring and pointless. My valuable time was being wasted in an education that I will never value. What are values, really? What is the point of living the day-to-day society life that everyone expects of us? Will that get us anywhere?

My Christian beliefs are based on the Sermon on the Mount, and particularly on the phrase about turn the other cheek. This is a justification for pacifism, nonviolence and nonresistance. I believe being a Christian makes me pacifist and, due to the military force used by my country’s government, being a pacifist makes me an anarchist.

An anarchist. I am not an anarchist. An anarchist is someone who wants to change society by using violence, and I am a strong believer of non-violence. But this is what they call me.

I suffer from an internal struggle of this concept. How can I believe so strongly in peace, and live in a country that exercises nothing like it? Recently, I shared correspondence with an Indian man named Mohandas Gandhi, an emerging activist in South Africa. Not only is he a vegetarian, like I am, but he shares a similar drive to change society. I believe he will have great achievements in his future. He shares this internal struggle with me, and we have discussed at length how to convince those around us that war is not the answer.

War is not the answer.

I have been ill for quite a while now. I need to leave and clear my thoughts. My sickness is torturing my wife, Sofia. I know she only married me out of obligation, and I cannot face this obligation any longer. My daughter Alexandria and I are leaving tonight with my doctor. I will continue this after our journey has been completed.
-Leo

I now know how it feels...

The strangest thing happened to me the other day. I was forced to spend my time at the doctor's office, as they attempted to find out what is causing me this great ill. While I sat there for what seemed like hours, I realized that I was experiencing something new. I was no longer the authority figure in the room. My role was changed. I was seen as the lowly person that did not know any better. This realization was upsetting, as I have been the authority figure most of my life, whether at work or at home.

As I sat in the doctor's office, the doctor finally emerged with his 'verdict' of what was causing my condition. All the doctor could utter were the following words, "Just put yourself in our hands and everything will be fine". All I really wanted to know was how serious my condition was. I could not get a decent response from the doctor. It seemed as if he just ignored my question. He just continued to say that he was looking at this and that, but if examination of this led to some new discovery, then he would proceed down that route. I was getting really agitated as I sat there all alone not knowing what was really wrong with me. I tried to ask him one last time as I left, but I got the same standard response that did not help alleviate any of my concerns.

Never have I been in such a position. It was just a simple question. How could the doctor not have an answer for me? He is a doctor, right? I still have no idea how serious my condition is. How can I go on like this? A man needs to know if he is going to die tomorrow or if it is merely a virus.

As I made my way later that afternoon, I started pondering both the significance of my condition, but also the idea that the whole interaction seemed so very familiar. About half way home, it finally hit me. Every day in court, I was the doctor. I was the one with the authority. Everything was just how I did it in court. From the doctor saying "Just put yourself into our hands and everything will be fine" to the lack of a response to my seemingly easy question. The more I thought about it, everything the doctor did was exactly how I act every day when I am the judge ruling on a criminal.

This realization was very eerie. I was very mad at the doctor for his treatment of me, but now that I realize I act the same way, do all of the people in the court feel the same about me? Of course there aren't any 'happy' convicted criminals, but could I have made their time in the courtroom more suitable if I had acted in a manner pleasing to them? Or should authority figures always act like authority figures? I do not know the answer.

All that I do know is that my trip to the doctor was a very eye opening experience. Having been on the other side of the authority, maybe I will adjust my courtroom manner. Now if I only could know how serious my condition is!

-Ivan


*The overall theme of this post was taken from portions of Chapter 4 and Chapter 8 of "The Death of Ivan Ilyich" written by Leo Tolstoy.

Role Reversal: Listener to Lecuturer

It is a usual routine by now; I wake up and throw some clothes on and listen to someone walk around on a stage in large auditorium for 50 or 80 minutes. This is the usual routine for a college student, especially at a large university.

On any given lecture, maybe half to ¾ of the lecture hall is full with maybe ¼ of the students actually listening to what the professor has to say. I am almost done with 3 years of listening to lectures from professors, and just this past week I was able to get a real feel for what it is like to be in their shoes.

Last Friday, I along with a few group members gave a presentation in New Brunswick, NJ for a case competition to a group of about 100 students, faculty, and Johnson & Johnson employees. The presentation was for a case competition in which I presented the decision process and implementation of one product choosing one of three business decisions. The topic of the presentation is for this story, irrelevant, but more important is how I felt being in front of all those people.

Before my presentation I was rather calm and goofing off to get rid of any nerves. When I finally stood up in front of the people all the nerves came right back. I started to talk, but midway through the introduction of the presentation I forgot some key words. This lead to an interruption in the flow of the presentation and continued till I was done talking. It was difficult also to speak when looking straight into the eyes of people looking right back at you and I noticed at the end I was using strange hand mannerisms as well.

This gave me just a little perspective of what it feels like to go up and lecture everyday. Of course, most lecturers have been doing it for years, so with time they are much better at it than me. But I would say that they probably still get a little nervous. I think one takeaway from this experience is to not be so critical when others have a tough time speaking in front of a large group of people. I know for me it is one of the most difficult and nerve racking things to do.

My Own Role Reversal

I was once a big fish. Life was so different then.

Things are easier when you are a big fish.

I graduated with 93 people. I knew every one of them by name. I had been in classes with all of them. There's a good chance that in our 12 years together, I had, at one time, been friends with each of them.

And then, I came to U of I. 40,000 people, and I knew 7 of them.

Some things aren't totally different. For one thing, the setting is similar. There is corn...everywhere. The original seed for the corn in the Morrow Plots was taken from the field that engulfs my house every summer. I'm sure that if I looked at that corn, it would look just like the corn back home (all corn looks the same). And it is flat here, just like all of Illinois is flat.

I ran cross country and track. I was no star but I was decent. Then I came here, and ran in CRCE, and even the fairly normal people there made me feel slightly insignificant.



Everyone always knew that if they had a question about homework, they could ask me. I had aced every class my high school had to offer. My GPA was over 4.0 and I didn't even have to try. Then I came here and found out I was barely above average (especially among the engineers).


I started architecture here and realized that nothing I had ever done in high school came anywhere near preparing me for what I had gotten myself in to. I thought physics and calculus would help me build buildings. Architecture isn't a science, though, it is an art. At times, it is a painful art. I was used to right answers and multiple choice and calculators, and I got "design solutions", open-ended questions, and a sketchbook. I had never taken an art class. I definitely wasn't prepared.


I thought I had done all the right things. I thought that, up to this point, I had lived my life well, comme il faut, even above-and-beyond, and I expected things to be the same when I came here, but when I got here I found, for the first time in my life, a level playing field. In a way, I guess, I can relate to Ivan Ilyich, without even having to consider my own mortality, because this is not a question of mortality, it is a matter of ego. He, like me, thought he was a Big Fish, but then he experienced the one thing that equalizes all of humanity--death.

Russia's New Jury System

"Our people are not ready for jury trials."

-- Aleksandr Dmitrievich Chernov, chairman of the Krasnodar Regional Court, 1999.

Over 10 years ago, Russia underwent a revolutionary change in their judicial system - the introduction to trial by jury. In the 1993 Russian Constitution (Article 20), "a defendant has the right to trial by jury in cases provided for by the federal law." Although the jury trials were only restricted to nine regions, this practice quickly expanded to include 83 regions under the 2001 Criminal Procedure Code (adopted on November 22, 2001 and become effective on July 1, 2002) which provided that a judge and 12 juries shall try all cases involving crime set forth in Article 31(3) of the code upon a motion by the defendant.

According to statistics, the number of defendants demanding jury trials is increasing, causing a backlog of over 6 months as of January 2003. Statistics also indicate that juries are 10 to 20 times more likely to acquit than judges -- "judges acquit less than 1% of defendants, whereas juries acquit 15 - 20% of defendants." This problem has been analyzed by many judges and scholars and many have argued that Russians do not have the legal consciousness needed for jury trials. When investigating the motivations behind jury acquittals, many judges found that jury acquittals (or verdicts) were not always legal or founded but based on sentiments. According to some investigation, a defendant charged with murdering a woman was acquitted not because the jury thought the defendant was innocent of all charges but because of sympathetic reasons-- according to one juror, she relieved his crimes because she thought to herself, "I have a son the same age as the defendant." Decisions based on pity and sympathy is made worse by the historical distrust of the police and the government.

Though some judges have argued that common people are incapable of understanding complex issues, others have remained hopeful in the jury system. They attribute the high acquittal rate to the mismatch between the legal culture of the people versus the legal culture of the state. In former Moscow City Court judge Sergei Pashin's opinion, acquittals are a result of the juries nullifying cruel criminal laws. For the first time, jurors finally have the ability to express their views about the criminal laws through their verdicts. They also have the ability to fulfill the role as representatives of citizens against the state and express their dislike for the old system.

It is natural that the system has produced some critics over the 10 years since its introduction. As a bystander, I am supportive of Russia's progress towards creating a fairer standard and justice. It will be interesting to see if the citizen can triumphantly prove their legal consciousness against the old system...