What HBO’s Watchmen can tell us about the relationship between law and justice.
In the fall television season, HBO debuted their newest series Watchmen to great critical and consumer praise. The show is a continuation of the story depicted in the Alan Moore series of comics which ran in 1987 also titled “Watchmen.” The story of Watchmen — like its comic source material — takes place in an alternate reality, where the United States won the Vietnam War, the Watergate break-in did not take place, and vigilantes emerged in the mid 20th century to fight local and global crime. Moore treats his comic as both a prism through which readers can understand the anxieties that pervaded American society during the final years of the Cold War and a satire of comic book heroes. Among the many themes covered by the HBO series, there is one that left a lasting impression on my mind as the final credits rolled: what to do when law and justice are not one and the same.
Black Wall Street
The show depicts a story within a story: that of Bass Reeves, the Black Marshal of Oklahoma. Officer Reeves is shown chasing down a corrupt sheriff and lassoing him to the ground. Upon capturing the sheriff, the crowd witnessing the event suggests to Officer Reeves that he ought to shoot the sheriff dead. Officer Reeves responds to the crowd, “trust in the law!” Reeves’ message to the crowd appears ironic because it is the law — embodied in the sheriff — who broke their trust. The story within a story is being viewed as a black and white silent film by a young William Reeves. As the film concludes, a massacre begins outside, and Will, an African American, is forced to flee with his parents as hooded Klansmen and local townsfolk wreak havoc on the black citizenry. This massacre is better known as the Black Wall Street Massacre of 1921, which took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The black citizens of Tulsa were a thriving demographic, and this sight boiled racist hatred in the town’s white community. Eventually, this hatred erupted into the worst single incident of racial violence in American history. The law was, again, a futile source of recourse. Nobody who took part in the violence was ever prosecuted, and the events of that day were framed as a ‘race riot’ initiated by the black community of Tulsa. William Reeves, the boy sitting in the theatre, would move to New York City. After finishing high school, Will enlisted as a police officer for the New York Police Department. He would discover shortly thereafter that the NYPD was infiltrated by a white supremacist group, and when he voiced his concerns, he was silenced. This is the origin story of the Hooded Justice: a vigilante who patrolled the streets of New York City, looking for white supremacists who preyed on black victims. Will decided that for there to be justice, he would have to step outside of the law and provide it himself. The law and justice were not one and the same.
Injustice
The fundamental question raised in HBO’s Watchmen — whether what is legal is equivalent to what is just — has weighed on the Canadian legal system since its earliest days. In nearly every civil rights victory achieved since confederation, the existing law was predicated on unjust foundations. In the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Edwards v Canada (Attorney General), the highest court in the land, and our greatest expression of law, determined that women were not persons according to the British North America Act. Two years later, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council overturned the SCC’s ruling, and allowed women to sit in Canada’s Senate. Although it was perfectly legal to prohibit women from sitting in the Chambers, the Famous Five who spearheaded the appeals effort understood that it was not just. Women were just as, if not more, capable of sitting in the Senate as their male counterparts. In the English Court of Probate and Divorce’s decision in Hyde v Hyde in 1866, marriage was defined as solely between a man and woman. This definition, embedded into the common law, informed Canadian judges for more than a century before it was finally rejected by the Supreme Court of Canada in Reference Re Same Sex Marriage in 2004. Yet again, it was perfectly legal for officers of the court to deny same-sex couples a marriage license knowing full well that it was not just.
Disobedience
So, what should one do when faced with a law and system that is unjust? William Reeves turned to vigilantism as his solution. For Will, obeying the law was a tacit concession to the white supremacists who drew them up, enforced them, and promoted their utility. Will knew that, should he be the victim of a hate crime, he would not find recourse in New York City’s justice system. What about the women who were prohibited from running for public office in Canada before the Edwards decision? What about members of the LGBTQ+ community who were prohibited from entering into a same-sex marriage before the Reference Re Same Sex decision? It may appear that courts and progressive thinking governments are the antidote to unjust laws, and in many cases, they are, but is that what we are to tell those currently marginalized by the legal system? That they should be patient, endure, and wait for reform? Should William Reeves have waited for the white supremacists to have been uprooted by the New York City Police Department? HBO’s Watchmen tells us that sometimes disobedience of the law is justified, and given Canada’s history of oppressing minorities and slow-burning march towards progress, they may be right. It is difficult for those of us entrusted with the law, as students, practitioners, professors, and even judges, to imagine a world where laws are not to be respected. But, for those who are under the boot of injustice, a suggestion to “trust in the law!” is a mere platitude.