“The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.”

Three cheers for Raymond Chandler! Highly recommend all his novels. Here's another quote from his 1950 essay, "The Simple Art of Murder," which you can find here:
http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/chandler__the_simple_art_of_murder__en.htm

"It is not a fragrant world, but it is the world you live in, and certain writers with tough minds and a cool spirit of detachment can make very interesting and even amusing patterns out of it."

Five + stars for the first sentence. A less than that for an almost accurate observation of legal positivism. A string of truth runs through the, "justice may show up." That which has been paraded as law, has more often than not, been a mechanism - a mechanism of power, control, impoverishing the many, tyranny, despotism and injustice

Check out the "Institute for Justice" and a see how many local, county, and state laws are passed simply to keep out competition for existing cartels. You will be amazed to see some of the worst laws are not passed by the federal government but by your own city councils.

The control is just on the other end of the gun. The smaller the community, the easer to perceive that which is not seen.

As Mike often reminds us, more often than not mere statutes and rules are referred to as 'law.' Since the power of police and courts (in their myriad of forms now) are used to 'enforce the law', those seeking power and control gravitate to those areas where 'laws' are written and thus forced upon us to obey. Indeed with such a definition of 'law' justice is merely the degree to which the 'lawmakers' can force the rest of us to obey them.

Beware all those demanding 'law and order' for it merely means masters and slaves. How many more 'laws' do we really need? If we truly observed the jurisprudence of Common Law, we could throw out 99% of the Uniform Commercial Code for 'criminal' offenses. "Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it." (Thoreau)

Very well said Archer !!