One of the most cited phrases in the Torah is found in the first sentences of this week’s reading: “justice, justice shall you pursue” [Deut. 16:20]. But this is not, despite what you may have read elsewhere, a license for each individual to elevate his or her own opinion of what is just and correct to a Biblical mandate. On the contrary, it is a demand that we follow the true Arbiter of right vs. wrong to the best of our ability. 

This is proven by the fact that this exhortation is part of the Commandment found in the opening words of our reading: “Judges and Officers shall you place for yourselves, in all your gates which Hashem your G-d gives you for your tribes, and they shall judge the nation with righteous judgment” [16:18]. There are neutral laws given to us as part of Torah, and our duty is to follow them, not remake them in our own image.

The Torah teaches us profound insights into human nature. Though an expression of G-d’s Perfection, it simultaneously is written for human beings who are inherently imperfect. The Torah tells us this explicitly: even Moshe, G-d’s chosen messenger to teach His Torah to the People of Israel, is criticized for his wrongdoing.

And because the Torah recognizes our inevitable lack of perfection, it offers us tools to fight against our baser instincts, at both the individual and communal level. Ideally, a person should internalize the Torah’s teaching, and control his or her own behavior without outside help. Seeing wrongdoing addressed at the communal level, in fact, helps us in our own internal battles, lest we earn for ourselves the punishments meted out to others. The existence of a system of justice not only protects us from those who wish to do us harm; it also protects us from ourselves.

The Mishnah says, in fact, that a court that gave the death penalty more than once in seven years was called “murderous.” This is true although the Torah has no shortage of sins punishable by death. This punishment was actualized very rarely, both because most people took the Torah very seriously and avoided even much more minor wrongdoing on their own, and because the judges observed the exhortation in the Chapters of the Fathers (1:6) to “judge every person favorably,” trying to find evidence and arguments to exonerate each defendant. But part of why these crimes were so rare is simply that we were told they were very serious, and, yes, the prospect of punishment did exist.

If we want to have justice, we must have judges and officers, both, and their authority must be respected. Seeing these models helps us to set up “judges”—education telling us what is right vs. wrong, and our own decision to do the right thing—along with “officers,” our own internal efforts to set up barriers to keep us away from wrong behavior, all within our own minds.