Legal Order and Moral Truth : Our society has become obsessed with guilt or innocence. But what really matters more is right or wrong.

When Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti met with representatives of Los Angeles’ African American and Jewish communities last week, he was acknowledging the potential for social disruption inherent in the Simpson murder case. In his sessions with the community leaders, Garcetti said he was concerned that the trial not rip apart the social fabric, turning women against men, black against white, poor against rich. Good luck.

The high-profile court cases emanating from this city recently reflect the divisions between us. The O.J. Simpson case will be no exception. Even before Simpson’s arraignment, we were being turned against each other as trial balloons of defense strategy were floated in the New Yorker and Newsweek magazines, alleging a history of racial bias on the part of one of the investigating officers. This tactic immediately alerted those who fear a defense based on a loophole (thus obscuring the horrendous deaths of the victims) and diverted the city’s minority communities into concern over the alleged racism of the LAPD. That controversy inevitably plagues the Simpson trial is not entirely the fault of the judicial system or even the media. The courts can only determine guilt or innocence relative to the burden of proof. They have little to say about what is morally right and wrong, the true concern of justice. That’s why these cases rile us up, entreat us to take sides, prod us into attention--but then leave us foundering in what the sages call in Hebrew mehuma, the unease of the soul.

I frequently judge the moral confusion of an issue by how it is perceived by children. As the public courtroom spectacles of the past few years unfolded, I’ve struggled for simpler ways of describing the controversies to my daughter, now 12. She has asked me: Is it ever right to kill one’s parents? To burn down a neighborhood when you’re angry? To hit a stranger with a brick? To beat a criminal suspect into submission? She starts by asking me who is the bad guy. But what she wants to know is, what is right and wrong. She gets concerned when an obviously culpable person goes free, and she becomes confused when a court accepts root causes as excuses for anti-social acts. “You wouldn’t accept that from me!” Samantha says. She’s right.

We are different, the law and I. The law must consider gray areas of doubt in what might otherwise seem cut-and-dried fact situations. It is bound by a strict presumption of innocence and awaits the accumulation of evidence before rendering judgment. But in trying to raise a child with internal registers of good and evil, I am bound by none of these. Here, however, is a truth that’s hard enough for an adult to understand: The courts are not the ultimate moral authority, nor a substitute for a strong commitment to personal ethics. Without these ingredients of social cohesion, our pursuit of justice naturally is reduced to calculation and formula as a democracy scatters its goodwill to the winds.

In our society, conscience, responsibility, relationship to God and fellow man are the realm of religion and ethics and designated a private affair. It’s time to ask if the private realm is doing enough. The chaos in values is not about a lenient law. It’s about our own failures to take seriously what instinct tells us is true: that there are standards of decency being breached, and the problem is in ourselves.

While we criticize the judicial system and the media, we take our lead from them. We are fascinated to find lawsuits and criminal cases that illuminate the devil within. But after a trial or a segment of Oprah, we return to our own particular caves, concerned only with ourselves. We cannot expect to create an ethical society across racial, class, sexual and ethnic divides on a conscience geared to a bunker mentality and a 15-minute attention span.

Our bestseller lists reflect the craving for personal values, the reassertion not of the bottom line of the human ledger but of the upper level of civilization. The restoration of conscience demands that we ask: What do we owe each other? What are the minimum standards of respect and responsibility? What does it mean to be human? These high-profile cases are challenges to the moral order. The judicial system cannot be expected to do more than weigh evidence and mete out punishment. But teachers, clergy, civic leaders and we ourselves can acknowledge that guilt or innocence is for the jury. Right and wrong is for us.