Shi Rui: "Justice may be late, but it will never be absent" is wrong from the beginning: it is another legal proverb that has been translated beyond recognition in China. No wonder the media and the public spread the truth. Let's look at the common Chinese version of "Justice may be late, but it will never be absent". This Chinese sentence is often quoted, often used to comfort the disadvantaged groups that justice will always come, or to tell them that the law will always give the final justice. Chicken soup sounds delicious at first glance and seems reasonable, but it is actually a very irresponsible statement to explore it carefully. Because if justice is eternal, it is meaningless. This stems from the fact that late justice cannot be regarded as real justice, because prescription is the timer of justice. On the one hand, if justice loses its timeliness, it is worthless, which is why the law will force the prescription of litigation or arbitration; On the other hand, if justice loses its timeliness, it will be attributed to irregular procedures, and often the lack and defects of procedural links will bring late justice. In this case, "justice may be late, but it will never be absent" is undoubtedly just a simple utopian view of law, just like "one good turn deserves another, and one evil turn deserves another" or "causal cycle, bad karma" and so on. , without logical support. If you reason carefully, you will find this sentence a bit puzzling and really incredible. However, the fallacy of this sentence is to this extent, but it is because domestic translators have changed their columns and dressed up. Since what I said is the sentence of evaluation, I will not just discuss this point. We just need to say, "If there are mistakes in future reports, the translator will bear the responsibility". In fact, tracing back to the source and exploring the original text, we will find that most of China's quotations do not understand the original version of French proverbs. Not only is the source wrong, it is depressing that even the original meaning of French proverbs has been misinterpreted.

So what is the real meaning of French proverbs?

Let's look at the original text first. The original text is actually "justice of delay is justice of refusal." Please pay attention to the mistakes in translation, which led to the misinterpretation of this sentence.

Normal Anglo-American legal system understands this as "justice delayed is equivalent to denying justice", or we can understand it as "law delayed is against justice" from another angle. Looking up the eighth edition of Blake's law dictionary, we can see that justice is closely related to negation or delay, that is, justice can neither be rejected nor delayed.

In william penn's Reflections and Some Solutions in Mottos, this sentence is regarded as delaying justice or injustice.

From 1963 Martin Luther King's letter from Birmingham Prison, we can clearly understand the meaning of this sentence. Justice is deprived if it is delayed for too long.

Looking through a new legal dictionary and glossary, "justice is delayed and justice is rejected" should actually be understood as follows: therefore, this proverb actually emphasizes that "justice is free, because nothing is more satisfactory than graft"; Integrity, because justice should not stop; And speed, because procrastination is a denial.

Translated into Chinese, justice should be free, and the worst person in the world pays bribes for justice; Justice is sufficient, and those who walk a hundred miles are unjust; Justice should be timely, if it is late, it is better to refuse justice.