Fairness is a Rotarian virtue. This should also be the virtue of every Christian and every Filipino. This is incidentally also a virtue that every lawyer and every human is called upon. Article 19 of the Civil Code of the Philippines provides that every person, in the exercise of his rights and in the performance of his duties, must act with justice, give everyone his due, and observe honesty and good faith. If all people in all nations would only adhere to this tenet, then we will have a more peaceful and happy world. If each of us acts with fairness, there should be less and less need for laws, for policemen, for prosecutors, and for judges.
Victor Hugo once said: “To be good is easy, what is difficult is to be fair.” Plato once told Socrates: “It is better, in fact, to be guilty of murder, than of fraud, which is to refuse to exercise fairness and justice.” Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote: “The foundation of fairness and justice is good faith.” It was the same great Cicero who once exclaimed: “Knowledge, if divorced from fairness is called cunning, it is plain knowledge that is devoid of wisdom.” Aristotle dared to write once: “At his best, man is the noblest of all animals, but without law and fairness, he is the worst.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn declared: “Fairness is conscience, not a personal conscience of any one but the conscience of all humanity.” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr once said: “An unfair law is no law at all.”
H. Jackson Brown Jr. wrote: “Live so that whenever your children think of fairness, of caring and of integrity, they would think of you.” Friedrich Nietzsche added: “In the end, we will be rewarded for our fairness, our good will, patience and gentleness with what is strange.” Euripides once said: “In case of dissention, never dare to judge until you have heard the other side.” Seneca puts it this way: “Auditur et altera pars” (the other side should also be heard). It is therefore unjust to be self-serving and one-sided in our decisions. Aristotle reminded us: “The guest is the fairer judge of a feast rather than the cook.” Thucydides wrote: “In a democracy, when someone loses in an election, he can always console himself with the thought that the voting process was not fair.”
Thus, every Rotarian, and of course, for that matter, every human being, be he a Christian or a Muslim, Jew or Buddhist, must always act with fairness. He must listen to the other side, and weigh things first before drawing a conclusion. This, in fact, is the essence of due process before making legal and judicial decisions. It is essential that we hear before we condemn or we declare anyone guilty or innocent. Fairness demands that we rid ourselves of all shades of bias and prejudice. We should do away with pre-conceived notions. Fairness demands a willingness and patience to hear and see before making a decision.
If only people could be more just, if governments and institutions could be fairer, life would then be less stressful and annoying. If each of us would be mindful of others, if we could consider the other side of the issue, then there would be more peace, more harmony, and more happiness in this world.