This is an All Ears English podcast episode 2061.
Justify your English with today's famous sayings.
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So you sometimes end up in English conversations about the topic of justice.
Today, get three common sayings that you can use to further the conversation and connect around what justice means.
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Hey, Lindsay, how's it going?
It's going great.
How are you, Aubrey?
How's everything out in Arizona? excellent.
It's hot right now, but we're managing.
I have a question for you.
I don't know this about you.
We've never talked about this.
We're talking about justice today.
We had a great question from a listener.
And I'm wondering, have you ever felt like you didn't receive justice?
Not just that something was unfair, but like an authority figure or law enforcement treated you unjustly.
To be honest, I'm lucky to say that I can't think of anything.
Nothing stands out in my mind and I'm very lucky because I know that a lot of people can't say that.
Right.
We recognize it's coming from a place of privilege if we've never been treated unjustly by authorities, because a lot of people do have those experiences, for whatever reason.
It might be based on race or language.
There's all kinds of possibilities.
I did have an experience.
I was given a trespassing violation as a college student.
And I did felt it did not have to do with my race, I don't think, but it did have to do with my age.
Like because we were young, hanging out in a park and there had been some kind of story.
Yes, I've told the story before.
And so I was given a misdemeanor and it felt very unjust.
It was like 10 p.m. in a park and we were doing nothing.
We were just like sitting there talking and we were seeing these trespassing violations.
And we said, we're not doing anything.
Too bad.
You get this fine.
And it felt very unjust.
Wow.
Yeah.
I mean, that's tough, right?
I imagine that's a very angry feeling.
That could become an angry feeling, right?
Yes.
I feel angry.
I think the thing that I can think of as an example.
I know a lot of times in small countryside towns you have cops that have a quota for speeding tickets.
The town needs to make a certain amount of money on speeding ticket violations.
And so they will be right past the sign where the speed limit went from 60 to 35, and they'll just get you.
Right?
It hasn't happened to me.
Yes.
I've gotten some of those.
I've had that happen too.
Or in a school zone where they get you where you can't.
I've turned a corner so I haven't.
The sign saying it went down to 15 was like back there and I wouldn't have been able to see it.
I got to find there once.
Yeah, it happens.
And you're right.
It feels, it doesn't feel good.
We have this righteous indignation we call it where we feel like we're justified in being extremely angry and we feel like we've been treated unfairly and it's not a good emotion to have.
Yeah.
Righteous indignation.
I want to say that again, just highlight that as a bonus word Big expression, right?
That'll for sure be in the app, right?
That is a big one.
That will be in the app for sure.
And guys.
By the way, if you want a better way to consume Allers English, it's in the iOS Android app.
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So good.
Yeah.
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Yes.
All right.
So Aubrey, we have a question from an amazing listener today.
Shall I go ahead and read it?
Yes, please.
All right.
Thanks for the amazing podcast.
They're really interesting and helpful.
I learned some useful expressions to use beyond the business context.
But as a non-native speaker, I always find it ambiguous when people use some expressions that are not that straightforward.
For example, that makes the two of us or justice has no arms.
Can you share some practical examples so I can understand and use them in daily life?
Thanks, Ben from China.
Now, if you guys also listen to our Business English podcast, this might sound familiar right, Aubrey?
Yes, we answered the first half of Ben's question on the Business English podcast, episode 121.
It was called excited for today's episode.
That makes two of us.
Yes.
Because that phrase we use so often in business English.
But it's definitely relevant whether you work in English or not.
So be sure you're following that podcast so you don't miss any episodes.
Yeah, but today's is going to be a completely different answer to answer the second one, right?
Justice has no arm.
So where do we start today?
Yeah, we had to save this for a separate episode because it's packed here.
There's so many phrases with the word justice.
And I really did a deep dive on Google and could not find this anywhere.
Justice has no arms, but I found some very similar phrases.
Have you heard that one?
Justice has no arms.
I thought this would be another episode where you learn something from you, Aubrey, but it's not.
Yeah, I agree.
I don't know this expression.
So there's a chance the student may have misheard or someone may have misspoken when they heard it.
That is not commonly used in English, but there are a few expressions that are, for example, The Long Arm of Justice.
We're going to share three today that we do use in English, that have the word justice.
Kind of describe them.
Share some examples so that you can use them and understand them when you hear them.
Yeah.
I mean the one that came to mind, that I think I've heard President Obama use this.
It's a.
The arc of history is long, but it bends towards justice.
Right.
That's another great one.
And so that's one that comes up.
But let's see what we've got for today.
That's going to be very related to our third one here.
Justice has no timetable.
So, yeah, we'll go into all of these.
They're all it's interesting because social justice is on a lot of people's minds.
The Barbie movie really covered a lot about this.
You know, it's there.
There's a lot that goes into justice change, social change and creating justice for everyone equality, social equality and social justice.
So let's dive into this first phrase here.
Here we go.
So the first one, guys, is the long arm of justice.
So maybe that was similar to what the person heard.
Maybe this is what our listener, Ben, heard.
It could be.
Yeah, that's what I imagined.
This means just the ability of law enforcement or police to find, catch and punish people who commit crimes.
Okay.
So for example, the long arm of the law finally caught up with her 10 years later.
So does this just mean eventually... everyone gets caught.
Is that kind of what it's saying?
Yes.
Sometimes it might take a while, but eventually there's a punishment, right?
So this was the long arm of the law.
I should have said justice.
We say both.
We say the long arm of the law just meaning like eventually people will receive some type of punishment, legal ramification, when they break the law.
The long arm of justice often means a little bit different.
It's sort of more like, even if the law doesn't ever punish you, the long arm of justice will meaning there will be some kind of repercussion for you in a changed nature in your life being worse.
If you are, you know, doing things that are not on the up and up.
Well, yeah.
I mean, this is something that we study in my Buddhist practice, right?
This is karma, karma 101.
That's actually what it is.
Karma or karma, as they say in Buddhism, that's the same thing, right?
It's eventually going to ripple out and create some kind of effect.
Um, Every action has a reaction, right?
It's just action out in the world.
Yes.
And we use that phrasal verb to say something will catch up to you, right?
Let's say someone steals and they have no problem.
They don't feel guilty.
They don't think they'll ever get caught.
You might say it's going to catch up to you.
And that might not mean that eventually, the authorities are going to catch you and you're going to be fined or thrown in jail.
It might just mean you are going to become a dishonest person, and that will have its own ramifications.
Oh, yeah, for sure.
And also it living with that, most people would experience some kind of guilt, right?
That's the thing, right?
You might be wracked with guilt.
People might no longer trust you.
Think of all of the consequences.
A lot of things for sure.
Okay.
So that's the first one.
What is the second one, Aubrey?
Yeah.
So this one is justice has no color.
And this is said to indicate that the law applies equally to to everyone regardless of race, right?
So this is used a lot.
When people are actually talking about that.
It's not accurate, but should be right.
Because some people believe that systemic racism exists in the legal system, at least in the United States.
When we look at the statistics, this seems to definitely be the case, right?
So you'll hear this with social activism.
People might say justice should have no color.
Oh, yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
The only thing I can think about when I think about this is the Central Park Five.
You remember the boys?
I think a number of them, if not all of them, went to jail for quite a long time.
I just watched the movie Till about Emmett Till.
I don't know if you've seen that.
Unfortunately, innumerable stories, right?
When you see a list of all of the deaths that have you know from either police brutality or otherwise, it's that's what's really mind boggling.
Is you think of the 10 or 12, maybe 15 you know of that you could name?
And then you see the list of hundreds that a lot of people don't know about.
Yeah.
But I think I heard more recently one of the members of the central park five is now running for local office in New York.
So that's kind of cool.
Um, Yeah, that would be exciting.
Yeah.
So, yeah, there are definitely a lot of stories you can look at.
We had seen one, an article called The Color of Justice in The New Yorker, where it was talking about a police officer that shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old unarmed black man in Ferguson, Missouri.
And then it just had this statistic in that article.
It said that in a Pew Research poll, it showed that 80 of African-Americans believe that this Ferguson case raised important racial issues, while only 37 of whites felt the same.
So that's where you kind of see the difference in the awareness of the issue or how much people believe that it actually is an issue.
That sometimes is where we really need the social change in just being aware of the statistics and the issue and being open-minded to it and not trying to hide from the problem.
Yeah.
I mean, we did have a nice kind of societal awakening to some extent in 2020 with Ferguson and with different marches and things going on, which was really cool because people were at home and sort of noticing what was actually going on for once.
So I feel like there's been a little bit more awareness in the last few years than maybe 10 years before.
But we still have a lot of work to do, don't we, Aubrey?
Absolutely.
Okay, Aubrey, what is next?
Do we have a third one?
Yes.
This one is justice has no timetable.
So this is what you were talking about, that quote, right?
That just means it takes time to build social justice.
But I believe this is sort of implied that it's always leading toward it, right?
Just sort of naturally that there might not be a timetable.
It's going to take time.
It's going to be slow, but it will come eventually.
Yes.
And Stacey Abrams is a well-known... Now, is she governor of Georgia?
She's a former Georgia state representative and a current voting rights activist.
Yes.
And she said in a speech, justice has no timetable.
It just has a destination.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She is definitely an exciting political figure kind of on the rise.
So I'm looking forward to see what she you know, seeing what happens with her career and can you know, is she going to get in there and make a difference?
Yes, let's hope, right?
Yes, justice campaigns, I think, understand that progress isn't easy.
It's not quick.
We interviewed Jamila Ball on the Allers English podcast a little while ago, episode 1471.
It was called How You Can Help Create Language Justice with Jamila Ball.
And this was really fascinating because we don't always think about social justice with language.
And, if you know, are articles available in a person's first language so that they can have all of the information that's available to someone who speaks English or speaks one of the more common languages that news is translated into?
Yeah, I love it.
And before we do our takeaway today, I've been meaning for us to do an episode here on the important Supreme Court justice decisions that just came down in June.
Big Supreme Court decisions come down at the end of June every year.
And now we're in September for this show.
So we've missed a little bit of a window, but we could bring it in because there's a lot going on right now Aubrey in the Supreme Court, with the justices, with the public losing respect and trust for the justices and the Supreme Court itself.
And I think we're in a little bit of a crisis right now, with people not completely trusting what the justices are doing in their personal lives.
And so we can bring that in.
We can also talk about the cases that were just decided on affirmative action.
There was student loan stuff.
And then there was what was the other one?
Oh, abortion.
Yeah, this would be really interesting to talk about.
I just recently was listening to a podcast about a recent Supreme Court decision about It was a company who didn't want to do some kind of service for an LGBTQ couple.
And then, when the Supreme Court asked them, have you actually been asked to do this service?
And had to say no, they said yes.
And then it was proven that that didn't happen.
It was like a fake email, like a fake account.
And so yeah, people are sort of losing trust because the Supreme Court didn't really look into it well enough and didn't insist on the evidence.
And so it's sort of feeling like oh, do we have the checks and balances to make sure that this body of justices is doing what the general public would like to have happen with their laws?
Exactly.
It's supposed to be an independent body of government, right?
It's not supposed to be influenced by any other body of government.
But particularly with that case, I think we're going to come back to it.
Guys, hit follow.
We should.
Yes.
If you want to hear more about this, be sure to follow.
Good stuff.
But we should wrap it up for today, Aubrey.
That was just a teaser of what we could get into this fall.
Where should we leave our listeners today?
Yeah well, you can definitely see how deep and meaningful connections and conversations come up when you're discussing justice, right?
There are several phrases where we use justice.
You can speak about this with friends, close friends.
You know family, but you definitely want to be open-minded to hear what others think.
We recognize that you out there listening may have very different political views from ours.
These are charged issues where people will have different opinions, but you need the vocabulary and the skills to be able to have those conversations respectfully, where you can listen to both sides, share your opinion.
And that's a difficult thing to do in a second language right, and then you can extend into your own court system in your own country.
Guys have conversations.
Do people trust decisions of your supreme court in your country?
Uh, you know what is.
How does that extend into politics for you?
Uh, love the topic aubry big topic, but i think our listeners are ready for it and this is the good stuff that we can talk about and become better people and more informed.
Yes, absolutely.
You are at the language level where you can get involved in the fight for social justice in your first language and as well as in English.
So yeah, don't shy away from it.
Have those conversations to help build awareness in yourself and in others.
I love it.
Good stuff.
Aubrey, I'll see you on here very soon.
You have a good rest of your day.
You too.
Thanks, Lindsay.
See ya.
Bye.
Bye.
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