"Smart laws don’t assure justice any more than a good recipe guarantees a delicious meal."
– Preet Bharara, Former US Attorney
A peek into ancient law evidences the Hammurabi Code and Mosaic Law demanding an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, and a foot for a foot. Pure retributive justice.
Time marched on. Humanity felt more urbane and civilised. The dispensers of justice felt that retributive justice was too harsh, too cruel, so it coughed up a liberal method to mete out punishment.
The doctrine of proportionality in law demands that the punishment be proportionate to the wrongdoing but with a degree of fairness and reasonableness.
Today, the guilty are literally getting away with murder. Silver-tongued lawyers and pliant judges and juries spoil the fun for retributive and distributive justice with meaningless judicial and legal platitudes.