Justice & Law Quote by Benjamin Tucker

Tucker’s line is a trapdoor under polite society’s favorite word: justice. He’s not praising the concept; he’s auditing who gets stuck with the bill. The sentence turns on a cold economic metaphor - “paid for” - that fits an activist steeped in 19th-century fights over labor, state power, and moralizing reform. Justice, in Tucker’s view, isn’t a halo; it’s a transaction. When the injured party has to finance the remedy (through court fees, lost wages, public shaming, retaliation, bureaucratic hurdles, emotional labor) the system has effectively re-victimized them, laundering harm through procedure.

The intent is surgical: expose how institutions can claim moral authority while offloading costs downward. It’s an early diagnosis of what we now call access-to-justice problems, but sharper because it treats them not as unfortunate “barriers” but as evidence of moral failure. If the path to redress requires sacrifice from the harmed, then the system isn’t merely inefficient - it is structurally aligned with the wrongdoer. Justice becomes a luxury good, available to those who can afford to chase it.

The subtext is a libertarian-anarchist suspicion of state-administered virtue: courts and officials can posture as neutral while demanding time, money, and compliance from the very people they failed to protect. Tucker’s framing also flips the usual moral homework assignment. Instead of telling victims to be patient, resilient, or “take the high road,” he asks why society is comfortable making them subsidize its conscience.