As lawyers, we like to think that outcomes according to the law are always just and fair. If the law has to treat an individual unfairly, there must be a reason why that is necessary for the greater good.
It is not always easy for a judge to reconcile their own sense of fairness to an individual with the needs of public justice. Public justice requires consistency and adherence to principle; individual fairness may be served by finding exceptions or even reasoning backwards from what the judge perceives to be a just result.
The stretch
Sometimes the story told by litigants is more powerful than the legal analysis of their position, and it may seem that law and justice are not aligned. Common law systems give judges a degree of flexibility, but finding the correct balance between the logic of the law and what seems fair or just is a longstanding and recurring challenge. The old saying that hard cases make
