From the Mueller report to the college cheating scandal, why we're all obsessed with fairness
Less than a week after charges were dropped against actor Jussie Smollett in a Chicago courtroom, hundreds of protesters converged on the Cook County state's attorney's office. On one side, a group organized by the Fraternal Order of Police, decrying State's Attorney Kim Foxx's handling of the case. On the other, a group including members of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, decrying the state of justice for people of color in Cook County.
The two groups merged and clashed, but both sides agreed on one thing: Something seemed very, very unfair.
A sense of uncertainty and unrest extended even to expert observers. "I don't understand what happened," says Preet Bahrara, former U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and author of the newly released "Doing Justice," his book dissecting the justice system. "I've never seen anything like it. And so you have all this speculation, and that makes people wonder and worry about the fairness of systems."
Of course, it wasn't just the Smollett case that started everyone wondering about fairness, or the lack. Unfairness, as
