What The Kevin Spacey Case Can Teach Us
More than an abstraction, the law tells a lot about our humanity
Kevin Spacey is one of the most famous actors in the world for a reason: he is pretty good at his craft. He is so good that he has won two Oscars. The guy used to be at the very top of his game.
Then something happened. In 2017, he started being accused of sexual assault. One of these accusations was especially serious: having sexually assaulted a 14-year-old actor.
This impacted Spacey’s career immensely, such as being fired from the House of Cards and not acting in any significant production since then. The reputation of the actor was and probably is gone.
However, this week Kevin Spacey was found not guilty of the probable last charges against him, as has happened in the other trials related to those allegations, including the one regarding that 14-year-old actor.
First of all, it’s crucial to stress that, even though I am a lawyer (in Brazil), in this article, I will not give any opinion whatsoever about the case itself and its verdicts.
I also will not say anything about whether Spacey is “really” innocent or not, because this idea, of knowing the “real truth” beyond the evidence produced in a trial, is a pretty problematic one for several reasons.
It’s irrelevant for this article to know whether Spacey “truly” did what he was accused of or not. For this article, we can assume as correct what the juries decided, that Spacey was not guilty of the charges against him.
Once these points are clarified, let’s talk about what this situation tells us about the relationship between the law and our humanity.
It can seem silly to write that there is such a connection, which can be seen as obvious for most readers, considering that the law is a fiction created exactly to serve humanity.
Still, this clarification is necessary, for it’s easy to forget that rights such as the due process of law, despite their fancy names, exist for a more tangible, human reason. And the Spacey case shows this in a very clear way.
This principle, the due process of law, says things such as before an adequate trial, everybody must be assumed innocent of any criminal charges against them. It’s pretty easy to forget this idea, and how tricky is to apply it even when we do remember its existence!
Again, let’s take the Spacey case as an example. He should be considered innocent while he was not properly judged. But his reputation and other aspects of his professional life were incredibly damaged. Even now, with his acquittal, experts say he will never be a major actor anymore.
One of the reasons for that principle, the due process of law, to exist is exactly to avoid situations like this. After all, we never know. And I think that this is the most important lesson we can draw from this case: the importance of humility.
Let’s be frank: we like judging others, forgetting that we ourselves are not perfect, that we have done things that make us ashamed when we remember them.
We also know how complicated life is, that nothing is as simple as narratives try to sell us, and that rarely something is black and white. Even so, when it comes to strangers, we forget our own faults and this complexity that is common to virtually everything in life.
Somehow we have a very difficult time seeing strangers as humans like us and we hurry to judge them, even if it implies their destruction.
What’s more serious is that we make this judgment without having a clue about what’s going on behind the scenes, basing our opinions on things like newspapers and social media, whose priority is not always respecting people and seeking the truth.
For psychological reasons that I am not qualified to explain, we seem to be addicted to labeling others, to saying that they are worse humans than us; in short, to being moralistic.
We see this even in religion. In Christianity, for example, it’s not rare to find people far more worried with morality, with whom one sleeps, and other types of personal issues or gossip if you will, than with forgiveness, empathy, and simple living, true features of Christ according to the Bible.
Thus, I think the real lesson behind “boring” things such as the law and high-profile cases is that we should be more humble and empathetic, remembering that we are talking about things that we don’t really understand and that a human life is at stake, not a mere abstraction.
