Kelesoglu 1Adrian Keleolu 5949B EnglishMr Smith4 May 2015Justice: one of the biggest pillars of society. But what does it mean? The answer changes from person to person; nobody can give an absolutely correct definition of justice. In spite of this fact, people have been trying to have a 100% just society -unfortunately, this is impossible. Not only because the concept itself is vague, but also because the ones who are carrying it out are imperfect. In Twelve Angry Men, Reginald Rose focuses on this: imperfection. The most important theme in Twelve Angry Men is that judicial system is imperfect because people are not perfect.Nobody can have a perfect memory -people have a hard time remembering even their last meal. Unfortunately, one of the most important aspects of a case is the eyewitness, where the testimonies are based on memory, and well, their testimonies mean a lot. Despite this importance, the fact that one can never be 100% sure of any memory is very often forgotten. Our brains have a reconstructive memory, which means that the brain fills out the missing details, by itself, with the bits of information from other memories, so eyewitnesses are very likely to be wrong. For instance, the old mans testimony is not very trustworthy, because given his old age - or his possible memories of voices coming from upstairs -, he might have assumed that the male voice belonged to the boy who lived there. This doesnt indicate that he is doing this on purpose; its purely unconscious. He cant be sure of remembering something correctly. In fact, nobody can be sure of the accuracy of any memory. The notion that even the jurors (at least one of them) arent sure if the boys guilty or not is emphasized a lot in the play. Their task is to look at the evidence and the testimonies and reach a verdict; however, some of them are blinded by their prejudice and personal conflicts: they simply cant be objective. For example, Juror 3 insists that the boy is guilty because of his issues with his son. Similarly, Juror 10 doesnt want to believe that the boy might be innocent. He is extremely biased towards people from the slums. The jurors are also arguing about reasonable doubt, which is what saved the boy from death.This, even though its a very important part of the judicial system, is a vague term; its meaning differs from person to person. It doesnt have an exact definition or at least a satisfying one, so it is a very controversial concept. The most general definition would be this: Reasonable doubt is the level of certainty a juror must have to find a defendant guilty of a crime. It is an important threshold to the verdict: it can either save innocent people from having their lives ruined by the government or let guilty people loose due to the lack of certainty, but what is defined as a reason to be sure someones guilty differs from person to person. This is why Juror 8 requested to go over the evidence over and over again: to prevent any potential ruination of a possibly innocent kids life. On the other hand, it was pretty clear to Juror 3: the boy bought the knife with which his father was killed, so it must have been him. Since reasonable doubt obviously doesnt have clear borders, it makes the perfection of the judicial system impossible.The main theme in Twelve Angry Men is that peoples imperfection is the reason why the judicial system is imperfect; since people are the root of all the factors that make the judicial system work and maybe even justice itself, its impossible for anything imperfect to create something perfect. Justice is a human-made concept. Even if not so, it is heavily distorted by humans. People arent the same, so nothing they make is agreed upon unanimously and nothing different from each other can be perfect at the same time, therefore, people are not perfect.