As America celebrates its 250 year-old legacy, Wheatley Fellow Shima Baughman makes a case for the future: "whether liberty endures will depend on whether we remain a people capable of mercy".
"We are quick to name civic responsibility, patriotism and justice as key characteristics of a thriving republic," she explains. "We are slower to name mercy — and yet a free society cannot survive long without it." This is not to do away with accountability. Rather, it is about finding the framework that melds both virtues together to form a well-functioning society. Baughman shares a case from early on in her legal career when she learned this lesson while serving as a law clerk.
"Accountability without mercy hardens into something a free people cannot bear; mercy without accountability dissolves the order that makes freedom possible," she states. "Meshing the two together is among the hardest things a free people is asked to do."