Establish Justice
Published May 30, 2024
Justice and equality under the law are American principles and values that act as a bulwark against oppression and allows the United States of America to endure as an open and democratic society. Special Agent Nick Shenkin draws from his personal experiences and his family’s escape from oppressive regimes where justice was completely absent. With a personal understanding of how rare and invaluable true justice can be, SA Nick Shenkin dedicates himself to the active and ongoing process to establish justice equally for all Americans.
>> Nick Shenkin: My name is special agent Nick Shenkin of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I've been an FBI agent for 16 years, and I'm currently a national security affairs fellow at the Hoover Institution. I work for the US Department of Justice, the institution that seeks to follow the admonition in the preamble of the constitution to establish justice for the people of the United States.
I grew up in Berkeley, California, a city noted for its cultural diversity and the vigor of its debate. During the Gulf War, the level of our civic discourse was front and center. My high school peers staged a walkout to protest the war. Many others, only a year or two older than myself, joined the military to fight for the freedom of people across the world whom they had never met.
On the one side, the freedom of speech to protest the action of our government. On the other side, the sense of duty and responsibility to act in defense of those freedoms. Both were exercising critical American duties supporting democracy. But one side was risking their lives in their support, and that spoke to me.
It occurred to me that my familial forebears risked their lives and sacrificed everything to come here in search of freedom. My great great grandparents escaped the tsarist pogroms in Russia in the 19th century. My wife's family escaped the fundamentalist revolution in Iran in 1979. They may have come to the United States over 100 years apart, but they came here for the same reasons.
They sought a land where democracy had established freedom, opportunity, stability, and something just as significant as something else that didn't exist where they came from, justice. The liberty we experience here in the United States depends upon our democratic institutions. Three separate but equal branches of government accountable to the will of the people.
Our constitution's preamble sought to establish justice because the founders understood how vital justice is to the integrity of our democratic institutions and our liberty. Without an impartial and accessible system of justice and equality under the law, the scales of justice tip forever in favor of the powerful, and democracy dies.
The balance of justice is fragile. It survives only through the efforts and faith of everyday people willing to work without fear, fear, or favor to maintain and improve it. I consider it a great honor to be one of those people. The United States is a beacon of hope for millions of people, like my great great grandparents and for my wife's family a century later.
It is an honor to serve in the FBI. So our country remains a beacon of hope for people suffering in systems of oppression, inequality, and injustice. Although my title says special agent, I'm just an average American who chose and still chooses to maintain the integrity of our democratic institutions, our houses of democracy, through the establishment of justice.