(יח) שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכָל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר ה' אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק׃
(יט) לֹא־תַטֶּ֣ה מִשְׁפָּ֔ט לֹ֥א תַכִּ֖יר פָּנִ֑ים וְלֹא־תִקַּ֣ח שֹׁ֔חַד כִּ֣י הַשֹּׁ֗חַד יְעַוֵּר֙ עֵינֵ֣י חֲכָמִ֔ים וִֽיסַלֵּ֖ף דִּבְרֵ֥י צַדִּיקִֽם׃
(כ) צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־ה' אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃
(18) Give yourself judges and officers, in all of your gates, that YHVH your God is giving you, for your tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment.
(19) You shall not hastily make judgement; you shall not make familiar faces; nor shall you take a bribe; for a bribe will blind the eyes of the wise and distort acts of righteous persons.
(20) Justice, justice shalt thou follow, that you may live and inherit the land that YHVH your God is giving you.
B'chol sha'arecha In all your gates :: [This means a judge was to be appointed] In every city.
Lo tateh mishpat Do not pervert justice. :: This means what it says it means.
Lo takir panim You shall not make familiar faces :: Even while the litigants are making their cases. This is a caution to the judge that he not be gentle with one party and severe with the other, or making one stand before him while the other is allowed to remain seated. For when the (unfavored) litigant sees that the judge is honoring his friend (the other party), he will not bother to make his arguments.
Racism and the Economy (1988) by Wendell Berry
...There are two ways by which individual success and security can be made (within moral limits) successful and secure: they must rest on a sound understanding and practice of economic justice; and they must involve and be involved in the success and security of the community. The competitive principle excludes both of these ways.
We might as well admit that we do not have a working concept of economic justice. We are resigned to the poor principle that people earn what they earn by power, not by the quality or usefulness of their work. Insurance executives, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, factory workers, and garbage collectors all earn in proportion to their power. People such as the small farmers, who have no power, must resign themselves to earning what they can get. This is what we mean by our understanding that the market is the ultimate arbiter of economic values. Workers will not be paid according to the quality of their work or their products, but according to their power. The market is thus detached utterly from the issue of quality and made utterly subject to manipulation by the most powerful in their own interest.
The first principle of economic justice, however, is that good work will be well paid. If follows that the first necessity of economic justice is good work -- something that we, as a nation, are less and less capable of doing. The market as a mere brokerage of economic power -- apart from the principled high standards of the seller and the discriminating judgment of the buyer -- will inevitably have a degenerative influence on both the quality of people and the quality of products.
But surely we can go further and say that a market will be degenerative if it is not under the rule of virtues. The most obvious lesson of slavery, one that we have never learned, is about the limits of a mere market. A mere market cannot adequately recognize or protect the full value of a creature, as seller or as buyer or as merchandise. We now call a market "free" to the extent that buyers and sellers are able to ignore this limitation. But it was a limit not ignorable by slaves or by the enemies of slavery. To them it was plain that the market was inevitably reductive: it treated people as bodies, not as souls.
Think Little (1970) by Wendell Berry
...A crowd whose discontent has risen no higher than the level of slogans is only [sic.] a crowd. But a crowd that understands the reasons for its discontent and knows the remedies is a vital community, and it will have to be reckoned with....