Drawing on an analysis of a criminal case in Norway, the author asserts that there is a “paradoxical problem of randomness” in the legal context, despite the claim of legal objectiveness. A historical analysis reveals that restorative justice practices were the usual way of handling conflict in Norway until the 15th century, when the professionalization of conflicts pushed conflict mediations into a punitive legal model in order to increase the incomes of the state and the church. Thus, the Norwegian judicial and criminal process was moved from a local and restorative process to a central and punitive process. In 1991, a Norwegian Act of Parliament regulating the mediation and reconciliation service provided that criminal offenses should be defined as conflicts, mediators must be lay people, the parties must meet personally, and lawyers are rarely allowed to participate in these meetings. But the author questions whether it is possible to force the principles of forgiveness and reconciliation into a modern criminal justice system predicated on the principles of punity and individual capacity. The remainder of the article discusses the Norwegian regime of restorative justice and compares it with criminal justice. In contrasting the two approaches, the author highlights theoretical differences between criminal and restorative justice. In criminal justice, the perpetrators are punished, the victims and perpetrators are treated as opponents in the negotiating process, the victims want punishment for the perpetrators, punishment of the perpetrator affords restoration to the victim, victims’ needs are not a concern of the criminal justice system, and the judges determine the best course of action for the perpetrators and the victims. In contrast, restorative justice demands that the actors accept responsibility for the offense, the actors and the community agree on the harm done, reconciliation is a possibility if there is a confrontation between the actors, the actors must offer repair for the harm in the form of remorse, restoration, restitution, and reconciliation, and actors are not punished but are helped to repair the harm created by the offense. The author further delineates the rituals of justice and claims that a restorative approach to justice in Norway would serve to restore Norwegian justice. Tables, notes, references