Justice, in its broadest sense, is the principle that people receive that which they deserve, with the interpretation of what then constitutes "deserving" being impacted upon by numerous fields, with many differing viewpoints and perspectives, including the concepts of
moral
A moral (from Latin ''morālis'') is a message that is conveyed or a lesson to be learned from a story or event. The moral may be left to the hearer, reader, or viewer to determine for themselves, or may be explicitly encapsulated in a maxim. A ...
correctness based on
ethics,
rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an abil ...
,
law,
religion,
equity
Equity may refer to:
Finance, accounting and ownership
* Equity (finance), ownership of assets that have liabilities attached to them
** Stock, equity based on original contributions of cash or other value to a business
** Home equity, the dif ...
and fairness. The state will sometimes endeavor to increase justice by operating
courts and enforcing their rulings.
Early theories of justice were set out by the Ancient Greek philosophers
Plato in his work
The Republic, and
Aristotle in his
Nicomachean Ethics
The ''Nicomachean Ethics'' (; ; grc, Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, ) is Aristotle's best-known work on ethics, the science of the good for human life, which is the goal or end at which all our actions aim. (I§2) The aim of the inquiry is ...
. Advocates of divine command theory have said that justice issues from God. In the 1600s, philosophers such as
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
said that justice derives from
natural law.
Social contract
In moral and political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships betw ...
theory said that justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone. In the 1800s,
utilitarian philosophers such as
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
said that justice is based on the best outcomes for the greatest number of people. Theories of
distributive justice
Distributive justice concerns the socially just allocation of resources. Often contrasted with just process, which is concerned with the administration of law, distributive justice concentrates on outcomes. This subject has been given considera ...
study what is to be distributed, between whom they are to be distributed, and what is the ''proper'' distribution.
Egalitarians have said that justice can only exist within the coordinates of equality.
John Rawls used a
social contract
In moral and political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships betw ...
theory to say that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness.
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, and others said that
property rights, also within the realm of distributive justice and natural law, maximizes the overall wealth of an economic system. Theories of
retributive justice
Retributive justice is a theory of punishment that when an offender breaks the law, justice requires that they suffer in return, and that the response to a crime is proportional to the offence. As opposed to revenge, retribution—and thus retr ...
say that wrongdoing should be
punished
''Punished'', also known as ''Bou ying'', is a 2011 Hong Kong thriller film directed by Law Wing-cheung. The film stars Anthony Wong, Richie Jen, and Janice Man.
Plot
The story starts with a real estate tycoon, Wong Ho-chiu (Anthony Wong), w ...
to ensure justice. The closely related
restorative justice (also sometimes called "reparative justice") is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders.
Harmony
Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. Hence, Plato's definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one's own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level. A person's soul has three parts – reason, spirit and desire. Similarly, a city has three parts – Socrates uses the parable of the chariot to illustrate his point: a chariot works as a whole because the two horses' power is directed by the charioteer. Lovers of wisdom – philosophers, in one sense of the term –
should rule because only they understand what is
good. If one is ill, one goes to a medic rather than a farmer, because the medic is expert in the subject of health. Similarly, one should trust one's city to an expert in the subject of the good, not to a mere
politician who tries to gain power by giving people what they want, rather than what's good for them. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust city is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship's course (the politicians), and a
navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.
Divine command
Advocates of divine command theory say that justice, and indeed the whole of morality, is the authoritative command of God. Murder is wrong and must be punished, for instance, because God says it so. Some versions of the theory assert that God must be obeyed because of the nature of his relationship with humanity, others assert that God must be obeyed because he is goodness itself, and thus doing what he says would be best for everyone.
A meditation on the Divine command theory by
Plato can be found in his dialogue,
Euthyphro. Called the
Euthyphro dilemma, it goes as follows: "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?" The implication is that if the latter is true, then justice is beyond mortal understanding; if the former is true, then morality exists independently from God, and is therefore subject to the judgment of mortals. A
response
Response may refer to:
*Call and response (music), musical structure
*Reaction (disambiguation)
*Request–response
**Output (computing), Output or response, the result of telecommunications input
*Response (liturgy), a line answering a versicle
...
, popularized in two contexts by
Immanuel Kant and
C. S. Lewis
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge Univers ...
, is that it is deductively valid to say that the existence of an objective morality implies the existence of God and vice versa.
Natural law
For advocates of the theory that justice is part of natural law (e.g.,
John Locke
John Locke (; 29 August 1632 – 28 October 1704) was an English philosopher and physician, widely regarded as one of the most influential of Age of Enlightenment, Enlightenment thinkers and commonly known as the "father of liberalism ...
), justice involves the nature of man.
Despotism and skepticism
In ''Republic'' by
Plato, the character
Thrasymachus argues that justice is the interest of the strong – merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler has imposed on the people.
Mutual agreement
Advocates of the social contract say that justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone; or, in many versions, from what they would agree to under ''hypothetical'' conditions including equality and absence of bias. This account is considered further below, under '
Justice as Fairness
"Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical" is an essay by John Rawls, published in 1985. In it he describes his conception of justice. It comprises two main principles of liberty and equality; the second is subdivided into Fair Equality of ...
'. The absence of bias refers to an equal ground for all people involved in a disagreement (or trial in some cases).
Subordinate value
According to utilitarian thinkers including
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 7 May 1873) was an English philosopher, political economist, Member of Parliament (MP) and civil servant. One of the most influential thinkers in the history of classical liberalism, he contributed widely to ...
, justice is not as fundamental as we often think. Rather, it is derived from the more basic standard of rightness,
consequentialism: what is right is what has the best consequences (usually measured by the total or average
welfare caused). So, the proper principles of justice are those that tend to have the best consequences. These rules may turn out to be familiar ones such as keeping
contracts; but equally, they may not, depending on the facts about real consequences. Either way, what is important is those consequences, and justice is important, if at all, only as derived from that fundamental standard. Mill tries to explain our mistaken belief that justice is overwhelmingly important by arguing that it derives from two natural human tendencies: our desire to retaliate against those who hurt us, or the feeling of self-defense and our ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place, sympathy. So, when we see someone harmed, we project ourselves into their situation and feel a desire to retaliate on their behalf. If this process is the source of our feelings about justice, that ought to undermine our confidence in them.
Theories of distributive justice
Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:
# ''What goods'' are to be distributed? Is it to be
wealth,
power,
respect
Respect, also called esteem, is a positive feeling or action shown towards someone or something considered important or held in high esteem or regard. It conveys a sense of admiration for good or valuable qualities. It is also the process of ...
, opportunities or some combination of these things?
# ''Between what entities'' are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future),
sentient
Sentience is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations. The word was first coined by philosophers in the 1630s for the concept of an ability to feel, derived from Latin '' sentientem'' (a feeling), to distinguish it from the ability to ...
beings, the members of a single society,
nations?
# What is the ''proper'' distribution? Equal,
meritocratic, according to
social status
Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to possess. More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society. Stat ...
, according to
need, based on property rights and non-aggression?
Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of ''who has the right'' to enforce a particular favored distribution, while property rights theorists say that there is no "favored distribution". Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from lawful interactions or transactions (that is, transactions which are not illicit).
Social justice
Social justice encompasses the just relationship between individuals and their society, often considering how privileges, opportunities, and wealth ought to be distributed among individuals. Social justice is also associated with
social mobility
Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society ...
, especially the ease with which individuals and families may move between
social strata
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power (social and political). As ...
. Social justice is distinct from
cosmopolitanism
Cosmopolitanism is the idea that all human beings are members of a single community. Its adherents are known as cosmopolitan or cosmopolite. Cosmopolitanism is both prescriptive and aspirational, believing humans can and should be " world citizens ...
, which is the idea that all people belong to a single global community with a shared morality. Social justice is also distinct from
egalitarianism, which is the idea that all people are equal in terms of status, value, or rights, as social justice theories do not all require equality. For example, sociologist
George C. Homans suggested that the root of the concept of justice is that each person should receive rewards that are proportional to their contributions. Economist
Friedrich Hayek said that the concept of social justice was meaningless, saying that justice is a result of individual behavior and unpredictable market forces. Social justice is closely related to the concept of relational justice, which is about the just relationship with individuals who possess features in common such as nationality, or who are engaged in cooperation or negotiation.
Fairness
In his ''
A Theory of Justice
''A Theory of Justice'' is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributiv ...
'',
John Rawls used a
social contract
In moral and political philosophy
Political philosophy or political theory is the philosophical study of government, addressing questions about the nature, scope, and legitimacy of public agents and institutions and the relationships betw ...
argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a
veil of ignorance that denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and life plans, and then asks what theory of justice we would choose to govern our society when the veil is lifted, if we wanted to do the best that we could for ourselves. We don't know who in particular we are, and therefore can't bias the decision in our own favor. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish
bias. Rawls said that each of us would reject the
utilitarian theory of justice that we should maximize welfare (see below) because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's ''two principles of justice'':
* Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
* Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
** to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
** attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.
This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods – (1)
the good of liberty rights and (2) social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income and power – and applies different distributions to them – equality between citizens for (1), equality unless inequality improves the position of the worst off for (2).
In one sense, theories of distributive justice may assert that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories vary on the meaning of what is "deserved". The main distinction is between theories that say the basis of just deserts ought to be held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice – and theories that say the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others.
According to ''
meritocratic'' theories, goods, especially wealth and
social status
Social status is the level of social value a person is considered to possess. More specifically, it refers to the relative level of respect, honour, assumed competence, and deference accorded to people, groups, and organizations in a society. Stat ...
, should be distributed to match individual ''merit'', which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to ''
needs''-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals'
basic needs for them.
Marxism is a needs-based theory, expressed succinctly in
Marx's slogan "
from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". According to ''contribution''-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.
Property rights
In ''
Anarchy, State, and Utopia'',
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino University Professorship at Harvard University, said that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal ''pattern'', but of each
individual entitlement having the right kind of ''history''. It is just that a person has some good (especially, some
property right) if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:
* Just ''acquisition'', especially by working on unowned things; and
* Just ''transfer'', that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not
theft (i.e. by force or fraud).
If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, they are entitled to it: that they possess it is just, and what anyone else does or doesn't have or need is irrelevant.
On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick said that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft. In particular,
redistributive taxation is theft.
Some property rights theorists (such as Nozick) also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and say that property rights based justice also has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system. They explain that voluntary (non-coerced) transactions always have a property called
Pareto efficiency. The result is that the world is better off in an absolute sense and no one is worse off. They say that respecting property rights maximizes the number of Pareto efficient transactions in the world and minimized the number of non-Pareto efficient transactions in the world (i.e. transactions where someone is made worse off). The result is that the world will have generated the greatest total benefit from the limited, scarce resources available in the world. Further, this will have been accomplished without taking anything away from anyone unlawfully.
Welfare-maximization
According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. This may require sacrifice of some for the good of others, so long as everyone's good is taken impartially into account. Utilitarianism, in general, says that the standard of justification for actions, institutions, or the whole world, is ''impartial welfare consequentialism'', and only indirectly, if at all, to do with
rights,
property,
need, or any other non-utilitarian criterion. These other criteria might be indirectly important, to the extent that human welfare involves them. But even then, such demands as human rights would only be elements in the calculation of overall welfare, not uncrossable barriers to action.
Theories of retributive justice
Theories of retributive justice involve
punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular acti ...
for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:
# ''why'' punish?
# ''who'' should be punished?
# ''what'' punishment should they receive?
This section considers the two major accounts of retributive justice, and their answers to these questions. ''Utilitarian'' theories look forward to the future consequences of punishment, while ''retributive'' theories look back to particular acts of wrongdoing, and attempt to balance them with deserved punishment.
Utilitarianism
According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment fights crime in three ways:
# ''
Deterrence''. The credible
threat
A threat is a communication of intent to inflict harm or loss on another person. Intimidation is a tactic used between conflicting parties to make the other timid or psychologically insecure for coercion or control. The act of intimidation for co ...
of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices that maximize welfare. This matches some strong
intuitions about just punishment: that it should generally be proportional to the crime.
# ''
Rehabilitation
Rehabilitation or Rehab may refer to:
Health
* Rehabilitation (neuropsychology), therapy to regain or improve neurocognitive function that has been lost or diminished
* Rehabilitation (wildlife), treatment of injured wildlife so they can be retur ...
''. Punishment might make "bad people" into "better" ones. For the utilitarian, all that "bad person" can mean is "person who's likely to cause unwanted things (like suffering)". So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things.
# ''
Security/Incapacitation''. Perhaps there are people who are irredeemable causers of bad things. If so,
imprisoning them might maximize welfare by limiting their opportunities to cause harm and therefore the benefit lies within protecting society.
So, the reason for punishment is the maximization of welfare, and punishment should be of whomever, and of whatever form and severity, are needed to meet that goal. This may sometimes justify punishing the innocent, or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments, when that will have the best consequences overall (perhaps executing a few suspected
shoplifters live on television would be an effective deterrent to shoplifting, for instance). It also suggests that punishment might turn out ''never'' to be right, depending on the facts about what actual consequences it has.
Retributivism
The retributivist will think
consequentialism is mistaken. If someone does something wrong we must respond by punishing for the committed action itself, regardless of what outcomes punishment produces. Wrongdoing must be balanced or made good in some way, and so the criminal ''deserves'' to be punished. It says that all guilty people, and only guilty people, deserve appropriate punishment. This matches some strong
intuitions about just punishment: that it should be ''proportional'' to the crime, and that it should be of ''only'' and ''all of'' the guilty. However, it is sometimes said that retributivism is merely
revenge
Revenge is committing a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, be it real or perceived. Francis Bacon described revenge as a kind of "wild justice" that "does... offend the law ndputteth the law out of office." Pr ...
in disguise. However, there are differences between retribution and revenge: the former is impartial and has a scale of appropriateness, whereas the latter is personal and potentially unlimited in scale.
Restorative justice
Restorative justice (also sometimes called "reparative justice") is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done – by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service". It is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community rather than the state. Restorative justice that fosters dialogue between victim and offender shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.
Mixed theories
Some modern philosophers have said that Utilitarian and Retributive theories are not mutually exclusive. For example,
Andrew von Hirsch Andreas von Hirsch, before 2008 published under his anglicised name Andrew von Hirsch, is a legal philosopher and penal theorist and the founding Director of the centre for Penal Theory and Penal Ethics at the Institute of Criminology, Faculty of L ...
, in his 1976 book ''Doing Justice'', suggested that we have a moral obligation to punish greater crimes more than lesser ones. However, so long as we adhere to that constraint then utilitarian ideals would play a significant secondary role.
Theories
Introduction
It has been said that 'systematic' or 'programmatic' political and moral philosophy in the West begins, in
Plato's
Republic
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
, with the question, 'What is Justice?' According to most contemporary theories of justice, justice is overwhelmingly important:
John Rawls claims that "Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought." In classical approaches, evident from
Plato through to
Rawls, the concept of 'justice' is always construed in logical or 'etymological' opposition to the concept of injustice. Such approaches cite various examples of injustice, as problems which a theory of justice must overcome. A number of post-World War II approaches do, however, challenge that seemingly obvious dualism between those two concepts. Justice can be thought of as distinct from
benevolence
Benevolence or Benevolent may refer to:
* Benevolent (band)
* Benevolence (phrenology), a faculty in the discredited theory of phrenology
* "Benevolent" (song), a song by Tory Lanez
* Benevolence (tax), a forced loan imposed by English kings from ...
,
charity,
prudence
Prudence ( la, prudentia, Contraction (grammar), contracted from meaning "seeing ahead, sagacity") is the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason. It is classically considered to be a virtue, and in particular one of th ...
,
mercy,
generosity, or
compassion
Compassion motivates people to go out of their way to relieve the physical, mental or emotional pains of others and themselves. Compassion is often regarded as being sensitive to the emotional aspects of the suffering of others. When based on n ...
, although these dimensions are regularly understood to also be interlinked. Justice is the concept of
cardinal virtue
The cardinal virtues are four virtues of mind and character in both classical philosophy and Christian theology. They are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. They form a virtue theory of ethics. The term ''cardinal'' comes from the ...
s, of which it is one. Metaphysical justice has often been associated with concepts of
fate
Destiny, sometimes referred to as fate (from Latin ''fatum'' "decree, prediction, destiny, fate"), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual.
Fate
Although often ...
,
reincarnation or
Divine Providence
In theology, Divine Providence, or simply Providence, is God's intervention in the Universe. The term ''Divine Providence'' (usually capitalized) is also used as a title of God. A distinction is usually made between "general providence", which ...
, i.e., with a life in accordance with a cosmic plan.
The equivalence of justice and fairness has been historically and culturally established.
Equality
In political theory, liberalism includes two traditional elements: liberty and equality. Most contemporary theories of justice emphasize the concept of equality, including Rawls' theory of justice as fairness. For Ronald Dworkin, a complex notion of equality is the sovereign political virtue. Dworkin raises the question of whether society is under a duty of justice to help those responsible for the fact that they need help. Complications arise in distinguishing matters of choice and matters of chance, as well as justice for future generations in the redistribution of resources that he advocates.
Equality before the law
Law raises important and complex issues about equality, fairness, and justice. There is an old saying that '
All are equal before the law
All or ALL may refer to:
Language
* All, an indefinite pronoun in English
* All, one of the English determiners
* Allar language (ISO 639-3 code)
* Allative case (abbreviated ALL)
Music
* All (band), an American punk rock band
* ''All'' (All al ...
'. The belief in equality before the law is called legal egalitarianism. In criticism of this belief, the author
Anatole France said in 1894, "In its majestic equality, the law forbids
rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." With this saying, France illustrated the fundamental shortcoming of a theory of legal equality that remains blind to social inequality; the same law applied to all may have disproportionately harmful effects on the least powerful.
Relational justice
Relational justice seeks to examine the connections between individuals and focuses on their relations in societies, with respect to how these relationships are established and configured. In a normative view, this focus includes an understanding of what these relations should be. In a political view, this focus includes the method of organizing persons in society. Rawls’ theory of justice stakes out the task of justice as equalizing the distribution of primary social goods to benefit the worst-off in society. However, his distributive scheme, and other distributive accounts of justice do not directly consider power relations between and among individuals. Nor do they address such political considerations as various structures of decision-making, such as divisions of labor culture, or the construction of social meanings. Even Rawls’ own basic value of self-respect cannot be said to be amenable to distribution. Iris Marion Young charges that distributive accounts of justice fail to provide an adequate way of conceptualizing political justice in that they fail to take into account many of the demands of ordinary life and that a relational view of justice grounded upon understanding the differences among social groups offers a better approach, one which acknowledges unjust power relations among individuals, groups, and institutional structures. Young Kim also takes a relational approach to the question of justice, but departs from Iris Marion Young's political advocacy of group rights and instead, he emphasizes the individual and moral aspects of justice. As to its moral aspects, he said that justice includes responsible actions based on rational and autonomous moral agency, with the individual as the proper bearer of rights and responsibilities. Politically, he maintains that the proper context for justice is a form of liberalism with the traditional elements of liberty and equality, together with the concepts of diversity and tolerance.
Classical liberalism
Equality before the law is one of the basic principles of
classical liberalism.
[ Classical liberalism calls for equality before the law, not for equality of outcome.][ Chandran Kukathas, "Ethical Pluralism from a Classical Liberal Perspective," in ''The Many and the One: Religious and Secular Perspectives on Ethical Pluralism in the Modern World'', ed. Richard Madsen and Tracy B. Strong, Ethikon Series in Comparative Ethics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003), 61 ().] Classical liberalism opposes pursuing group rights
Group rights, also known as collective rights, are rights held by a group '' qua'' a group rather than individually by its members; in contrast, individual rights are rights held by individual people; even if they are group-differentiated, which ...
at the expense of individual rights.[Mark Evans, ed., ''Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Liberalism: Evidence and Experience'' (London: Routledge, 2001), 55 ().] In addition to equality, individual liberty serves as a core notion of classical liberalism. As to the liberty component, British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin
Sir Isaiah Berlin (6 June 1909 – 5 November 1997) was a Russian-British social and political theorist, philosopher, and historian of ideas. Although he became increasingly averse to writing for publication, his improvised lectures and talks ...
identifies positive and negative liberty in "Two Concepts of Liberty", subscribing to a view of negative liberty, in the form of freedom from governmental interference. He further extends the concept of negative liberty in endorsing John Stuart Mills' harm principle: "the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually and collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection", which represents a classical liberal view of liberty.
Religion and spirituality
Abrahamic justice
Jews, Christians, and Muslims traditionally believe that justice is a present, real, right, and, specifically, governing concept along with mercy, and that justice is ultimately derived from and held by God. According to the Bible, such institution
Institutions are humanly devised structures of rules and norms that shape and constrain individual behavior. All definitions of institutions generally entail that there is a level of persistence and continuity. Laws, rules, social conventions a ...
s as the Mosaic Law
The Law of Moses ( he, תֹּורַת מֹשֶׁה ), also called the Mosaic Law, primarily refers to the Torah or the first five books of the Hebrew Bible. The law revealed to Moses by God.
Terminology
The Law of Moses or Torah of Moses (Hebrew ...
were created by God to require the Israelites to live by and apply His standards of justice.
The Hebrew Bible describes God as saying about the Judeo-Christian patriarch Abraham: "No, for I have chosen him, that he may charge his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing righteousness and justice;...." (Genesis
Genesis may refer to:
Bible
* Book of Genesis, the first book of the biblical scriptures of both Judaism and Christianity, describing the creation of the Earth and of mankind
* Genesis creation narrative, the first several chapters of the Book of ...
18:19, NRSV). The Psalmist
The Book of Psalms ( or ; he, תְּהִלִּים, , lit. "praises"), also known as the Psalms, or the Psalter, is the first book of the ("Writings"), the third section of the Tanakh, and a book of the Old Testament. The title is derived f ...
describes God as having "Righteousness and justice sthe foundation of isthrone;...." (Psalms 89:14, NRSV).
The New Testament also describes God and Jesus Christ as having and displaying justice, often in comparison with God displaying and supporting mercy (Matthew
Matthew may refer to:
* Matthew (given name)
* Matthew (surname)
* ''Matthew'' (ship), the replica of the ship sailed by John Cabot in 1497
* ''Matthew'' (album), a 2000 album by rapper Kool Keith
* Matthew (elm cultivar), a cultivar of the Ch ...
5:7).
Theories of sentencing
In criminal law
Criminal law is the body of law that relates to crime. It prescribes conduct perceived as threatening, harmful, or otherwise endangering to the property, health, safety, and moral welfare of people inclusive of one's self. Most criminal law i ...
, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge
A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...
-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment
Imprisonment is the restraint of a person's liberty, for any cause whatsoever, whether by authority of the government, or by a person acting without such authority. In the latter case it is "false imprisonment". Imprisonment does not necessari ...
, a fine
Fine may refer to:
Characters
* Sylvia Fine (''The Nanny''), Fran's mother on ''The Nanny''
* Officer Fine, a character in ''Tales from the Crypt'', played by Vincent Spano
Legal terms
* Fine (penalty), money to be paid as punishment for an offe ...
and/or other punishment
Punishment, commonly, is the imposition of an undesirable or unpleasant outcome upon a group or individual, meted out by an authority—in contexts ranging from child discipline to criminal law—as a response and deterrent to a particular acti ...
s against a defendant
In court proceedings, a defendant is a person or object who is the party either accused of committing a crime in criminal prosecution or against whom some type of civil relief is being sought in a civil case.
Terminology varies from one jurisdic ...
convicted of a crime. Laws may specify the range of penalties that can be imposed for various offenses, and sentencing guidelines sometimes regulate what punishment within those ranges can be imposed given a certain set of offense and offender characteristics. The most common purposes of sentencing in legal theory are:
In civil cases
Civil law is a major branch of the law. Glanville Williams. ''Learning the Law''. Eleventh Edition. Stevens. 1982. p. 2. In common law legal systems such as England and Wales and the United States, the term refers to non- criminal law. The law r ...
the decision is usually known as a verdict, or judgment, rather than a sentence. Civil cases are settled primarily by means of monetary compensation for harm done (" damages") and orders intended to prevent future harm (for example injunction
An injunction is a legal and equitable remedy in the form of a special court order that compels a party to do or refrain from specific acts. ("The court of appeals ... has exclusive jurisdiction to enjoin, set aside, suspend (in whole or in pa ...
s). Under some legal systems an award of damages involves some scope for retribution, denunciation and deterrence, by means of additional categories of damages beyond simple compensation, covering a punitive effect, social disapprobation, and potentially, deterrence, and occasionally disgorgement
Disgorgement is defined by ''Black's Law Dictionary'' as "the act of giving up something (such as profits illegally obtained) on demand or by legal compulsion."
Overview
Disgorgement is a remedy or penalty used in US securities law. For exampl ...
(forfeit of any gain, even if no loss was caused to the other party).
Evolutionary perspectives
Evolutionary ethic
Evolutionary ethics is a field of inquiry that explores how evolutionary theory might bear on our understanding of ethics or morality. The range of issues investigated by evolutionary ethics is quite broad. Supporters of evolutionary ethics have ...
s and evolution of morality
The concept of the evolution of morality refers to the emergence of human moral behavior over the course of human evolution. Morality can be defined as a system of ideas about right and wrong conduct. In everyday life, morality is typically associ ...
suggest evolutionary bases for the concept of justice. Biosocial criminology
Biosocial criminology is an interdisciplinary field that aims to explain crime and antisocial behavior by exploring biocultural factors. While contemporary criminology has been dominated by sociological theories, biosocial criminology also re ...
research says that human perceptions of what is appropriate criminal justice are based on how to respond to crimes in the ancestral small-group environment and that these responses may not always be appropriate for today's societies.
Reactions to fairness
Studies at UCLA in 2008 have indicated that reactions to fairness are "wired" into the brain and that, "Fairness is activating the same part of the brain that responds to food in rats... This is consistent with the notion that being treated fairly satisfies a basic need". Research conducted in 2003 at Emory University involving capuchin monkeys demonstrated that other cooperative animals also possess such a sense and that " inequity aversion may not be uniquely human".
Institutions and justice
In a world where people are interconnected but they disagree, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice. These institutions may be justified by their approximate instantiation of justice, or they may be deeply unjust when compared with ideal standards – consider the institution of slavery. Justice is an ideal the world fails to live up to, sometimes due to deliberate opposition to justice despite understanding, which could be disastrous. The question of institutive justice raises issues of legitimacy
Legitimacy, from the Latin ''legitimare'' meaning "to make lawful", may refer to:
* Legitimacy (criminal law)
* Legitimacy (family law)
* Legitimacy (political)
See also
* Bastard (law of England and Wales)
* Illegitimacy in fiction
* Legit (d ...
, procedure
Procedure may refer to:
* Medical procedure
* Instructions or recipes, a set of commands that show how to achieve some result, such as to prepare or make something
* Procedure (business), specifying parts of a business process
* Standard operat ...
, codification and interpretation
Interpretation may refer to:
Culture
* Aesthetic interpretation, an explanation of the meaning of a work of art
* Allegorical interpretation, an approach that assumes a text should not be interpreted literally
* Dramatic Interpretation, an event ...
, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 emphasizes the need for strong institutions in order to uphold justice.
See also
Other pages
* Education for Justice
Education is a purposeful activity directed at achieving certain aims, such as transmitting knowledge or fostering skills and character traits. These aims may include the development of understanding, rationality, kindness, and honesty. Vari ...
* Adl
Adl ( ar, عدل, ) is an Arabic word meaning 'justice', and is also one of the names of God in Islam. It is equal to the concept of ''Insaf'' انصاف (lit. sense of justice) in the Baháʼí Faith.
Adil ( ar, عادل, ), and Adeel ( ar, ...
(Arabic for Justice in Islam
Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
)
* Criminal justice
* Ethics
* Global justice
Global justice is an issue in political philosophy arising from the concern about unfairness. It is sometimes understood as a form of internationalism.
History
Henrik Syse claims that global ethics and international justice in western traditi ...
* International Court of Justice
* International Criminal Court
* Just war theory
The just war theory ( la, bellum iustum) is a doctrine, also referred to as a tradition, of military ethics which is studied by military leaders, theologians, ethicists and policy makers. The purpose of the doctrine is to ensure that a war is m ...
* Just-world hypothesis
* Justice (economics)
* Morality
* Napoleonic Code
* Rationality
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reasons. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an abil ...
* Rule according to higher law
* Sociology of law
* ''A Theory of Justice
''A Theory of Justice'' is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributiv ...
'' by John Rawls
Types of justice
* Distributive justice
Distributive justice concerns the socially just allocation of resources. Often contrasted with just process, which is concerned with the administration of law, distributive justice concentrates on outcomes. This subject has been given considera ...
* Environmental justice
* Injustice
* Occupational injustice Occupational injustice derives from the concept of occupational justice, which originated in 1997 with social scientists/ occupational therapists Ann Wilcock of Australia and Elizabeth Townsend of Canada.Stadnyk, Robin L., Townsend, Elizabeth A, & W ...
* Open justice
* Organizational justice
Greenberg (1987) introduced the concept of organizational justice with regard to how an employee judges the behavior of the organization and the employee's resulting attitude and behaviour. For example, if a firm makes redundant half of the worker ...
* Poetic justice
* Social justice
* Spatial justice Spatial justice links social justice to space, most notably in the works of geographers David Harvey and Edward W. Soja. The field analyzes the impact of regional planning and urban planning decisions. It is promoted by the scholarly tradition of c ...
References
Further reading
* Clive Barnett, ''The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory'' (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017),
* Brian Barry, ''Theories of Justice'' (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989)
* Gad Barzilai, ''Communities and Law: Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities'' (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2003)
* Harry Brighouse, ''Justice'' (Cambridge: Polity Press
Polity is an academic publisher in the social sciences and humanities. It was established in 1984 and has offices in Cambridge (UK), Oxford (UK), New York (US) and Boston (US). It specializes in the areas of sociology, media, politics, and soci ...
, 2004)
* Anthony Duff & David Garland eds, ''A Reader on Punishment'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
* Colin Farrelly, ''An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory'' (London: Sage, 2004)
* David Gauthier
David Gauthier (; born 10 September 1932) is a Canadian-American philosopher best known for his neo-Hobbesian social contract (contractarian) theory of morality, as developed in his 1986 book ''Morals by Agreement''.
Life and career
Gauthie ...
, ''Morals By Agreement'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
* Robert E. Goodin
Robert 'Bob' E. Goodin (born 30 November 1950) was Professor of Government at the University of Essex and is now Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Social and Political theory at the Australian National University.
Biography
Goodin atten ...
& Philip Pettit eds, ''Contemporary Political Philosophy: An anthology'' (2nd edition, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), Part III
* Serge Guinchard
Serge Guinchard (born May 9, 1946) is a French jurist who formerly taught at the Law School of Dakar and Jean Moulin University Lyon 3 and most recently at Panthéon-Assas University, where he is now Professor emeritus. He has also held political ...
, ''La justice et ses institutions'' (Judicial institutions), Dalloz editor, 12 edition, 2013
* Eric Heinze, ''The Concept of Injustice'' (Routledge, 2013)
* Ted Honderich
Ted Honderich (born 30 January 1933) is a Canadian-born British professor of philosophy, who was Grote Professor Emeritus of the Philosophy of Mind and Logic, University College London.
Biography
Honderich was born Edgar Dawn Ross Honderich on ...
, ''Punishment: The supposed justifications'' (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1969)
* James Konow (2003) "Which Is the Fairest One of All? A Positive Analysis of Justice Theories", ''Journal of Economic Literature'', 41(
pp. 1188–1239
* Will Kymlicka, ''Contemporary Political Philosophy: An introduction'' (2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002)
* Nicola Lacey, ''State Punishment'' (London: Routledge, 1988)
* John Stuart Mill, ''Utilitarianism'' in ''On Liberty and Other Essays'' ed. John Gray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)
* Robert Nozick, ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1974)
*
* Marek Piechowiak, ''Plato's Conception of Justice and the Question of Human Dignity'' (2nd edition, revised and extended, Berlin: Peter Lang Academic Publishers, 2021), ISBN 978-3-631-84524-0.
* C.L. Ten, ''Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A philosophical introduction'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987)
* Plato, ''Republic
A republic () is a "state in which power rests with the people or their representatives; specifically a state without a monarchy" and also a "government, or system of government, of such a state." Previously, especially in the 17th and 18th c ...
'' trans. Robin Waterfield (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994)
* John Rawls, ''A Theory of Justice'' (revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)
* David Schmidtz, ''Elements of Justice'' (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006)
* Peter Singer ed., ''A Companion to Ethics'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), Part IV
* Reinhold Zippelius
Reinhold Zippelius (born 19 May 1928) is a German jurist and law scholar. Now retired, he was formerly the professor of the Philosophy of law and Public law at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg.
Life and career
Reinhold Walter Zippelius was ...
, ''Rechtsphilosophie, §§ 11–22'' (6th edition, Munich: C.H. Beck
Verlag C. H. BECK oHG, doing business as Publishers C. H. Beck (german: Verlag C. H. Beck), is a German publisher with its headquarters in Munich and a branch office in Frankfurt. The company was established in 1763. Historically, its headquarte ...
, 2011),
External links
* Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:
*
Distributive Justice
by Michael Allingham
*
Punishment
by Kevin Murtagh
*
Western Theories of Justice
by Wayne P. Pomerleau
* Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:
*
"Justice"
by David Miller
*
"Distributive Justice"
by Julian Lamont
*
"Justice as a Virtue"
by Michael Slote
*
"Punishment"
by Hugo Adam Bedau
Hugo Adam Bedau (September 23, 1926 – August 13, 2012) was the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, at Tufts University, and is best known for his work on capital punishment. He has been called a "leading anti-death-penalty ...
and Erin Kelly
Erin Kelly (born August 21, 1981) is an American film, theater and television actress, best known for her role as Annabelle Tillman in Katherine Brooks' 2006 film ''Loving Annabelle''.
Career
Kelly has collaborated with director Katherine Bro ...
United Nations Rule of Law: Informal Justice
on the relationship between informal/community justice, the rule of law
The rule of law is the political philosophy that all citizens and institutions within a country, state, or community are accountable to the same laws, including lawmakers and leaders. The rule of law is defined in the ''Encyclopedia Britannica ...
and the United Nations
Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?
, a series of 12 videos on the subject of justice by Harvard University's Michael Sandel, with reading materials and comments from participants.
{{Authority control
Ethical principles
Philosophy of law
Virtue