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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 correctness based on
ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
, rationality, law,
religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...
,
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 diff ...
and fairness. The state will sometimes endeavor to increase justice by operating
court A court is any person or institution, often as a government institution, with the authority to adjudicate legal disputes between parties and carry out the administration of justice in civil, criminal, and administrative matters in acco ...
s and enforcing their rulings. Early theories of justice were set out by the Ancient Greek philosophers
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
in his work The Republic, and
Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ...
in his Nicomachean Ethics. Advocates of divine command theory have said that justice issues from God. In the 1600s, philosophers such as John Locke said that justice derives from
natural law Natural law ( la, ius naturale, ''lex naturalis'') is a system of law based on a close observation of human nature, and based on values intrinsic to human nature that can be deduced and applied independently of positive law (the express enacte ...
. Social contract theory said that justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone. In the 1800s, utilitarian philosophers such as John Stuart Mill said that justice is based on the best outcomes for the greatest number of people. Theories of distributive justice 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 theory to say that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness. Robert Nozick 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 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), who ...
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 A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, ...
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 A navigator is the person on board a ship or aircraft responsible for its navigation.Grierson, MikeAviation History—Demise of the Flight Navigator FrancoFlyers.org website, October 14, 2008. Retrieved August 31, 2014. The navigator's prima ...
(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 Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
can be found in his dialogue,
Euthyphro ''Euthyphro'' (; grc, Εὐθύφρων, translit=Euthyphrōn; c. 399–395 BC), by Plato, is a Socratic dialogue whose events occur in the weeks before the trial of Socrates (399 BC), between Socrates and Euthyphro. The dialogue covers su ...
. 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, popularized in two contexts by
Immanuel Kant Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
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 Univer ...
, 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), justice involves the nature of man.


Despotism and skepticism

In ''Republic'' by
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, 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, 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 Welfare, or commonly social welfare, is a type of government support intended to ensure that members of a society can meet basic human needs such as food and shelter. Social security may either be synonymous with welfare, or refer specifical ...
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
contract A contract is a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties that creates, defines, and governs mutual rights and obligations between them. A contract typically involves the transfer of goods, services, money, or a promise to tr ...
s; 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 Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an I ...
, power, respect, 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,
nation A nation is a community of people formed on the basis of a combination of shared features such as language, history, ethnicity, culture and/or society. A nation is thus the collective identity of a group of people understood as defined by th ...
s? # What is the ''proper'' distribution? Equal,
meritocratic Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and ac ...
, according to social status, 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, 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, which is the idea that all people belong to a single global community with a shared morality. Social justice is also distinct from
egalitarianism Egalitarianism (), or equalitarianism, is a school of thought within political philosophy that builds from the concept of social equality, prioritizing it for all people. Egalitarian doctrines are generally characterized by the idea that all h ...
, 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 George Caspar Homans (August 11, 1910 – May 29, 1989) was an American sociologist, founder of behavioral sociology, and a major contributor to the social exchange theory. Homans is best known for his research in social behavior and his works ' ...
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 Friedrich August von Hayek ( , ; 8 May 189923 March 1992), often referred to by his initials F. A. Hayek, was an Austrian–British economist, legal theorist and philosopher who is best known for his defense of classical liberalism. 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 distrib ...
'', John Rawls used a social contract 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 Bias is a disproportionate weight ''in favor of'' or ''against'' an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases can be innate or learned. People may develop biases for or against an individual, a group ...
. 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 Meritocracy (''merit'', from Latin , and ''-cracy'', from Ancient Greek 'strength, power') is the notion of a political system in which economic goods and/or political power are vested in individual people based on talent, effort, and ac ...
'' theories, goods, especially wealth and social status, 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 Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
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 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 Rights are legal, social, or ethical principles of freedom or entitlement; that is, rights are the fundamental normative rules about what is allowed of people or owed to people according to some legal system, social convention, or ethical theory ...
,
property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...
, 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 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 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 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, 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 Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
's Republic, 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 Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
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, mercy, generosity, or compassion, 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,
reincarnation Reincarnation, also known as rebirth or transmigration, is the philosophical or religious concept that the non-physical essence of a living being begins a new life in a different physical form or body after biological death. Resurrectio ...
or Divine Providence, 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 a ...
'. 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 is a political tradition and a branch of liberalism that advocates free market and laissez-faire economics; civil liberties under the rule of law with especial emphasis on individual autonomy, limited government, e ...
. 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 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 Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
,
Christians Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρ ...
, and
Muslims Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...
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 The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
, such institutions as the Mosaic Law 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 The highest-ranking bishops in Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy, the Catholic Church (above major archbishop and primate), the Hussite Church, Church of the East, and some Independent Catholic Churches are termed patriarchs (and in c ...
Abraham Abraham, ; ar, , , name=, group= (originally Abram) is the common Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions, including Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In Judaism, he is the founding father of the special relationship between the Je ...
: "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 The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chris ...
also describes God and
Jesus Christ Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and relig ...
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 Chi ...
5:7).


Theories of sentencing

In criminal law, a sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process, and also the symbolic principal act connected to his function. The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a
crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in C ...
. 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 rel ...
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 injunctions). 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 (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 assoc ...
suggest
evolutionary Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variati ...
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 Emory University is a private research university in Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1836 as "Emory College" by the Methodist Episcopal Church and named in honor of Methodist bishop John Emory, Emory is the second-oldest private institution of ...
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 Slavery and enslavement are both the state and the condition of being a slave—someone forbidden to quit one's service for an enslaver, and who is treated by the enslaver as property. Slavery typically involves slaves being made to perf ...
. 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, 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 A philosopher is a person who practices or investigates philosophy. The term ''philosopher'' comes from the grc, φιλόσοφος, , translit=philosophos, meaning 'lover of wisdom'. The coining of the term has been attributed to the Greek t ...
. 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 *
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, ع ...
(Arabic for Justice in
Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God (or '' Allah'') as it was revealed to Muhammad, the ...
) * Criminal justice *
Ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...
* Global justice *
International Court of Justice The International Court of Justice (ICJ; french: Cour internationale de justice, links=no; ), sometimes known as the World Court, is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN). It settles disputes between states in accordan ...
*
International Criminal Court The International Criminal Court (ICC or ICCt) is an intergovernmental organization and International court, international tribunal seated in The Hague, Netherlands. It is the first and only permanent international court with jurisdiction to pro ...
*
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 i ...
* Just-world hypothesis * Justice (economics) * Morality * Napoleonic Code * Rationality * 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 distrib ...
'' by John Rawls


Types of justice

* Distributive justice *
Environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement to address the unfair exposure of poor and marginalized communities to harms from hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses.Schlosberg, David. (2007) ''Defining Environmental Justi ...
* Injustice * Occupational injustice * Open justice * Organizational justice * Poetic justice *
Social justice Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals ...
*
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 The University of California Press, otherwise known as UC Press, is a publishing house associated with the University of California that engages in academic publishing. It was founded in 1893 to publish scholarly and scientific works by facul ...
, 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, 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 o ...
, ''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 Routledge () is a British multinational publisher. It was founded in 1836 by George Routledge, and specialises in providing academic books, journals and online resources in the fields of the humanities, behavioural science, education, law ...
, 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 Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1987) *
Plato Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution ...
, '' Republic'' 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 Columbia University Press is a university press based in New York City, and affiliated with Columbia University. It is currently directed by Jennifer Crewe (2014–present) and publishes titles in the humanities and sciences, including the fie ...
, 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, 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 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 and the
United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...

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