The meaning of the word justice

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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, rationality, law, religion, equity 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. Advocates of divine command theory have said that justice issues from God. In the 17th century, philosophers such as John Locke said that justice derives from natural law. Social contract theory said that justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone. In the 19th century, 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 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[edit]

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.^[1]

Divine command[edit]

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, popularized in two contexts by Immanuel Kant and C. S. Lewis, 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[edit]

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For advocates of the theory that justice is part of natural law (e.g., John Locke), justice involves the nature of man.^[3]

Despotism and skepticism[edit]

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[edit]

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’. The absence of bias refers to an equal ground for all people involved in a disagreement (or trial in some cases).^{[citation needed]}

Subordinate value[edit]

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 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.^[4]

Theories of retributive justice[edit]

Theories of retributive justice involve punishment for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:

1. why punish?
2. who should be punished?
3. 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[edit]

According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment fights crime in three ways:

1. 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.
2. Rehabilitation. 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.
3. 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.^[5]

Retributivism[edit]

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.^[6] However, it is sometimes said that retributivism is merely revenge in disguise.^[7] 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.^[8]

Restorative justice[edit]

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.^[9]

Mixed theories[edit]

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.^[10] However, so long as we adhere to that constraint then utilitarian ideals would play a significant secondary role.

Theories[edit]

Introduction[edit]

It has been said^[11] that ‘systematic’ or ‘programmatic’ political and moral philosophy in the West begins, in Plato’s Republic, with the question, ‘What is Justice?’^[12] 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.»^[13] 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.^[14] Justice can be thought of as distinct from benevolence, charity, prudence, mercy, generosity, or compassion, although these dimensions are regularly understood to also be interlinked. Justice is the concept of cardinal virtues, of which it is one.^[15] Metaphysical justice has often been associated with concepts of fate, reincarnation 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.^[16]

Equality before the law[edit]

Law raises important and complex issues about equality, fairness, and justice. There is an old saying that ‘All are equal before the law’. 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.»^[17] 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[edit]

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.^[18] 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.^[19] 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.^[20] 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[edit]

Equality before the law is one of the basic principles of classical liberalism.^[21][22] Classical liberalism calls for equality before the law, not for equality of outcome.^[21] Classical liberalism opposes pursuing group rights at the expense of individual rights.^[22] 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»,^[23] 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»,^[24] which represents a classical liberal view of liberty.^[25]

Equality[edit]

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.^[26] 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.^[27]

Religion and spirituality[edit]

Abrahamic justice[edit]

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 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 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 18:19, NRSV). The Psalmist describes God as having «Righteousness and justice [as] the foundation of [His] throne;….» (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 5:7).

Theories of sentencing[edit]

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.^[28] The sentence can generally involve a decree of imprisonment, a fine and/or other punishments against a defendant 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.^[29] The most common purposes of sentencing in legal theory are:

Theory	Aim of theory	Suitable punishment
Retribution	Punishment imposed for no reason other than an offense being committed, on the basis that if proportionate, punishment is morally acceptable as a response that satisfies the aggrieved party, their intimates and society.	Tariff sentences Sentence must be proportionate to the crime
Deterrence	To the individual – the individual is deterred through fear of further punishment. To the general public – Potential offenders warned as to likely punishment	Prison Sentence Heavy Fine Long sentence as an example to others
Rehabilitation	To reform the offender’s behavior	Individualized sentences Community service orders moral education vocational education
Incapacitation	Offender is made incapable of committing further crime to protect society at large from crime	Long prison sentence Electronic tagging Banning orders
Reparation	Repayment to victim(s) or to community	Compensation Unpaid work Reparation Schemes
Denunciation	Society expressing its disapproval reinforcing moral boundaries	Reflects blameworthiness of offense punishment in public punishment reported to public

In civil cases the decision is usually known as a verdict, or judgment, rather than a sentence.^[30] 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[edit]

Evolutionary ethics and evolution of morality suggest evolutionary bases for the concept of justice.^[31] Biosocial criminology 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.^[32]

Reactions to fairness[edit]

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».^[33] 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».^[34]

Institutions and justice[edit]

Main article: Law

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, procedure, codification and interpretation, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law.^[35] The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 emphasizes the need for strong institutions in order to uphold justice.^[36]

Psychology[edit]

There has been research into victim’s persepctive of justice following crimes. Victims find respectful treatment, information and having a voice important for a sense of justice as well as the perception of a fair procedure.^[37]

Pemberton et al propose a «Big 2» model of justice in terms agency and communion, membership in a society. Victims experience a loss of perception of agency due to a loss of control as well as a loss of communion if the offender is a member of their social group, but may also lose trust in others or institutions. It can shatter an individual’s trust that they live in a just and moral world. This suggests that a sense of justice can be restored by increasing a sense of communion and agency rather than through retribution of restoration.^[37]

Theories of distributive justice[edit]

Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:

1. What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, opportunities or some combination of these things?
2. Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations?
3. What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, 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).

[edit]

Social justice encompasses the just relationship between individuals and their society, often considering how privileges, opportunities, and wealth ought to be distributed among individuals.^[38] Social justice is also associated with social mobility, especially the ease with which individuals and families may move between social strata.^[39] Social justice is distinct from cosmopolitanism, which is the idea that all people belong to a single global community with a shared morality.^[40] 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.^[41] 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.^[42][43] 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.^[44] 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.^[45][46]

Fairness[edit]

In his A Theory of Justice, 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. 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.^[47]

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, 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».^[48] According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual’s contribution to the overall social good.

Property rights[edit]

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[edit]

According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals.^[49] 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.

See also[edit]

Other pages[edit]

• Education for Justice

Types of justice[edit]

References[edit]

Further reading[edit]

• Clive Barnett, The Priority of Injustice: Locating Democracy in Critical Theory (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2017), ISBN 978-0-8203-5152-0
• 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, 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, Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986)
• Robert E. Goodin & Philip Pettit eds, Contemporary Political Philosophy: An anthology (2nd edition, Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 2006), Part III
• Serge Guinchard, La justice et ses institutions (Judicial institutions), Dalloz editor, 12 edition, 2013
• Eric Heinze, The Concept of Injustice (Routledge, 2013)
• Ted Honderich, 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(4)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)
• Amartya Sen (2011). The Idea of Justice. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-06047-0.
• 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 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, Rechtsphilosophie, §§ 11–22 (6th edition, Munich: C.H. Beck, 2011), ISBN 978-3-406-61191-9

External links[edit]

• 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
• United Nations Rule of Law: Informal Justice, on the relationship between informal/community justice, the rule of law and the United Nations
• Justice: What’s The Right Thing To Do? Archived 27 April 2014 at the Wayback Machine, a series of 12 videos on the subject of justice by Harvard University’s Michael Sandel, with reading materials and comments from participants.

Ethics

Theoretical

Meta-ethics Consequentialism / Deontology / Virtue ethics Ethics of care Good and evil | Morality

Applied

Medical ethics / Bioethics Business ethics Environmental ethics Human rights / Animal rights Legal ethics Media ethics / Marketing ethics Ethics of war

Core issues

Justice / Value Right / Duty / Virtue Equality / Freedom / Trust Free will

Key thinkers

Aristotle / Confucius Aquinas / Hume / Kant / Bentham / Mill / Nietzsche Hare / Rawls / MacIntyre / Singer / Gilligan

Justice is the ideal, morally correct state of things and persons. The term comes from the Latin jus, meaning «right» or «law.» The questions what justice is and how it can or might be achieved go back in philosophy to the ancient Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle, who gave those questions a great deal of attention and thought.

For many people justice is overwhelmingly important: «Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.»^[1] For many, it has not been achieved: «We do not live in a just world.»^[2]

This problem of uncertainty about fundamentals has inspired philosophical reflection about justice, as about other topics. What exactly justice is, and what it demands of individuals and societies, are among the oldest and most contested of philosophical questions.

The question or problem of justice has numerous sub-questions or sub-branches, including, among others, legal justice; criminal justice and punishment (sometimes called retributive justice); economic justice (often called distributive justice); the just organization of states and governments; just relationships between people including spouses, parents and children, social hierarchies, and other social arrangements; international justice; and environmental justice.

In the field of economic justice, for example, the question of the proper distribution of wealth in society has been fiercely debated for at least the last 2,500 years.^[3] Philosophers, political theorists, theologians, legal scholars and others have attempted to clarify the source, nature and demands of justice, with widely various results.

Some may picture justice as a virtue — a property of people, and only derivatively of their actions and the institutions they create — or as a property of actions or institutions, and only derivatively of the people who bring them about. The source of justice may be thought to be harmony, divine command, natural law, or human creation, or it may be thought to be subordinate to a more central ethical standard. The demands of justice are pressing in two areas, distribution and retribution. Distributive justice may require equality, giving people what they deserve, maximizing benefit to the worst off, protecting whatever comes about in the right way, or maximizing total welfare. Retributive justice may require backward-looking retaliation, or forward-looking use of punishment for the sake of its consequences. Ideals of justice must be put into practice by institutions, which raise their own questions of legitimacy, procedure, codification and interpretation.

Some Components of Justice

Some philosophers have taken justice to be the whole of ethics. But most have taken ethical goodness or rightness to be a larger category, with justice being a subset. Justice is usually taken to involve at least four closely related ethical concepts: rights, fairness, equality, and desert or getting what one deserves.

Each person, solely by virtue of being human, is entitled to certain rights, generally known as human rights or basic rights, and anything that takes away or infringes on those rights without sufficient reason for doing so is unjust—in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson enumerated these basic rights as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. John Locke had included property in that list, and the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution—the first ten amendments to that Constitution—is a further specification of such basic human rights. Today the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, and the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, attempt to specify and promote such human rights worldwide.

Justice often means fairness, as in fair treatment of people, fair pay for work, fair compensation for injuries, fair treatment at law and in the courts and in governmental affairs, and so on. Just what fairness is may be difficult to specify, but it includes treatment of similar cases in a similar way, and treatment of different cases in ways that are proportional to the differences.

Closely related to fairness is equality. Human beings should be treated equally unless some relevant difference between them is demonstrated. Moreover, a claim of injustice based on inequality of treatment puts the burden of justifying the inequality on whoever is carrying out or supporting the unequal treatment. This principle cannot however, be pushed to an extreme because most people recognize that no two people or cases are exactly the same, and some differences in treatment of people and cases is inevitable. Nevertheless, any egregious or obvious unequal treatment generally is regarded as unjust.

Equality is closely related to the notion of desert, of each person getting what he or she deserves. Specifying what each person deserves is difficult and perhaps impossible, but any treatment that deviates in an obvious way from the principle of desert is unjust.

Virtue or results?

We speak both of a just (or unjust) punishment, and of the just (or unjust) judge who imposed it. But which of these senses is more fundamental? Justice has been thought, primarily, the morally right assignment of good and bad things (including wealth, power, reward, respect and punishment); alternatively, it has been thought the virtue of a person who expresses or acts for that right assignment. Either actions are just because a just person does them, or a person is just because they do just things. The twentieth-century moral philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe influentially argued that modern philosophy had gone wrong in focusing on actions and their results over the character of actors. Thus she, along with others, inspired modern virtue ethics, which follows Aristotle in considering justice as one of the virtues of a good person, and only indirectly as a property of a state of affairs.^[4]

Understandings of justice

It has already been noted that justice is distinguished from other ethical standards as required and as overwhelmingly important: Justice can be thought of as distinct from, and more important than, benevolence, charity, mercy, generosity or compassion. All of these things may be valuable, but they are generally understood as being supererogatory rather than required. We need to know more than this: we need to know what justice is, not merely what it is not, and several answers to that problem have been proposed.

Justice is linked, both etymologically and conceptually, to the idea of justification: having and giving decisive reasons for one’s beliefs and actions. So, attempts to understand justice are typically attempts to discover the justification—the source or basis—of justice, and therefore to account for (or disprove) its overwhelming importance.

Justice as harmony

In his dialogue Republic, Plato uses the character of Socrates to argue for a single account of justice which covers both the just person and the just city-state. Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. A person’s soul has three parts—reason, spirit and desire—and the just person is the one in whom reason commands the other two and each keeps to its task. Similarly, a city has three parts—lovers of wisdom, soldiers and workers—and the just city is the one in which the lovers of wisdom rule the other two, and in which everyone sticks to his or her own, appropriate tasks. 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 doctor rather than a quack, because the doctor 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.^[5]

Justice as divine command

Advocates of divine command theory argue that justice, and indeed the whole of morality, is the authoritative command of a deity or deities, for instance, the Christian or Jewish or Islamic God. Murder is wrong and must be punished, for instance, because, and only because, God commands that it be so.

A common response to Divine Command Theory is the Euthyphro dilemma, which asks: is what is right right because it is commanded by God, or does God command what is in fact morally right? If the former, then justice is arbitrary; if the latter, then morality exists on a higher order than God, and God’s commands and will are subject to a higher authority and may be wrong or even evil.

Divine command advocates have the option of responding by claiming that the dilemma is false: goodness is the very nature of God and is necessarily expressed in his commands. But critics of divine command theory reply in ways that seem to be devastating to divine command theory: this claim that «goodness is the very nature of God» cannot be established by fiat or by definition; moreover one can always ask, «is God really good by his very nature?» and our ability to ask what is a non self-contradictory question shows that the claim embodied in the question is not necessarily true. Moreover, there are numerous competing claims about what God commands or requires, thus resorting to divine command theory does not, in practice, aid us much in determining what is just or good.

Justice as natural law

For advocates of the theory that justice is part of natural law, it involves the system of consequences which naturally derives from any action or choice. In this, it is similar to the laws of physics: in the same way as the Third of Newton’s laws of Motion requires that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, justice requires according individuals or groups what they actually deserve, merit, or are entitled to. Justice, on this account, is a universal and absolute concept: laws, principles, religions, etc., are merely attempts to codify that concept, sometimes with results that entirely contradict the true nature of justice.

Natural law theory, however, crumbles on the observation that not just anything in nature results in a law for human action; some things occurring in nature cannot be good norms for humans, and some things that do not occur in nature seem to be perfectly acceptable human practices or activities. For example, some fish eat their young, poisonous snakes kill humans, and the strong prey on the weak. Moreover, no animals cook their food in stainless steel containers over electric coils. So some selection must be made about which natural «laws» or principles or activities are applicable as norms for human life and justice, and making that selection cannot be done just by appeal to natural law, so natural law by itself cannot establish norms for human justice or ethics.

Justice as human creation

In contrast to the understandings canvassed so far, justice may be understood as a human creation, rather than a discovery of harmony, divine command, or natural law. This claim can be understood in a number of ways, with the fundamental division being between those who argue that justice is the creation of some humans, and those who argue that it is the creation of all humans.

According to thinkers including Thomas Hobbes, justice is created by public, enforceable, authoritative rules, and injustice is whatever those rules forbid, regardless of their relation to morality. Justice is created, not merely described or approximated, by the command of an absolute sovereign power. This position has some similarities with divine command theory (see above), with the difference that the state (or other authority) replaces God. But this theory cannot be correct because we know of many historical examples of states and sovereign powers establishing laws or commands that were manifestly unjust.

Justice as mutual agreement

According to thinkers in the social contract tradition, justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone concerned; or, in many versions, from what they would agree to under hypothetical conditions including equality and absence of bias. This view is considered further below, under ‘Justice as fairness’.

Justice as less important than we think

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, which is 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 which 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, and our ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another’s place. So, when we see someone harmed, we project ourselves into his situation and feel a desire to retaliate on his behalf. If this process is the source of our feelings about justice, that ought to undermine our confidence in them.^[6]

Eternal justice

In Human, All Too Human, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche dismantles the notion that ‘the world’ treats everyone fairly:

«One common false conclusion is that because someone is truthful and upright toward us he is speaking the truth. Thus the child believes his parents` judgments, the Christian believes the claims of the church`s founders. Likewise, people do not want to admit that all those things which men have defended with the sacrifice of their lives and happiness in earlier centuries were nothing but errors. Perhaps one calls them levels of truth. Basically, however, one thinks that if someone honestly believed in something and fought for his belief and died it would be too unfair if he had actually been inspired by a mere error. Such an occurrence seems to contradict eternal justice. Therefore the hearts of sensitive men always decree in opposition to their heads that there must be a necessary connection between moral actions and intellectual insights. Unfortunately, it is otherwise, for there is no eternal justice.»

Distributive Justice

Distributive justice is concerned with the proper or right or fair distribution of both the rewards and the costs—wealth, power, reward, respect, taxes, the costs of an enterprise—between different people or groups (if groups are being considered).

Theories of distributive justice

Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:

1. What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, or something else, some combination of these things? Are the costs of whatever is under consideration also to be distributed?
2. Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans, sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations? Should non-human animals too be considered as having rights and as subjects of just or unjust treatment? If so, which ones, and under what circumstances?
3. What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, according to social status, according to need, or some other principle?

At least six possible principles or schemes of distribution might be used:

1. To each an equal share. Each person should receive an equal amount of the rewards, or be assigned an equal amount of the costs, of an enterprise. Thus each person would get or be assessed the same amount, regardless of that person’s work, responsibility, or contribution.

2. To each according to individual need. Thus whoever was allocating pay or other benefits would ascertain the needs of every participant, considering such things as family size, indebtedness, need for school tuition, medical situation, etc. and then give out pay or rewards according to need.

3. To each according to individual effort. By this principle employees or participants in an enterprise would be rewarded according to the effort they put into the enterprise. This takes no account of result, so a person producing an excellent result with little effort would receive less than the person producing a poor result who have nevertheless put a great deal of effort into it.

4. To each according to social contribution. This principle would allocate pay or other rewards according to the degree to which the given individual aids the welfare of society.

5. Winner take all. By this principle, one person (or group) would be declared the winner of a contest, election, or whatever, and would receive all the benefits, with none going to other participants.

6. To each according to merit. According to this principle, people or groups would be paid, rewarded, hired or fired, promoted, or otherwise dealt with according to their merit. Note, however, that merit means different things to different people. In an egalitarian context it means the individual and his/her merit and achievement. In a hierarchical or royalist or class system, however, merit is determined by position in the hierarchy or royal order or class. We should note that present-day business organizations are usually hierarchical in organization, with those higher in the hierarchy receiving more just by virtue of their position, regardless of their effort or result.

Egalitarianism

According to the egalitarian, goods should be distributed equally. This basic view can be elaborated in many different ways, according to what goods are to be distributed, such as wealth, respect, or opportunity, and what they are to be distributed equally between—individuals, families, nations, races, species. Commonly-held egalitarian positions include demands for equality of opportunity and for equality of outcome.

Giving people what they deserve

In one sense, all theories of distributive justice claim that everyone should get what he or she deserves. Where they diverge is in disagreeing about the basis of desert. The main distinction is between, on one hand, theories which argue that the basis of just desert is something held equally by everyone and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice; and, on the other hand, theories which argue that the basis of just desert is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice according to which some should have more than others. This section deals with some popular theories of the second type.

According to meritocratic 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 can be regarded as a needs-based theory on some readings of Marx’s slogan, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’.^[7] According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual’s contribution to the overall social good.

Fairness

In his A Theory of Justice, 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 which denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and lifeplans, 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 favour. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish bias. Rawls argues 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:

1. 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.

2. Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both

a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and

b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.^[8]

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) liberties 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).

Having the right history

Robert Nozick’s influential libertarian critique of Rawls argues that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal pattern, but of each individual entitlement having been based on rights of ownership—Nozick calls these «Lockean rights.» It is just that a person has some good (especially, some property right) if and only if he or she came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:

1. Just acquisition, especially by working to create or achieve ownership; and

2. Just transfer, that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not theft.

If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, then he or she is entitled to it; it is just that he or she possesses it, and what anyone else has, or does not have, or needs, is irrelevant.

On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick argues that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of the owners of those goods, are theft. In particular, redistributive taxation is theft.

Further information: Anarchy, State, and Utopia, Economic libertarianism

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, argues 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.

Retributive Justice

Retributive justice is concerned with the proper response to wrongdoing. So, for instance, the lex talionis (law of retaliation) is a theory of retributive justice which says that the proper punishment is equal to the wrong suffered: «life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.»^[9]

Theories of retributive justice are concerned with punishment for wrongdoing, and need to answer three questions:

1. why punish?
2. who should be punished?
3. 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, as already noted, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment is bad treatment of someone, and therefore can’t be good in itself, for the utilitarian. But punishment might be a necessary sacrifice which maximizes the overall good in the long term, in one or more of three ways:

1. Deterrence. The credible threat of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices which maximize welfare.
2. Rehabilitation. Punishment might make bad people into better ones. For the utilitarian, all that ‘bad person’ can mean is ‘person who’s likely to cause bad things (like suffering)’. So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment which changes someone such that he or she is less likely to cause bad things.
3. Security. 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.

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. Worryingly, 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.^[10]

Retributivism

The retributivist will think the utilitarian’s argument disastrously mistaken. If someone does something wrong, we must respond to it, and to him or her, as an individual, not as a part of a calculation of overall welfare. To do otherwise is to disrespect him or her as an individual human being. If the crime had victims, it is to disrespect them, too. Wrongdoing must be balanced or made good in some way, and so the criminal deserves to be punished. Retributivism emphasises retribution – payback – rather than maximization of welfare. Like the theory of distributive justice as giving everyone what she deserves (see above), it links justice with desert. 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 argued that retributivism is merely revenge in disguise.^[11]

Institutions

In an imperfect world, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice, however imperfectly. 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 which the world fails to live up to, sometimes despite good intentions, sometimes disastrously. The question of institutive justice raises issues of legitimacy, procedure, codification and interpretation, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law.

See also

• Criminal justice
• Distributive justice
• Ethics
• Global justice
• Just war
• Justice (economics)
• Morality
• Retributive justice
• Social justice
• Teaching for social justice
• Environmental justice

Notes

Bibliography and further reading

• Anscombe, Elizabeth. «Modern Moral Philosophy.» Philosophy 33(1958): 1-19. * Barry, Brian. Theories of Justice. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. ISBN 0520038665
• Brighouse, Harry. Justice. Malden, MA: Polity, 2004. ISBN 0745625959
• Duff, Anthony & David Garland, eds., A Reader on Punishment. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. ISBN 0198763522
• Farrelly, Colin. An Introduction to Contemporary Political Theory. London, UK & Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2004. ISBN 0761949070
• Gauthier, David. Morals By Agreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. ISBN 019824746X
• Goodin, Robert E. & Philip Pettit, eds., Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, 2nd Ed., Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. ISBN 1405130644
• Honderich, Ted. Punishment: The Supposed Justifications Revisited. Ann Arbor, MI: Pluto Press, 2006. ISBN 0745321313
• Kymlicka, Will. Contemporary Political Philosophy: An introduction, 2nd Ed., Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0198782748
• Lacey, Nicola. State Punishment. London & New York: Routledge, 2002. [Electronic resource, elibrary] ISBN 0203046064
• MacIntyre, Alasdair. After Virtue, 2nd ed. London: Duckworth, 1985.
• Mill, John Stuart. «Utilitarianism» in On Liberty and Other Essays, ed. John Gray, Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, 1998. ISBN 0192833847
• Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. (Reprint of 1974 ed. with a new forward), New York: Basic Books/Perseus Pub. Group, 2006. ISBN 0465051006
• O’Neill, Onora. Towards Justice and Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1996.
• Plato, Republic, Ed. with introduction, notes and vocabulary by D.J. Allan, London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993. ISBN 1853992542
• Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, Rev. Ed., Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. ISBN 0674000773
• Schmidtz, David. Elements of Justice. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. ISBN 0521539366
• Singer, Peter, ed., A Companion to Ethics. Oxford, UK & Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001. ISBN 0631187855
• Ten, C.L. Crime, Guilt, and Punishment: A philosophical introduction. Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1987. ISBN 019875082X

External links

All links retrieved October 4, 2022.

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entries:
  • Distributive justice
  • Justice as a virtue

General Philosophy Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Paideia Project Online.
• Project Gutenberg.

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When pondering the term justice, what comes to mind? 

Do you conjure up images of Lady Justice — also commonly known as Justinia — or Themis, the Greek Goddess of Justice? Or perhaps you think about ethics, fairness, and equality. Maybe you have not the slightest clue as to what the term justice means. Worry not, though, because we’re here to help.

In this post, we’re exploring the term justice to clear up any confusion you may have about its definition. By the end of this article, you should have a clear understanding of the meaning behind the word justice and feel comfortable using it in a sentence. Are you ready? 

Let’s get started! 

What Does Justice Mean?

To truly understand what the term justice means, it can be helpful to review more than one definition. Below, you’ll discover the definitions provided by three well-known and trusted sources:

•  The Cambridge Dictionary defines justice as fairness in the way people are dealt with. 

• According to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, justice is the ethical, philosophical idea that everyone is to be treated impartially, properly, fairly, and reasonably by the law.  

• The Oxford English Dictionary says the word justice is a noun that refers to just behavior or treatment. 

After reviewing the definitions listed above, we can conclude that justice is the quality of being just, fair, and reasonable. 

What Is the Origin of Justice?

Believe it or not, the English word justice is over 860 years old. Yup, it’s true; derived from justitia — an Old French word that descended from Latin to mean “righteousness” and “equity,” from iustus “just” and ius “right” — justice meant uprightness, equity, vindication of right, court of justice, and judge. 

By late Old English, justice was commonly used to describe the judicial administration of law or equity. It also described those administering the law in addition to those working in the judicial assembly and court of justice — especially a judge presiding over or belonging to one of the superior courts.    

During the 16th century, the word justice became personified when it was the name given to a beautiful goddess portrayed in paintings holding balanced scales and a sword. Justice appeared blindfolded to symbolize the impartiality of true justice. 

What Are the Synonyms and Antonyms of Justice?

To better your understanding of a term, it can be helpful to discover its synonyms and antonyms. Synonyms are words that have the same or nearly the same meaning as another word. In contrast, anonyms are words that have the opposite meaning of another word. 

Defined as the quality of being just, synonyms of justice include:

• Fairness
• Equity
• Integrity
• Honesty
• Decency
• Impartiality
• Uprightness
• Justness
• Right
• Reasonableness
• Rightfulness
• Natural virtue
• Even-handedness
• Egalitarianism
• Neutrality
• Non-partisanship

Antonyms of justice include:

• Wrong 
• Injustice
• Dishonesty
• Favoritism
• Unfairness
• Partiality
• Unreasonableness
• Unlawfulness
• Inequity

The Word “Justice” in Example Sentences

Now that you understand what justice means, let’s take a look at a few examples of this word in a sentence:

Did you know that a new Supreme Court justice is getting picked next week?

Do you view capital punishment as a type of justice or means of revenge?

Mr. Justice Smith currently presided over the appellate court.

She appointed a new chief justice and initiated prosecution of the old one.

Were you aware that early theories of justice were set out by the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato?

Perhaps justice would be better served if the shoplifter worked for the owner of the store he stole from.

If you ask me, justice is an important element of good government.

The victim’s family is crying for justice.

Did you know that John Rawls used a social contract theory to say that justice is a form of fairness?

Believe it or not, advocates of divine command theory argue that justice issues from God.

The killers will be brought to justice.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons is basically just the law enforcement agency of the Justice Department.

John Locke was just one of many philosophers who believed justice derives from natural law.

Rooted in accountability and redress for victims, transitional justice recognizes their dignity as citizens and as human beings.

Social justice is concerned with equal rights for those of all social dimensions.

If you take advantage of his generosity, justice will be served!

Did you know that poetic justice is often used in literature?

Conclusion

So, what does justice mean, you ask?

Simply put, the term justice means to treat adequately, fairly, or with full appreciation. It is the ideal of fairness —especially with regard to the punishment of wrongdoing. In other words, justice is the judgment involved in the determination of rights and the assignment of rewards and punishments. 

Considered the first virtue of social institutions, justice is based on the best outcomes for the greatest number of people. That said, the term can also be used as a noun to refer to a public official (ex: judge) authorized to decide questions brought before a court of justice. 

We hope this guide has provided you with all of the information needed to understand the term justice. Check out our website to discover more interesting words, grammar tips, tools and more!

Sources:

1. JUSTICE | Meaning & Definition for UK English | Lexico.com
2. justice | Wex | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
3. JUSTICE | Cambridge English Dictionary

Last Updated:
5 Apr 2023
— Updated example sentences

The word ‘justice’, meaning ‘the exercise of authority in vindication of right by assigning reward or punishment’ is over 860 years old (c. 1140 AD).  ‘Justice’ was once ‘justitia’ an Old French word that descended from Latin to mean ‘righteousness and equity’.  A similar word from the same Latin root was ‘justus’ meaning ‘upright, and just’.  When ‘justitia’ was adopted into Old English it was extremely simplified.  From the original Old French meanings that included, ‘uprightness, equity, vindication of right, court of justice, and judge’, Old English adopted the word only as a title for a judicial officer (c.1200).

By late Old English, ‘justice’ was used to describe the judicial administration of law or equity (first attested in 1303).  ‘Justice’ was also used to describe the people administering the law- ‘justice of the peace’ was first used in 1320, and ‘justice’ was used to describe the people working in the judicial assembly and court of justice, especially a judge presiding over or belonging to one of the superior courts.  By late Middle English ‘justice’ included the assignment of deserved reward or punishment, ‘They should have cut my head off.  That would have been justice’ (early 19th century).  By the early 19th century ‘justice’ was used to describe the infliction of punishment on an offender, especially capital punishment and execution.

By late 16th century ‘justice’ became personified.  The word became the name for a beautiful goddess portrayed in painting and sculpture holding balanced scales and a sword.  She appeared blindfolded to symbolize the impartiality of true justice.

It was not till the Middle English period that the word ‘justice’ began to extend its meaning like its original Old French predecessor.  The meaning of the word ‘justice’ began to be defined as the quality or principle of just dealing and conduct- this included integrity, impartiality, and fairness, ‘the elders in spite of their long-winded orations about justice were prone to deviousness and chicanery’.  By the middle of the 16th century ‘justice’ was adopted by theology to mean, ‘the state of being righteous’.  By the late 18th century, ‘justice’ was also used to express the conformity (of an action or thing) to moral right or to reason, ‘he was enraptured by what seemed the beautiful justice of the remark’ (early 19th century).        

1	0   0 n. 1) fairness. 2) moral rightness. 3) a scheme or system of law …

2	0   0 justice The moral principle ensuring fairness and reasonableness in the way people are treated, as well as the administration of the law, and the authority in maintaining this process. This is a value the Eur [..]

3	0   0 justice Fairness, equity, and morality in action or attitude in order to promote and protect human rights and responsibilities. In most societies, people work for justice by organizing through different categ [..]

4	0   0 justice mid-12c., «the exercise of authority in vindication of right by assigning reward or punishment;» also «quality of being fair and just; moral soundness and conformity to truth,» fro [..]

5	0   0 justice dikephobia

6	0   0 justice Justice [N] [T] [B]is rendering to every one that which is his due. It has been distinguished from equity in this respect, that while justice means merely the doing what positive law demands, equity m [..]

7	0   0 justice administration of law.

8	0   0 justice 1) A concept of fairness and moral rightness. 2) A scheme or system of law. 3) Judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, the federal courts of appeal, and state appellate courts.

9	0   0 justice the quality of being just or fair judgment involved in the determination of rights and the assignment of rewards and punishments judge: a public official authorized to decide questions brought before [..]

10	0   0 justice The virtue of protecting individuals’ possessions within the acknowledged rules of conduct.

11	0   0 justice {Gk. δικη [díkê]; Lat. iustitia} Equitable distribution of goods and evils in a social institution, including the moral sanctions of reward and punishment. After surveying alternative notions of [..]

12	0   0 justice is rendering to every one that which is his due. It has been distinguished from equity in this respect, that while justice means merely the doing what positive law demands, equity means the doing of w [..]

13	0   0 justice The legal process and the imposition of proportionate punishment. See common sense, procedural justice. It is the impartial and fair settlement of conflict.

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0   0 justice Justice in research involves mainly considerations of fairness and balance. As far as is consistent with the research method people should have equal opportunity to participate in research or to benefit from it. The benefits of research should be spread as evenly as possible and in particular those who participated in research should have access to [..]

15	0   0 justice gerekhtikeyt

16	0   0 justice tsedek

17	0   0 justice yoysher

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0   0 justice To dream that you demand justice from a person, denotes that you are threatened with embarrassments through the false statements of people who are eager for your downfall. If some one demands the same of you, you will find that your conduct and reputation are being assailed, and it will be extremely doubtful if you refute the charges satisfactorily [..]

19	0   0 justice [Old French, from Latin justitia, from justus just] 1 a : the quality of being just, impartial, or fair [it is not the province of the court to decide upon the or injustice…of these laws «Scott [..]

20	0   0 justice judge (a person who makes the final decision) at the Supreme Court.

21	0   0 justice Justice is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, fairness, religion and/or equity. Justice is the result of the fair and proper administration of law. It is th [..]

22	0   0 justice (n) the quality of being just or fair(n) judgment involved in the determination of rights and the assignment of rewards and punishments(n) a public official authorized to decide questions brought b [..]

23	0   0 justice Colloquial term for murder.

24	0   0 justice «Refers to an evaluation of the fairness of economic and socio-emotional outcomes.» (Grandey & Cordeiro). «Is concerned with how goods, honors, and obligations are distributed within a community…

25	0   0 justice «Refers to the evaluation of the procedures that are followed in allocating outcomes.» (Grandey & Cordeiro) «The element of justice concerned with the application of laws, rather than with the…

26	0   0 justice An interactive process whereby members of a community are concerned for the equality and Rights of all.

27	0   0 justice 1. Justice and utilitarianism The concept of justice is often invoked in economic discussions. Its relevance to economic evaluation is obvious …

28	0   0 justice Traditionally, economists have treated justice as a component of social welfare maximization. Recently, philosophical treatments of justice have challenged …

29	0   0 justice This article provides a survey of recent normative work on justice. It shows how the concern for distributive equality has been questioned by the idea …

30	0   0 justice Latin iustitia «righteousness, equity.»

31	0   0 justice   The maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings.

32	0   0 justice The maintenance or administration of what is just by law, as by judicial or other proceedings.

33	0   0 justice n. 1) fairness. 2) moral rightness. 3) a scheme or system of law in which every person receives his/her/its due from the system, including all rights, both natural and legal. One problem is that attor [..]

34	0   0 justice n. «justice; judicial punishment; judge,» s.v. justice sb. OED. KEY: justice@n

35	0   0 justice n 22 justice 12 justise 9 justyse 1

36	0   0 justice One of three basic ethical principles addressed in the Belmont Report (1979), justice here is understood in the context of “fairness in distribution” or “what is deserved” regarding the possible benefits of research as well as the assumption of its burdens.

37	0   0 justice Justice refers to the ethical obligation to treat each person in accordance with what is morally right and proper, to give each person what is due to him or her. In the ethics of research involving hu [..]

38	0   0 justice The title of a justice of court.

39	0   0 justice From an occupational surname meaning "judge, officer of justice" in Old French. This name can also be given in direct reference to the English word justice.

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