JUSTICE
This Photo by Unknown author is licensed under CC BY-SA.
What is Justice
• Fairness & Reasonableness of rules, principles, and standards that are
component part of the normative edifice.
• Justice looks to the content of legal norms and institutional
arrangement, their effect upon human beings and their worth in
terms of their contribution to human happiness and building of
civilisation.
• It is the aim of justice to satisfy the reasonable needs and claims of
individuals and at the same time promote productive effort and that
degree of social cohesion which is necessary to maintain a civilised
social existance.
What is Justice
• Justinian’s Corpus Juris – Justice is the constant and perpetual will to
render to everyone that to which he is entitled.
• A willingness to be fair and readiness to give recognition to claims and
concerns of others.
WHAT IS JUSTICE?
• “Giving to each what they are due.”
• “Justice” is a set of universal principles which guide people in judging what is right and what is wrong, no
matter what culture and society they live in.
• Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call
institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for
the person, both individually and in our associations with others.
• Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to collaborate with others, at whatever
level of the “Common Good” in which we participate, to design and continually perfect our institutions as
tools for personal and social development.
• Economic justice, which touches the individual person as well as the social order, encompasses the moral
principles which guide us in designing our economic institutions. These institutions determine how each
person earns a living, enters into contracts, exchanges goods and services with others and otherwise
produces an independent material foundation for his or her economic sustenance.
• The ultimate purpose of economic justice is to free each person to engage creatively in the unlimited work
beyond economics, that of the mind and the spirit.
• Social justice dictates how well members should compare with one another within the basic structure of
the society. Political justice dictates how far they should share in controlling the shape of that basic
structure.
The Runway Trolley Problem
The Runway Trolley Problem
The Three theories of Justice
Utilitarianism – The idea of maximising welfare. Much contemporary political debate is about how to promote prosperity, or improve our standard of living, or spur economic growth. Therefore, the
greatest happiness of greatest number. Bentham thought his utility principle offered a science of morality that could serve as the basis of
political reform.
Justice & Freedom - The idea that justice means respecting freedom and individual rights is at least as familiar in contemporary politics as the utilitarian idea of maximizing welfare. For example, the
U.S. Bill of Rights sets out certain liberties—including rights to freedom of speech and religious liberty—that even majorities may not violate. And around the world, the idea that justice means
respecting certain universal human rights is increasingly embraced.
The Lasseiz Faire camp –justice consists in respecting and upholding The Fairness Camp – justice requires policies that remedy social and
the voluntary choices made by consenting adults. economic disadvantages and give everyone a fair chance at success.
Justice & Morality - In contemporary politics, virtue theories are often identified with cultural conservatives and the religious right. The idea of legislating morality is anathema to many citizens of
liberal societies, as it risks lapsing into intolerance and coercion. But the notion that a just society affirms certain virtues and conceptions of the good life has inspired political movements and
arguments across the ideological spectrum. Not only the Taliban, but also abolitionists and Martin Luther King, Jr., have drawn their visions of justice from moral and religious ideals.
Moral Dilemmas
• Life in democratic societies is rife with disagreement about right and wrong, justice and
injustice. Some people favor abortion rights, and others consider abortion to be murder.
Some believe fairness requires taxing the rich to help the poor, while others believe it is
unfair to tax away money people have earned through their own efforts.
• Some defend affirmative action in college admissions as a way of righting past wrongs,
whereas others consider it an unfair form of reverse discrimination against people who
deserve admission on their merits.
• Some people reject the torture of terror suspects as a moral abomination unworthy of a
free society, while others defend it as a last resort to prevent a terrorist attack.
Utilitarianism
• Every moral argument, he claims, must implicitly draw on the idea of maximizing happiness. People may say they
believe in certain absolute, categorical duties or rights. But they would have no basis for defending these duties or
rights unless they believed that respecting them would maximize human happiness, at least in the long run.
• “When a man attempts to combat the principle of utility,” Bentham writes, “it is with reasons drawn, without his
being aware of it, from that very principle itself.”
• All moral quarrels, properly understood, are disagreements about how to apply the utilitarian principle of
maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain, not about the principle itself. “Is it possible for a man to move the
earth?” Bentham asks.
• “Yes; but he must first find out another earth to stand upon.” And the only earth, the only premise, the only
starting point for moral argument, according to Bentham, is the principle of utility.
• E.g., – Throwing Christians to Lions
• Is torture justified?
• What about individual rights??
Libertarianism
A libertarian rejects three policies that modern States enact –
a) No Paternalism
b) No moral legislations
c) No redistribution of Income & Wealth
• As an intellectual doctrine, libertarianism emerged earlier, in opposition to the welfare
state.
• Libertarians favor unfettered markets and oppose government regulation, not in the
name of economic efficiency but in the name of human freedom.
• Their central claim is that each of us has a fundamental right to liberty—the right to do
whatever we want with the things we own, provided we respect other people’s rights to
do the same.
What is Justice then?
• Justice is inescapably judgmental.
• Whether we’re arguing about financial bailouts or surrogate motherhood or same-sex
marriage, affirmative action or military service, CEO pay or the right to use a golf cart,
questions of justice are bound up with competing notions of honor and virtue, pride and
recognition.
• Justice is not only about the right way to distribute things. It is also about the right way
to value things.
Common Good
• The term is a useful conceptual tool for designating the outer limits which must not be
transgressed in allocation and exercise of individual rights, lest the [State] suffers a
serious harm.
• UDHR – Justice requires that freedom, equality & security be accorded to human beings
to the greatest extent consistent with common good.
• Common Good – full & satisfying life (individual) – contribution – building of civilisation.