And Justice for All

Last time I talked about liberty, and now I would like to approach the subject of justice. Both of these are, as I see it, central to the role of government, and so it seems appropriate to discuss them more or less together like this, and before further approaching political philosophy.

The problem with justice is that it is very broad and includes a wide variety of meanings. However, as with liberty, as a moral realist I believe that there is a basic principle of true justice, and the question is still what constitutes this true justice. It may include a variety of ideas, but let us begin to evaluate some common theories of justice, recalling the required principle of consistency, that any moral law must be consistent with other moral laws.

First, there is the basic conception of justice that one ought to receive consequences according to his choices and actions. Under this conception, a criminal is brought to justice when he receives punishment for his crime, a person is justly dealt with when he receives full payment for a contract entered into, and it is injustice for a person to receive payment other than what is merited by the good or service he is providing (although this last example is complicated by questions of whether there is an absolute and fundamental value which may be attached to a particular good or service, so that most often it is only by deceit, such as failing to pay a previously agreed upon amount, that we consider this type of infraction against justice, though there are some counterexamples).

Second, there are several conceptions regarding equality. One idea is that one must reward or punish everyone equally. Indeed, it has been asserted that any variation in pay for similar jobs in the workplace (for example) is injustice. Alternately, there is a conception in which variation in advantages and disadvantages outside of one's control (such as one's family's economic situation) is inherently unjust. The strongest conception relating to equality is that justice demands that all people have complete equality in terms of economics, freedoms, and privileges.

Finally, there are conceptions related to need, requiring that everyone have certain minimum needs and liberties allotted them in order to fulfill justice. In many ways this is related to equality, though perhaps not quite as strong, and perhaps imposing slightly different standards (for in such a conception of justice, the ideal society gives more to a section of society because of their greater need, contrary to the conception based in equality).

There may yet be other conceptions of justice, but these, I think, can mostly be formulated as intermediates between the above. If anyone thinks of another common conception, then please comment so that I may address this as well.

In the next post I will take these different conceptions and attempt to determine which of these formulations (or what combination of them) corresponds to my personal theory of justice.

Title: U.S. Pledge of Allegiance