What is Justice?

Justice is equality?

Perhaps not so much as it is a set of practices or standards of behaviour.

^^

This. At least to me.

Also, that's going to be my new sig for a while.

edited 22nd Jan '11 2:46:37 PM by Barkey

I'd say it's a combination of equal opportunity and minimizing suffering.

Justice is vengeance in a Sunday suit.

I am Justice. I am the night. I! Am! Dapper!

Not equality no, if you mean in terms of the distribution of social resources. But a social arrangement where everyone gets enough to feel satisfied to be a contributing member of that community.

"Justice" isn't just. It's people in power pushing the rest of us around and saying, "This is fair and right."

Justice is merely a form of justification. To justify something doesn't make it universally acceptable.

"Justice" is when society protects one's life, possessions and personal freedom to the extend of the law, and all are treated equally before the law.

"Justice" is the mods locking this or any other thread that gets necroed from three years ago, due to people not checking the post dates.

Am I doing it right?

edited 20th Jul '14 8:40:58 AM by TotemicHero

Mod Hat ON

I won't lock it solely because it's a necro. If conversation picks up and stays on topic, it may continue it's new life. If it gets silly or pointless, it will be locked and allowed to sink quietly back to the depths of history.

Mod Hat OFF

edited 20th Jul '14 8:51:28 AM by Madrugada

Justice is whatever is right, fair, and impartial, as well as righting wrongs to the extent of undoing them. While I do believe in the concept of objective, true justice, I also think that it is absolutely impossible for humans to attain such justice on their own.

Enforcement of written law is not true justice, since written law exists for the lawless. The very existence of written law acknowledges the existence of injustice, since a truly good and lawful individual will always do the right thing and never do the wrong thing regardless of whether there is a law against it or not. Thus a society with a sense of objectively true justice would have no need for written laws because everyone's individual consciences would serve as a law to themselves without contradicting those of others; basically, everyone would naturally share the same sense of morality.

Also, "an eye for an eye" is not true justice because while it may punish the wrongdoer, it does not make reparation. The injured person has still lost an eye, and taking the eye of the wrongdoer does nothing to repair the damage done. True justice would be just as focused on actually restoring the eye of the injured person to how it was before as it would be punishing the wrongdoer. Human justice centered on punishment because it is incapable of reparations for things like murder or injury is only a mockery of justice.

In case punishment would be necessary, an individual needs authority over the wrongdoer in order to pass judgement on him/her. Since all humans are equal, this is why vengeance via personal justice may be viewed as wrong, because the individual lacked the authority to give judgement. And even if a human does attain a measure of authority via government, they would still lack the knowledge and capability to always pass judgement on the right people and never pass judgement on the wrong people. The very fact of the adversarial court system exists acknowledges that it is possible for a judge/court to condemn the wrong person. If judges could read the minds and hearts of the accused, there would be no need for attorneys. So even the court system is a mockery of justice.

Obviously, this standard is way too high for humanity to ever be able to implement and use.

edited 20th Jul '14 11:31:00 AM by shiro_okami

Justice is equality. Equality is monotony. Monotony is meaningless. So justice is meaningless too, imo

Minimalizing suffering is fundamentally incompatible with people getting what they "deserve", because when people do bad things, we'd say they "deserve" bad things, but doing bad things back to them doesn't do anything, except maybe preventing them from doing it in the future. But if we somehow knew they won't do it again, is it good to punish them anyway just because they deserve it? That causes unnecessary suffering, no?

Also, what do people "deserve" anyway? If we go with the eye-for-an-eye model, what if someone harms more of something than he has? A serial killer only has one life, so should we kills his family too or something? But his family's lives belong to them, not him. Or maybe substitute something else of the same value of the harm the offender perpetrated? How do we measure that value, and what is the perpetrator still doesn't have enough of the value "owed" to "pay back"?

Besides, what if someone who doesn't particularly value their eye, say, a blind person, takes the eye of someone whose eye is everything to them? Would it really break even to take something not particularly valuable from the offender when the same thing the victim lost means so much more to them?

So even if objective justice exists, I wouldn't call it something to aim for. A world without sentient beings would be a perfectly just world as insentient objects do nothing (and therefore deserve nothing), and get nothing as well, for they can't own. Therefore no-one gets more or less of what they deserve.

I'm more partial to this: "It is the moderation or mean between selfishness and selflessness - between having more and having less than one's fair share." The problem is more on what that fair share is, rather than what justice actually is.

edited 2nd Aug '14 7:52:01 PM by entropy13

What if taking away from someone who had more than their fair share doesn't increase the share of those who have less?

This is probably due to watching too many Batman movies, but I believe that justice is (proportionately) punishing evildoers for their crimes while ensuring that innocents aren't punished in their place.

Uh, then you do another thing to increase the share of those who have less? We're not in a video game where you can choose only one from A, B, C, or D.

So long as they're possible and within limits set up by various elements (legalisms, morality, logic, rationality, etc.) you can do A (takes away from someone who had more, but doesn't do anything with those with less) and B (gives to someone who had less, but doesn't do anything with those with more).

Ok, I know you can do both, but is the former really necessary? Is it really good to take away from someone who has more just for the sake of everyone having a "fair share" if it doesn't do anything else? Of course it's good to give to someone who has less, because someone gains, but the only consequence of taking someone who has more is someone losing and ... equality? idk I just don't think equality's worth it

And if we didn't bother punishing the evildoers in the first place, innocents won't be punished in anyone's place!

edited 2nd Aug '14 11:30:52 PM by ctang15

It's quite simple. Justice is giving what's deserved. To describe justice best, I'd compare it to evil. Evil is doing something wrong, but more specifically, unjustifiable. Someone beating someone for kicks would be committing evil, someone who saw this and beat them up for their unprovoked attack on their innocent victim would be serving justice. Ultimately, if an action meant to right a wrong, or punish the guilty has justification that holds up, it can't be considered injustice.

edited 4th Aug '14 7:16:40 PM by GhostofMuramasa

The road to hell is paved with good intentions; just because something can be justified via righting a wrong or punishing the guilty does not automatically deny it from being injustice, for example, miscarriages of justice.