Justice
Concept · Politics, stage 1: Learn the vocabulary
Justice is the standard by which the basic arrangements of a society - who holds what, who decides what, who answers for what - are judged right or wrong. Distributive justice concerns how benefits and burdens are shared out; procedural justice concerns whether the process that produced an outcome was fair; corrective justice concerns what is owed once a wrong has been done. Theories differ over whether justice tracks desert, need, entitlement to whatever one has legitimately acquired, or the terms that free and equal people would agree to in advance.
Why it matters
It is the master term of political argument: a policy defended as efficient, popular or traditional can still be attacked as unjust.
Part of
Sources
- Justice Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Justice, Western Theories of Internet Encyclopedia of PhilosophyA historical run through the main theories, from the Greeks to Rawls and his critics.
- Justice Wikipedia
