Justice
A 6th-century codification of Roman law called the Institutes of Justinian carried a definition that philosophers still treat as the most plausible core: justice is "the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due". The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy names that line as the strongest candidate for a foundational meaning. It sounds simple. In its broadest sense, justice is the treatment of individuals fairly, a society in which people receive what they deserve. But the word "deserve" is where the simplicity collapses. What someone is owed has been argued over by ethics, rationality, law, religion, and competing ideas of fairness. Does justice come from God, from nature, from a contract among strangers, or from whatever the strongest decide to impose? And once a wrong is done, what is the point of punishment at all. The state pursues justice by operating courts and enforcing their rulings, yet the reasons behind those rulings pull in opposite directions. The questions that follow have occupied thinkers from Plato to the present day.
Plato, in his work The Republic, defined justice as balance and harmony, the right relationship between conflicting aspects within an individual or a community. For him a just person contributes to society according to their unique abilities and receives what is proportionate to their contribution. Everyone has and does what belongs to them. To make the idea concrete, Plato described a person as having three parts: reason, spirit, and desire. These mirror the three parts of a city, which he pictured through the metaphor of a chariot. The chariot works only when the charioteer, standing for reason, controls two horses that stand for spirit and desire. From this he drew a conclusion about who should rule. Those who love wisdom, the philosophers, are best suited to govern, because only they truly comprehend the nature of the good. Plato compared this to seeking a doctor for matters of health rather than a farmer. A city should entrust its governance to someone who knows the good, not to politicians who might prioritize power over people's genuine needs. Socrates later sharpened the point with the parable of the ship. The unjust city is a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain who is the common people, a group of untrustworthy advisors who manipulate the captain for power and stand for the politicians, and a navigator who is the philosopher. Only the navigator knows how to get the ship to port. That same idea of matching reward and role would later be named proportionality, described in Republic, Book IV, 433a-b.
"Is what is morally good commanded by the gods because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by the gods?" Plato posed this in his dialogue Euthyphro, and it became known as the Euthyphro dilemma. The implication is sharp. If goodness is good only because it is commanded, then justice lies beyond mortal understanding. If the gods command it because it is already good, then morality exists independently of them and falls under the judgment of mortals. Immanuel Kant and C. S. Lewis later popularized a response in two contexts: that it is deductively valid to say the existence of an objective morality implies the existence of God, and the reverse. Advocates of divine command theory hold that justice and the whole of morality are the authoritative command of God. Murder is wrong and must be punished because God says so. Some versions argue God must be obeyed because of the nature of God's relationship with humanity, others because God is goodness itself, so obeying would be best for everyone. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology traditionally treat justice as a present, real, governing concept paired with mercy, ultimately derived from and held by God. The Bible presents institutions such as the Mosaic Law as created by God to require the Israelites to live by His standards. In Genesis 18:19, God says of Abraham that he will charge his household to keep the way of the Lord "by doing righteousness and justice". The Psalmist, in Psalms 89:14, describes God as having "Righteousness and justice as the foundation of His throne". The New Testament, in Matthew 5:7, shows God and Jesus Christ displaying justice alongside mercy. Buddhist ethics takes an entirely different road. Justice is not individuals receiving their due, but the transformation of suffering for all sentient beings by addressing their ignorance and leading them toward enlightenment. Karma is understood not as rewards and punishments but as the continuation of actions, thoughts, and intentions that shape future experience. Central principles include Buddha nature, interbeing, dependent origination, and non-duality. From this view, justice means recognizing shared responsibility and cultivating compassion, a restorative orientation rooted in collective liberation rather than reparation.
John Locke, writing in the 17th century, argued that justice derives from natural law, a set of inherent laws drawn from nature and universal moral principles, discoverable through reason. In ethics it asserts that certain rights and values are inherent in human nature and understood universally, independent of enacted laws. In jurisprudence it holds that objective legal standards based on morality underlie human-made laws, a position that contrasts with legal positivism, where laws are rules created by human authorities and not necessarily tied to morality. Aquinas pushed the idea further. Because human beings have reason, and reason is a spark of the divine, all human lives are sacred and of infinite value, making everyone fundamentally equal and bestowed with intrinsic rights no one can remove. Modern natural law theory was used to challenge the divine right of kings, becoming an alternative justification for the social contract, positive law, and government in the form of classical republicanism. Locke stressed its role in justifying property rights and the right to revolution. Jean-Jacques Rousseau advanced a different foundation: social contract theory, where justice arises from a mutual agreement among members of society to be governed within a political system. In many versions, justice is what people would agree to under hypothetical conditions of equality and absence of bias, an equal ground for all parties in a disagreement. Not everyone accepts that justice is so noble. In Plato's Republic, 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. Some scholars note natural law has also been used for the law of the strongest, observable among all members of the animal kingdom, or as the principle of self-preservation inherent in all living beings.
"Why punish? Who should be punished? What punishment should they receive?" These are the questions instrumental theories of justice put to wrongdoing, and the utilitarian answers them with a single goal: the maximization of total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Utilitarianism fights crime in three ways. Deterrence uses the credible threat of punishment to lead people toward choices that maximize welfare, which matches the intuition that punishment should be proportional to the crime. Rehabilitation aims to turn likely causers of suffering into people less likely to cause it, reducing recidivism. Security or incapacitation removes the irredeemable from opportunities to harm, protecting society. The reason for punishment is welfare, so punishment should fall on whomever and take whatever form is needed to meet that goal. John Stuart Mill went so far as to argue that justice is not as fundamental as we think. It is derived from consequentialism, the standard that what is right has the best consequences. Mill explained our mistaken sense of justice as importance through two natural tendencies: the desire to retaliate against those who hurt us, and sympathy, our ability to imagine ourselves in another's place. Retributive justice rejects this. It holds that all guilty individuals deserve appropriate punishment, proportional to the crime, for all the guilty. Critics call retributivism revenge in disguise, but retribution is impartial and has a scale of appropriateness, while revenge is personal and potentially unlimited in scale. Restorative justice, also called reparative justice, instead repairs the harm done to victims. It encourages victims to participate and offenders to take responsibility, fostering dialogue between them. It shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability, though meta-analyses show no improvement in recidivism. Some philosophers refuse to choose between these camps. Andrew von Hirsch, in his 1976 book Doing Justice, argued that we have a moral obligation to punish greater crimes more than lesser ones, with utilitarian ideals playing a significant secondary role.
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought." John Rawls wrote that line, and it captures how overwhelmingly important most contemporary theories take justice to be. In his A Theory of Justice, Rawls used a social contract argument to show that justice, especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness. He asks us to imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance that hides our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents, and life plans. From there we choose a theory of justice to govern society once the veil lifts. Because we do not know who we are, we cannot bias the decision in our own favor, which is exactly what models fairness. Rawls argued each of us would reject the utilitarian aim of maximizing welfare, fearing we might be the one sacrificed for others' greater benefit. Instead we would endorse two principles. First, each person has an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with the same for all. Second, social and economic inequalities must work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and attach to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity. Distributive justice asks three questions: what goods are distributed, between whom, and what the proper distribution is. The answers run from equal to meritocratic to need-based. George C. Homans suggested each person should receive rewards proportional to their contributions. Robert Nozick, in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, rejected matching any ideal pattern. For him a person justly holds property only if they acquired it through a history of just acquisition by working on unowned things, and just transfer through gift, sale, or agreement rather than theft by force or fraud. On that basis Nozick called redistributive taxation theft. Fairness may run deeper than philosophy. Studies at UCLA in 2008 indicated that reactions to fairness are wired into the brain, activating the same part that responds to food in rats. Research at Emory University in 2003 with capuchin monkeys found that inequity aversion may not be uniquely human.
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread." Anatole France wrote that in 1894 to expose the shortcoming of legal egalitarianism, the belief that all are equal before the law. The same law applied to everyone may have disproportionately harmful effects on the least powerful, blind to social inequality beneath it. Liberalism in political theory carries two traditional elements, liberty and equality, and Ronald Dworkin treated a complex notion of equality as the sovereign political virtue. Dworkin asked whether society has a duty to help those responsible for needing help, a question that complicates the line between choice and chance. Social justice concerns the just relationship between individuals and their society, including how privileges, opportunities, and wealth ought to be distributed. It connects to social mobility, the ease with which families move between social strata. It is distinct from cosmopolitanism, the idea that all people belong to a single global community with a shared morality, and from egalitarianism, the idea that all people are equal in status, value, or rights. Friedrich Hayek called social justice meaningless, arguing that justice results from individual behavior and unpredictable market forces. Marxism, by contrast, is a needs-based theory captured in Marx's slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need". Relational justice examines individual connections and societal relationships. Iris Marion Young charged that distributive accounts fail to address unjust power relations among individuals, groups, and institutional structures. Young Kim also took a relational approach but emphasized the individual as the proper bearer of rights and responsibilities. The old warning that "Justice delayed is justice denied" points to slow justice; in some jurisdictions a right to speedy trial is enshrined, and higher quality justice tends to be speedy.
A sentence forms the final explicit act of a judge-ruled process and the symbolic principal act of the judge's function. It can involve imprisonment, a fine, or other punishments against a defendant convicted of a crime, within ranges that laws and sentencing guidelines may specify. Legal theory names several purposes behind those decisions, and they rarely agree. Retribution imposes punishment for no reason beyond an offense being committed, on the basis that proportionate punishment is a morally acceptable response satisfying the aggrieved party and society, delivered through tariff sentences scaled to the crime. Deterrence works on the individual through fear of further punishment and on the public through warning, using prison, heavy fines, or a long sentence as an example to others. Rehabilitation reforms the offender's behavior through individualized sentences, community service, moral education, and vocational education. Incapacitation makes the offender incapable of further crime through long prison sentences, electronic tagging, or banning orders. Reparation repays the victim or community through compensation, unpaid work, and reparation schemes. Denunciation expresses society's disapproval and reinforces moral boundaries through public punishment that reflects the blameworthiness of the offense. Civil cases differ. The decision is usually a verdict or judgment rather than a sentence, settled primarily by monetary compensation for harm done, called damages, and by orders such as injunctions to prevent future harm. Some systems allow additional categories of damages with a punitive effect, social disapprobation, deterrence, and occasionally disgorgement, the forfeit of any gain even where no loss was caused. Research into the victim's perspective shows what restores a sense of justice may surprise the courts. Victims value respectful treatment, information, and having a voice. Pemberton and colleagues proposed a "Big 2" model built on agency, communion, and membership in society, suggesting that a sense of justice can be restored by increasing communion and agency rather than through retribution or restoration. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 16 carries that conviction outward, emphasizing the need for strong institutions to uphold justice in a world that still fails to live up to it.
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Common questions
What is the definition of justice in philosophy?
Justice, in its broadest sense, is the treatment of individuals fairly, a society in which people receive what they deserve. The Institutes of Justinian, a 6th-century codification of Roman law, defines it as "the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due", which the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy names as the most plausible core definition.
How did Plato define justice in The Republic?
Plato defined justice as balance and harmony, the right relationship between conflicting aspects within an individual or a community. He held that a just person contributes to society according to their unique abilities and receives what is proportionate to their contribution, illustrated through the metaphor of a chariot whose charioteer, reason, controls the horses of spirit and desire.
What is the difference between retributive and restorative justice?
Retributive justice holds that all guilty individuals deserve punishment proportional to the crime, and it is impartial with a scale of appropriateness. Restorative justice instead repairs the harm done to victims, encouraging dialogue and offender responsibility; it shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability but no improvement in recidivism.
What is John Rawls' veil of ignorance theory of justice?
In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls asks us to imagine choosing a theory of justice behind a veil of ignorance that hides our social status, wealth, talents, and life plans. Because we cannot bias the decision in our own favor, the choice models fairness, leading to two principles guaranteeing equal basic liberties and arranging inequalities to benefit the least advantaged.
What is the Euthyphro dilemma about justice?
The Euthyphro dilemma, posed by Plato in his dialogue Euthyphro, asks whether something is morally good because the gods command it, or whether the gods command it because it is already morally good. If the latter, justice lies beyond mortal understanding; if the former, morality exists independently of the gods and is subject to the judgment of mortals.
What are the main purposes of sentencing in criminal justice?
Legal theory names retribution, deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, reparation, and denunciation as the main purposes of sentencing. These range from proportionate tariff sentences and long prison terms as examples to others, through individualized rehabilitative sentences and reparation schemes, to public punishment that expresses society's disapproval.