Exploring the Principles and Types of Justice
The Meaning of Justice
In essence, the meaning of Justice has to do with giving each person what he or she deserves—in other words, giving each person his or her due. Philosophers used to explain it in terms of fairness, desert, and entitlement, while equitability and appropriateness of treatment are used in interpretations. This statement, however, is not enough to understand the true nature of Justice and the role it must play in the different realms of this world. Having said this, it would be important to outline some principles of Justice as well as different categorizations of this concept in order to clarify this abstract concept.
Kinds of Justice
As for the different kinds of justice, we can distinguish three categories.
Distributive Justice
In the first place, we have distributive justice, which refers to the extent to which society’s institutions ensure that benefits and burdens are distributed among society’s members in ways that are fair and just. The most fundamental principle of distributive justice is the principle that ‘equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally’. In its contemporary form, this principle is sometimes expressed as follows: ‘individuals should be treated the same, unless they differ in ways that are relevant to the situation in which they are involved’. Nevertheless, it is relevant to determine some principles to decide who and why a person should be treated equally or not.
Principles of Distributive Justice
- Justice as Equality (Egalitarianism): According to the egalitarian, all benefits and burdens should be distributed as exactly shares of a society’s or a group’s benefits and burden (equal compensation). We may become more cooperative with each other. Solidarity concept of justice.
- Justice Based on Contribution (Capitalist Justice): Benefits should be distributed according to the value of the contribution the individual makes to a society, a task, a group, or an exchange (proportional concept).
- Justice Based on Needs and Abilities (Socialism): Work burdens should be distributed according to people’s abilities, and benefits should be distributed according to people’s needs.
- Justice as Freedom (Libertarianism): The libertarian holds that no particular way of distributing goods can be said to be just or unjust apart from the free choices individuals make.
Retributive Justice
On the other hand, there is retributive or corrective justice, which refers to the extent to which punishments are fair and just (fair imposition of Punishment and penalties on those who wrong (when there is certitude that the punished one actually did wrong), excluding those who act in an ignorance or inability way).
Compensatory Justice
Finally, it would be important to mention compensatory justice, which refers to the extent to which people are fairly compensated for their injuries by those who have injured them. In other words, that the compensation is proportional to the loss inflicted on a person.
Justice in Society
When analyzing the role that Justice should play in ordering common life in society, it is quite clear that the three types of Justice explained above have to be present. To begin with, distributive justice has to be the core of any developed society. The institutions must guarantee that the resources are well distributed in order to ensure Justice in society. Additionally, both retributive and compensatory justice need to exist to correct the malfunctioning elements of society and guarantee that Justice is preserved above all.
Justice in Professional and Business Ethics
In professional ethics, the principle of justice refers to: the social role of the profession, the contribution of a given professional practice to overall social justice, and the exact performance of duties coming from contact or public service. More precisely, in business ethics, the principle of justice implies fulfilling all legal and contractual obligations, taking into account: the institutional context and the professional’s role in it, the different titles accumulated by those who request professional services, and the duty of equal treatment at establishing priorities and allocation resources.
As we have previously mentioned, the principle of justice in professional ethics refers to the compliance to regulations and rules and requires professionals to act within the limits established by these. In this sense, we can find a touch of justice in the principle of integrity, precisely in when it refers to the respect for the rule of law and fair administration of Justice. This principle is aimed to guarantee that the law is respected and thus Justice is served. On another note, we can state that all principles of the legal profession are regulated in different documents, which would mean that the fulfillment of all the principles implies the existence of Justice, in its stricter sense.