The concept of justice is simultaneously recognized and misunderstood around the world. The Oxford English Dictionary defines justice as “The quality of being (morally) just or righteous.” For such a brief definition it would not be unlikely to assume that the term justice is a superficial one. On the contrary, this age-old term might have started with a single simple meaning but has developed many more over its existence. The ways civilizations have evolved have in turn forced the word to evolve. Due to this evolution of civilizations, the current state of justice has been lost and it is important to recollect it traits. Many branches of justice now exist and it is possible one may become overwhelmed when searching for its true definition. Observing the term justice presents a plethora of opinions about its definite meaning. In order to create a solid understanding of justice it is necessary to analyze a few of its important branches: retribution, restoration, and distribution. The first step begins with retribution. In order to arrive at a unified definition of justice it is important to take an in-depth look at retributive justice. Robinson provides a clear answer when he states “people often conceptualize justice as that the guilty being held accountable for their actions” (337). In other words, one who has committed a crime has gained an unfair advantage which they were not entitled to by law and deserve punishment. Likewise, it also acts as reinforcement to rules that have been broken (Maiese “Retributive Justice” par. 4). Retributive justice is especially important for severe acts of cruelty and violence. This more severe form of justice, serves for instances where none of the others will suffice. This could include, for ... ... middle of paper ... ...o, Boulder. Posted: October 2003. 12 February 2011.. Maiese, Michelle. "Retributive Justice ." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: May 2004. 12 February 2011. . Maiese, Michelle. "Types of Justice." Beyond Intractability. Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Research Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: July 2003. 12 February 2011. . Robinson, Matthew B. "Justice as freedom, fairness, compassion, and utilitarianism: How my life experiences shaped my views of justice." Contemporary Justice Review 6.4 (2003): 329-340. Academic Search Premier. Web. 6 February 2011.
In 1977, Nils Christie wrote the essay, “Conflicts as Properties”, in which he discusses the four problems that occur within the western legal system. The four problems that affect the legal system in four ways is that the courts are always located in areas that people may not have easy access to locate, the courthouses are challenging to find your way around, the parties are irrelevant to much of the proceedings and the proceedings makes conflicts between the actual parties involved turn into conflicts between the State and the parties 2.
Garrett, Brandon. Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2011. 86. Print.
Greg Mantle, F. D., & Dhami, M. K. (2005). Restorative justice and three individual theories of crime. Internet Journal of Criminology IJC , 1-36. Retrieved from http://www.restorativejustice.org/articlesdb/articles/5914
Since we are made as free moral agents with the ability to choose the standards by which we will live some in society determine their right and wrong behavior based on their feelings of particular situations. For example, a person who grew up in a culture that is less fortunate than others and steals for survival might feel he hasn’t done anything wrong. However, this type of behavior is not acceptable in our society because it violates our obligation to be obedient to the law, not to mention the disadvantage of consequences one faces for their decisions. The advantage to displaying moral character by far out weights the consequences in that choosing to do right creates fairness by way of harmony. Of course, justice requires that victims are compensated for the wrong done to them, and anyone committs a crime must bear the ...
Justice is described as “a moral concept that is difficult to define, but in essence it means to treat people in ways consistent with
He explains that when a conflict arises, we are less capable to take on the situation and are more likely to hand it off to authorities. He then comes to the conclusion of how they are overlooked, in terms of importance, and that individuals own their conflicts as one would own property. Furthermore, he justifies that these properties are stolen by law, therefore, no longer owned by individuals. Christie urges the need to eliminate ‘professionals’ from the sphere of conflict resolution in order to prevent the theft of conflicts. He explains his perspective of “conflict as property” as not relating to material compensation but rather to the ownership of conflict itself. He then recognizes the effects of victim losing the “property” originally, and puts forth a fix for this process. He introduces a way to remodel the justice system for dealing with conflicts in which the court is victim
“Restorative justice is a process whereby parties with a stake in a specific offence collectively resolve how to deal with the aftermath of the offence and its implications for the future” (Munchie, 2004).
Berstein, R. (2007). “Racial Discrimination or Righting Past Wrongs?” in Justice: A Reader. 237-240. Ed. Sandel, M. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 237.
This paper considers the desert arguments raised to support retributivism, or retribution. Retributivism is "the application of the Principle of Desert to the special case of criminal punishment." Russ Shafer-Landau and James Rachels offer very different perspectives on moral desert which ground their differing views on the appropriate response to wrongdoing. In "The Failure of Retributivism," Shafer-Landau contends that retributivism fails to function as a comprehensive theoretical foundation for the legal use of punishment. In contrast, in his article "Punishment and Desert," Rachels uses the four principles of guilt, equal treatment, proportionality and excuses to illustrate the superiority of retribution as the basis for the justice system over two alternatives: deterrence and rehabilitation. Their philosophical treatment of the term leads to divergence on the justification of legal punishment. Ultimately, Rachels offers a more compelling view of desert than Shafer-Landau and, subsequently, better justifies his endorsement of a retributive justice system.
Agreeing on a definition of restorative justice has proved difficult. One definition is a theory of justice that focuses mostly on repairing the harm caused by criminal behaviour. The reparation is done through a cooperative process that includes all the stakeholders. Restorative justice can also be explained as an approach of justice that aims to satisfy the needs of the victims and offenders, as well as the entire community. The most broadly accepted definition for restorative justice, however, is a process whereby all the parties that have a stake in a specific offence collectively resolve on how to deal with the aftermath. This process is largely focused around reparation, reintegration and participation of victims. That is to say, it is a victim-centred approach to criminal justice, and it perceives crime differently than the adversarial system of justice.
According to Pojman (2006), justice is the constant and perpetual will to give every man his due. This would seem to imply that for justice to be carried out, people must get what they deserve. But there is some debate over what being just entails; to be just is to be fair, but is being fair truly to give people what they deserve? In this essay, I will detail why justice requires that people are given what they deserve through the scope of punishment, reward, and need.
Of course I looked “justice” up in the dictionary before I started to write this paper and I didn’t find anything of interest except of course a common word in every definition, that being “fair”. This implies that justice would have something to do with being fair. I thought that if one of the things the law and legal system are about is maintaining and promoting justice and a sense of “fairness”, they might not be doing such a spiffy job. An eye for an eye is fair? No, that would be too easy, too black and white. I could cite several examples where I thought a judge’s or jury’s ruling was not fair, but I won’t because frankly, we’ve all seen those.
dawn of the formal justice system Some of the more moderen versions of restorative justice
Does absolute justice exist or not? This essay will present arguments for the existence of absolute justice.
Michael W. Morris& Kwok Leung, “Justice For All? Progress in Research On Cultural Variation in the Psychology of Distributive and Procedural Justice” Applied Psychology; An International Review, Vol. 49, 1999.