Justice Definition Ethics Principle

The conceptual distinction between distributive and corrective justice seems clear, but their normative relationship is more difficult to determine (see Perry 2000, Ripstein 2004, Coleman 1992, chaps. 16-17). Some have argued that corrective justice is merely instrumental to distributive justice: its purpose is to move from a situation of distributive injustice caused by erroneous behavior to a more (if not perfectly) distributively just situation. However, there are a number of objections to this view. The first is that as long as Alice has a legitimate right to her computer, her demand for corrective justice against Bill does not depend on her having the share of resources that distributive justice ideally needs before the robbery. She may be richer than she deserves, but corrective justice still requires that the computer be returned to her. In other words, corrective justice can be used to promote conservative rather than ideal justice, to use the distinction introduced in point 2.1. Another objection is that corrective justice requires the wrongdoer himself to restore or compensate the person he wronged, even though the cause of distributive justice would be better served by transferring resources from a third party – giving Alice, for example, one of Charles` even more unworthy computers. This underscores the bilateral nature of corrective justice and the fact that it comes into play in response to a person`s erroneous behaviour. Its main claim is that people do not lose because others have behaved improperly or negligently, but it also includes the idea that “no one should profit from his own injustice.” If Alice loses her computer in a boating accident, she may be entitled to distributive justice for a new machine under an insurance plan, but she is not entitled to corrective justice. The Rawlsian view presented in the previous section, which argues that social justice principles apply to people working together in a cooperative practice, is a major example of a relational theory of justice. Other theories offer different versions of the relevant justice-generating characteristic: for example, Nagel argued that the principles of distributive justice apply to people who, by virtue of their citizenship of the same state, are obliged to both observe and take responsibility for the coercive laws that govern their lives (Nagel 2005).

In both cases, it is argued that persons who are in a certain relationship are subject to principles of justice, the scope of which is limited to those who are part of the relationship. In particular, comparative principles apply within the relationship, but not beyond. If A is in a (of the right kind) relationship with B, then it becomes a matter of justice how A is treated in relation to B, but it does not matter how A is treated in relation to C, which is outside the relationship. The judiciary can always demand that C receive some type of treatment, but it will be justice in its non-comparative form. Justice – in the context of medical ethics – is the principle that, when we assess whether something is ethical or not, we must ask ourselves whether it is compatible with the law, the rights of the patient, and whether it is fair and balanced. As mentioned above, justice, as mere equality of treatment, seems to succumb to the objection that it does not recognize the capacity of addressees to act, who may have acted in a way that seems to qualify them to receive more (or less) of what is distributed. To address this objection, several recent philosophers have presented alternative versions of “responsible-sensitive egalitarianism”—a family of theories of justice that treat equal distribution as a starting point, but allow deviations from this baseline if they result from the responsible decisions of individuals (see Knight and Stemplowska 2011 for examples). These theories differ in several dimensions: the “currency of justice” used to define the basis of equality, the conditions that must be met for an election to be considered responsible, and which should be among the consequences that result from an election when judging the justice of a result (this may seem unfair in particular, To allow people to suffer all the consequences of bad decisions that they could not reasonably have predict). The label often used to describe a subclass of these theories is “egalitarianism of happiness.” According to wealth egalitarians, justice requires that no one be disadvantaged over others because of “raw” bad luck, while inequalities arising from the exercise of personal responsibility are permitted (for a full discussion of happiness egalitarianism, see the entry on justice and bad luck).