INDISPENSIBILITY OF JUSTICE

Justice consists of a system of understandings and procedures through which each is accorded what is agreed upon as fair C.E.MERRIEM Justice is a very complex term, which can least be called an ideology because there exists no commonly accepted meaning to define and explain it. Giving to a common acceptance, justice can be explained in one of two ways. One is derived from the merit theory of justice which lays emphasis on the utilitarian ethics, in which a person is either awarded or punished based solely upon whether his act was beneficial or harmful for the society. The other is derived from the Need theory of justice according to which the advantaged and responsible members of a community should help those other members of the society who are In need of being redressed of their disadvantages. On combining the two theories the image that develops in ones mind related to justice is that it is an instrument of social and moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, religion, etc. It is an act of being fair to the fellow people and a sense of being unbiased towards any individual or group. Justice as we know it dates back to sixth century B.C. Athens with the genius of Solon. This genius provided peace and fairness to the people of Greece through his poetry. Then also Justice was considered to be a set of protocols to be followed with a punishment to those who failed to go by the procedure. Therein came the concept of Procedural Justice which was concerned more with the process of reaching the desired ends rather than focusing on the end itself. Procedural Justice refers to the application of the perfect methods of law to ensure that the seekers of the justice are properly being provided justice. It is a concept which was never given much of an importance as it was only concerned about the cumbersome documentation, evidence and presentation work rather than the actual issue at hand. Thibaut and Walkers (1975) control model of

procedural justice has had a dominant influence on procedural justice work. Their approach links peoples concern with procedures to their desire to influence their outcomes, and thus defines procedural fairness as the level of input or participation that procedures allow (often referred to as voice). Another more important form of justice comes in the form of one of the most influential political philosopher, John Rawls theory of Distributive Justice which is based on the social contract theory. According to this concept, society is marked by both conflicts between differing individual interests and an identity of shared interest. Thus this type of justice calls in for the appropriate distribution of benefits and burdens of social co-operation and demands from an individual concerned to further their own interest to accept the principles of justice in an initial position of equality as the fundamental terms of their association. According to Rawls, these principles are a result of fair agreement wherein the concerned party is totally unaware of the position he is going to land in after the agreement and this would be called as the veil of ignorance. According to Rawls at first justice is to be distributed equally unless a certain inequality works to everyones advantage. Once a certain level of material well-being is achieved, the focus switches to our basic liberties- political liberties, freedom of speech, assembly, conscience, thought, etc. This approach by Rawls is a libertarian approach wherein he gives importance to liberty over the distribution of social and economic inequalities and is widely criticized by the Marxist philosophers as this concept seems to define justice out of the conflict arising between individuals who are disinterested in each others welfare. Apart from Rawls, another philosopher who makes a significant contribution to the discourse of distributive justice although as a criticism is Robert Nozick who argues in terms of distribution of property which he claims to be a Self-owned resource. Nozick argues that whether a distribution is just or not, entirely depends upon how it came about that is the pattern that it followed to reach an individual. According to him if an individual voluntarily agrees to a specific pattern of distribution, then that distribution is considered to be just. Nozicks Entitlement Theory is quite appealing due to the notion that certain things are wrong and must be rectified. To the libertarian, people are moral agents in the fullest sense of the word. They

are both the subjects of and subject to justice, that is, they are both protected by and bounded by the constraints that justice imposes and they have both rights and responsibilities. On a Global front, Justice has been categorized into two segments. One is the ideology of the Nationalists who believe that an individual is first the citizen of a country and has to have a stronger obligation towards the members of his Nation than to non-members; the other segment is that of the Cosmopolitans, who believe that all individual human beings have moral worth and that national boundaries do not importantly diminish the strength of our moral obligation towards others. John Rawls through his The Law of Peoples tries to uplift the cosmopolitan segment of justice wherein justice is not bound to any naturally or artificially existing barriers and as per the libertarian concept, every individual is entitled to justice from all the available sources provided that he is treated equally or with a considerable level of inequality (difference principle) if it is in best interest of the society. This lays foundation for a globally driven system of provisional justice which works devoid of any territorial limit and applies to the entire humanity as a whole. This system of Global justice works on certain natural and birth rights of an individual which exist independently of social, political or economic differences among individuals such as the right to live, right to education, right to employment, etc. Even after this indifference towards boundaries, there have been instances of conflict throughout the world and one such area of conflict is that of Capital Punishment. Capital punishment refers to the penalty of death given to any criminal for committing highest of the crimes by various methods like hanging, use of deadly chemicals, electrocution, etc. It is still in continuance in many Middle Eastern countries and crime rates in these countries are minimal but capital punishment is still seen as an act of cruelty. Countries that do not follow these policies have exuberant crime rates but they prefer it over punishing a criminal and treating him with severe coercion for his misdeeds. Justice is a concept which is still in its budding state unlike other pillars of democracy. It is still unclear as to what should be ones approach towards

providing justice to an individual and in the process not harming his or the societys interests. Procedural justice is nowadays gaining some of the required significance and attention as it involves satisfaction of an individual who is least concerned about the judgment and more concerned about the efforts that he puts into attain judgment.