Justice

==Theories of distributive justice==
{{Main|Distributive justice}}
[[File:VD-04-3.jpg|thumb|''Lex, justitia, pax'' ([[Latin]] for "Law, justice, peace") on the pediment of the [[Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland|Supreme Court of Switzerland]]]]Theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:
# ''What goods'' are to be distributed? Is it to be [[wealth]], [[Political power|power]], [[respect]], opportunities or some combination of these things?
# ''Between what entities'' are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), [[Sentience|sentient]] beings, the members of a single society, [[nation]]s?
# What is the ''proper'' distribution? Equal, [[Meritocracy|meritocratic]], according to [[social status]], according to [[need]], based on property rights and non-aggression?

Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of ''who has the right'' to enforce a particular favored distribution, while property rights theorists say that there is no "favored distribution". Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from lawful interactions or transactions (that is, transactions which are not illicit).

===Social justice===
{{Main|Social justice}}

Social justice encompasses the just relationship between individuals and their society, often considering how privileges, opportunities, and wealth ought to be distributed among individuals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=social justice {{!}} Definition of social justice in English by Oxford Dictionaries |url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/social_justice |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170114180223/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/social_justice |archive-date=14 January 2017 |access-date=2018-11-13 |website=Oxford Dictionaries {{!}} English}}</ref> Social justice is also associated with [[social mobility]], especially the ease with which individuals and families may move between [[Social stratification|social strata]].<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ornstein |first=Allan C. |date=2017-12-01 |title=Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning |journal=Society |language=en |volume=54 |issue=6 |pages=541–548 |doi=10.1007/s12115-017-0188-8 |issn=1936-4725 |doi-access=free}}</ref> Social justice is distinct from [[cosmopolitanism]], which is the idea that all people belong to a single global community with a shared morality.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Kleingeld |first1=Pauline |title=Cosmopolitanism |date=2014 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/cosmopolitanism/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Fall 2014 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=2018-12-14 |last2=Brown |first2=Eric}}</ref> Social justice is also distinct from [[egalitarianism]], which is the idea that all people are equal in terms of status, value, or rights, as social justice theories do not all require equality.<ref>{{Cite web |title=egalitarianism {{!}} Definition of egalitarianism in English by Oxford Dictionaries |url=https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/egalitarianism |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181113125343/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/egalitarianism |archive-date=13 November 2018 |access-date=2018-11-13 |website=Oxford Dictionaries {{!}} English}}</ref> For example, sociologist [[George C. Homans]] suggested that the root of the concept of justice is that each person should receive rewards that are proportional to their contributions.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Rubinstein |first=David |date=1988 |title=The Concept of Justice in Sociology |journal=Theory and Society |volume=17 |issue=4 |pages=527–550 |doi=10.1007/BF00158887 |jstor=657654 |s2cid=143622666}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last=Homans |first=George Caspar |url=https://archive.org/details/socialbehaviorit0000homa_e3x9/page/246 |title=Social behavior; its elementary forms. |publisher=Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich |year=1974 |isbn=978-0-15-581417-2 |edition=Rev. |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/socialbehaviorit0000homa_e3x9/page/246 246–249] |oclc=2668194}}</ref>

Economist [[Friedrich Hayek]] said that the concept of social justice was meaningless, saying that justice is a result of individual behavior and unpredictable market forces.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Hayek |first=F.A. |title=Law, legislation and liberty : a new statement of the liberal principles of justice and political economy |date=1976 |publisher=Routledge & Kegan Paul |isbn=978-0-7100-8403-3 |pages=78 |oclc=769281087}}</ref> Social justice is closely related to the concept of relational justice, which is about the just relationship with individuals who possess features in common such as nationality, or who are engaged in cooperation or negotiation.<ref>{{Citation |last1=Poblet |first1=Marta |title=Concepts and Fields of Relational Justice |date=2008 |url=http://ddd.uab.cat/record/143902 |work=Computable Models of the Law |pages=323–339 |series=Lecture Notes in Computer Science |publisher=Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg |language=en |doi=10.1007/978-3-540-85569-9_21 |isbn=978-3-540-85568-2 |last2=Casanovas |first2=Pompeu|volume=4884 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Nagel |first=Thomas |date=2005 |title=The Problem of Global Justice |journal=Philosophy & Public Affairs |language=en |volume=33 |issue=2 |pages=113–147 |doi=10.1111/j.1088-4963.2005.00027.x |issn=1088-4963 |s2cid=144307058}}</ref>

===Fairness===
{{More citations needed|date=February 2018}}
[[File:Justice statue.jpg|thumb|J. L. Urban, statue of [[Lady Justice]] at court building in [[Olomouc]], [[Czech Republic]]]]

In his ''[[A Theory of Justice]]'', [[John Rawls]] used a [[social contract]] argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls asks us to imagine ourselves behind a [[veil of ignorance]] that denies us all knowledge of our personalities, social statuses, moral characters, wealth, talents and life plans, and then asks what theory of justice we would choose to govern our society when the veil is lifted, if we wanted to do the best that we could for ourselves. We do not know who in particular we are, and therefore can not bias the decision in our own favor. So, the decision-in-ignorance models fairness, because it excludes selfish [[bias]]. Rawls said that each of us would reject the [[utilitarianism|utilitarian]] theory of justice that we should maximize welfare (see below) because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's ''two principles of justice'':
* Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
* Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both
** to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and
** attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.<ref>John Rawls, ''A Theory of Justice'' (revised edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 266.</ref>

This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods&nbsp;– (1) [[Freedom (political)|the good of liberty rights]] and (2) social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income and power&nbsp;– and applies different distributions to them&nbsp;– equality between citizens for (1), equality unless inequality improves the position of the worst off for (2).

In one sense, theories of distributive justice may assert that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories vary on the meaning of what is "deserved". The main distinction is between theories that say the basis of just deserts ought to be held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice&nbsp;– and theories that say the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others.

According to ''[[Meritocracy|meritocratic]]'' theories, goods, especially wealth and [[social status]], should be distributed to match individual ''merit'', which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to ''[[need]]s''-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals' [[basic needs]] for them. [[Marxism]] is a needs-based theory, expressed succinctly in [[Karl Marx|Marx's]] slogan "[[from each according to his ability, to each according to his need]]".<ref>Karl Marx, 'Critique of the Gotha Program' in ''Karl Marx: Selected writings'' ed. David McLellan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977): 564–70 [569].</ref> According to ''contribution''-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.

===Property rights===
{{further|Libertarianism|Entitlement theory|Constitutional economics}}
{{Unreferenced section|date=February 2018}}

In ''[[Anarchy, State, and Utopia]]'', [[Robert Nozick]] said that distributive justice is not a matter of the whole distribution matching an ideal ''pattern'', but of each [[Entitlement theory|individual entitlement]] having the right kind of ''history''. It is just that a person has some good (especially, some [[Property rights|property right]]) if and only if they came to have it by a history made up entirely of events of two kinds:
* Just ''acquisition'', especially by working on unowned things; and
* Just ''transfer'', that is free gift, sale or other agreement, but not [[theft]] (i.e. by force or fraud).

If the chain of events leading up to the person having something meets this criterion, they are entitled to it: that they possess it is just, and what anyone else does or does not have or need is irrelevant.

On the basis of this theory of distributive justice, Nozick said that all attempts to redistribute goods according to an ideal pattern, without the consent of their owners, are theft. In particular, [[redistribution (economics)|redistributive taxation]] is theft.

Some property rights theorists (such as Nozick) also take a consequentialist view of distributive justice and say that property rights based justice also has the effect of maximizing the overall wealth of an economic system. They explain that voluntary (non-coerced) transactions always have a property called [[Pareto efficiency]]. The result is that the world is better off in an absolute sense and no one is worse off. They say that respecting property rights maximizes the number of Pareto efficient transactions in the world and minimized the number of non-Pareto efficient transactions in the world (i.e. transactions where someone is made worse off). The result is that the world will have generated the greatest total benefit from the limited, scarce resources available in the world. Further, this will have been accomplished without taking anything away from anyone unlawfully.

===Welfare-maximization===
{{Main|Utilitarianism}}

According to the utilitarian, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals.<ref>{{Cite web |title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of on Liberty, by John Stuart Mill. |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/34901/34901-h/34901-h.htm |access-date=2019-05-03 |work=gutenberg.org}}</ref> This may require sacrifice of some for the good of others, so long as everyone's good is taken impartially into account. Utilitarianism, in general, says that the standard of justification for actions, institutions, or the whole world, is ''impartial welfare consequentialism'', and only indirectly, if at all, to do with [[Human rights|rights]], [[property]], [[need]], or any other non-utilitarian criterion. These other criteria might be indirectly important, to the extent that human welfare involves them. But even then, such demands as human rights would only be elements in the calculation of overall welfare, not uncrossable barriers to action.