5.2 Value profile: justice

Value profile: justice

The root or core meaning of justice is giving to each what is due.

Suppose you are moving and are trying to decide how to pay the three workers who are helping you. Giving each his and her due might simply consist of paying all three the same amount. This version of what is due is egalitarian. Or you might give a bit more to the worker whose oldest child is sick and needs expensive medical treatments. This version of giving each what is due is more necessitarian, that is, distributing on the basis of need. Or you could wait until the move has already occurred and give the most to the worker who did the most; this could be termed a merit-based approach to what is due. This example is presented in different sources. One is Beauchamp and Bowie (1988). Ethical Theory and Business, 3rd Edition . Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p. 552.

Justice, then, in its core sense implies a distribution of something that accords with our common ideas of fairness, equality, merit, and impartiality.

Moving from this core meaning, justice classically divides into different senses. These are different senses distinguished by Manuel Velasquez (2006), Business Ethics: Concepts and Cases, 6 th ed . Upper Saddle River: NJ: Prentice-Hall, p. 88.

1. Distributive Justice examines how to divide and allot fairly the benefits and harms that result from social cooperation.
2. Retributive Justice concerns itself with the fair and impartial administration of punishment to wrongdoers.
3. Compensatory Justice scrutinizes how we fairly compensate those who have been wrongfully harmed by others.
4. Administrative Justice looks at how rules are fairly and impartially administered in a social, political, or organizational context.

Justice, hobbes, and the social contract

Many have worked to derive a conception of justice a version of the social contract. The exercises in this module have you look at justice as resulting from procedures derived from Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and John Rawls (1921-2002). (Hobbes selections come from Steven Cahn (editor), Classics of Western Philosophy, 2nd Edition. Indianaplis, IN: Hackett Press (1985): 361 and 368. Those on Rawls come from Theory of Justice or Ethical Theory and Business (edited by T Beauchamp and N Bowie, Upper Saddle, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1988, pp. 559-567.