Justice

Justice, at its most general, means treating people fairly. A foundational definition, widely considered the most plausible core statement, comes from the 6th-century Roman legal code known as the Institutes of Justinian: it describes justice as the constant and perpetual will to give each person what they are due.

Early Western ideas about justice were shaped by ancient Greek philosophers. Plato, in *The Republic*, and Aristotle, in his *Nicomachean Ethics* and *Politics*, both explored the concept. Saint Augustine, writing in the 4th and 5th centuries, argued that without justice, kingdoms are merely large-scale gangs of criminals. Around the same period, classical Confucian thought developed a very different theory. It treated justice as a personal and public virtue, but one that did not involve freedom or equality and was not connected to law. In this view, law existed to maintain order, not to achieve justice.

Modern Western notions of justice are deeply influenced by Christian theology, which often follows divine command theory. In this framework, God dictates morality, defining what is good, and this divine determination shapes what is just. Later Western thinkers proposed other foundations. In the 17th century, John Locke argued that justice comes from natural law. Jean-Jacques Rousseau championed social contract theory, where justice arises from a mutual agreement among people to live under a shared political system.

Contemporary frameworks include several distinct approaches. Distributive justice asks what is fair in terms of which goods are shared, among whom, and according to what principle. Utilitarian theories focus on the future consequences of punishment. Retributive justice looks backward at specific wrongful acts and seeks to match them with appropriate punishment. Restorative justice, also called reparative justice, centers on the needs of victims and society, aiming to repair the harm caused by wrongdoing.

For Plato, justice was about balance and harmony—the right relationship between conflicting parts within a person or a community. He defined it as everyone having and doing what they are responsible for or what belongs to them. A just person contributes to society according to their unique abilities and receives a proportionate return. This applies to individuals, organizations, and societies. Plato described a person as having three parts: reason, spirit, and desire. These parallel the three parts of a city. He used the metaphor of a chariot, where the charioteer (reason) must control the two horses (spirit and desire). He believed that philosophers, who love wisdom, are the best rulers because they alone understand the nature of the good. Just as one would trust a doctor over a farmer for health, a city should trust a philosopher over a politician for governance. Socrates illustrated this with the parable of a ship: an unjust city is like a ship at sea with a drunken captain (the common people), untrustworthy advisors (politicians) seeking power, and a navigator (the philosopher) who alone knows how to reach port. Socrates also said that a group cannot successfully commit injustice if its members are unjust to each other. Aristotle saw justice as nearly synonymous with virtue, but also as a specific form of virtue: giving people what they deserve.

Advocates of divine command theory hold that justice and all morality come from God’s authoritative command. Murder is wrong and must be punished because God says so. Some versions argue that God must be obeyed because of the nature of God’s relationship with humanity; others, because God is goodness itself, so following God’s command benefits everyone. Plato’s dialogue *Euthyphro* presents a dilemma: is what is morally good commanded by the gods because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded? If the latter, justice is beyond human understanding; if the former, morality exists independently of the gods and is open to human judgment. A common response, advanced by Immanuel Kant and C. S. Lewis, is that objective morality and God logically imply each other. Jewish, Christian, and Muslim theology traditionally hold that justice is a present, real, and right principle.