Access to Justice

Concepts of Justice

As suggested at the outset, the concept of justice encompasses various social and political perspectives, some of which reflect competing notions of acceptable behavior and suitable punishments for practices that are viewed as immoral, unacceptable, and/or illegal. Moral judgments and public discussions about what is considered right or wrong may be informed by cultural, religious, spiritual, and political beliefs and can be enforced through various institutions, policies, and discourses (commonly agreed upon ways of speaking and representing ideas)—for example, church-sanctioned policies, state laws, neighborhood gossip, and gang codes of honor. Ideas of what constitutes just practices and how these are defined are dynamic; they are reflective of and also influence the geographical and historical contexts of which they are a part. Indeed, an issue of contention in debates about establishing systems of justice has been the issue of the “naturalness” of the concept and to what extent concepts of justice can be revised and enforced. For some, justice is seen as part of a natural order that is grounded in a relatively strict set of beliefs—which may be the case in certain religious and political traditions, for example—and as such it is sometimes viewed as a concept that is less open to negotiation. For others, justice is seen as being representative and adaptable to a combination of individual and collective goals that are guided by changing secular values and needs.

Although frequently represented otherwise, neither of the aforementioned understandings of justice is neutral in their construction and implementation: Religious tenets are interwoven with changing political and economic contexts even if these human-based activities are minimized in broader discussions of spirituality; and state-run legislative systems and judicial processes are often reflective of attitudes held by dominant social groups. In other words, regardless of the specific concept or system of enforcement, the cornerstones of justice are decision making (what form and application justice takes) and power (who is afforded the privilege of making decisions determining the goals and implementation of justice), both partial (to varying degrees) and often controversial, as the following examples below highlight.

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