Justice

Civil Justice

A central assumption of the U.S. Constitution is the promotion and protection of a just society. Justice here refers to the assumptions, norms, and laws that permit liberty and equality to thrive, even under the stress of a diverse society with competing needs. Indeed, U.S. society seeks to protect both individuals and institutions against unfair domination, be it intellectual, racial, cultural, economic, or political, and it is the task of justice to do so. To that end, civil justice is the system by which a society distributes its resources while maintaining the fundamental ideals on which the country is founded. This is easier to define than to execute, given the tension between individual liberty and collective equality, particularly [Page 513]when it is acknowledged that liberty includes liberty to acquire and that equality as humans does not mean equal quality of life, at least not in a capitalist society such as in the United States.

Philosophers and political theorists have asserted the centrality of just institutions since Plato (in the European tradition). However, the notion that civil justice denotes the extent to which social institutions attack or promote individual well-being is relatively recent, most notably articulated by Rawls in his books Theory of Justice and Justice as Fairness. Rawls insists that justice is what is demanded by any reasonable person in the so-called original position—that is, without knowledge of individual attributes and advantage. According to this theory, justice supports the least intrusive demands on any individual and would never support the abdication of individual rights for the collective good. Consequently, the distribution of wealth and other entitlements must be such that no individual is abandoned by society for expediency and that no individual is obliged to conform to moral or other values save those that prohibit harm to others (the realm of criminal justice).

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