In my mind justice is a very abstract concept. Although it seems like everyone knows the meaning of the word many people view justice differently. If you would ask people what they associate the word justice with, you would hear many opinions. To me it means fairness, accountability, equality, punishment, following the letter of the law, and these are the words that came to my mind on the spot, but the list sure doesn't end here. What may seem just to one person may be considered totally unjust to someone else; we are faced with this reality very often. It could be a minor issue, which affects only few individuals, such as debating if a grade your professor gave you on an exam is a fair evaluation of your knowledge of the material. On a greater level, it could be an issue such as capital punishment. Those who support death sentence say that some criminals should be punished by death for crimes that they commit. Those with th
John Rawls takes a more general approach to his discussion of justice stating that: "We cannot, in general, assess a conception of justice by its distributive role alone...". Among other things he states that based on the concept of original position, which is "the appropriate initial status quo which insures that the fundamental agreements reached in it are fair". Based on the concept of the original position, we see how certain things such as person's position in a society, their possessions, and any details about them that may some how influence justice are ignored. This is defined by Rawls as a "veil of ignorance", which basically means that justice is blind.
I can see some resemblance of both of the theories in our society, although we are far from reaching total equality. There is still inequality on all levels of our society. Our judicial system, which is the unit that upholds the law, unfortunately is not perfect and
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