• Law & Legal

Justice

A number of important questions surrounding justice have been fiercely debated over the course of western history:

What is justice?

What does it demand of individuals and societies?

What is the proper distribution of wealth and resources in society:

equal, meritocratic, according to status,

or some other arrangement?

There is a myriad of possible answers to these questions from divergent perspectives on the political and philosophical spectrum.

Some theorists, such as the classical Greeks, conceive of justice as a virtue—a property of people, and only derivatively of their actions and the institutions they create. Others emphasize actions or institutions, and only derivatively of the people who bring them about. The source of justice has variously been attributed to harmony, divine command, natural law, or human creation. It may be considered subordinate to a different ethical value.