Principles of Justice

• The Principles of Justice consists of fairness, equality, and access.
• Fairness: focuses on the making of laws and legal procedures/processes that are fair.
• Equality: focuses on discrimination, impartiality, bias etc.
• Access: focuses on the accessibility of legal institutions and legal assistance.
• Fairness: Laws must be fair.
• Fairness: penalty is appropriate to seriousness of crime.
• Fairness: fair legal processes (all parties receive a fair hearing, are able to understand court processes, have an opportunity to present their case).
• Equality: All people should be treated equally before the law regardless of characteristics or attributes.
• Equality: laws should not be discriminatory.
• Equality: No group is treated advantageously or disadvantageously.
• Equality: people are provided an equal opportunity to present their case.
• Equality: unbiased jury members, with no links to the parties.
• Access: All parties should be able to understand their legal rights.
• Access: should have the right and opportunity to use the legal institutions, processes, and systems.
• Access: be able to seek compensation for harm suffered.
• Access: have the ability to be informed about cases.
• Access: Victim should have access to court proceeding information, such as the plea of the accused/defendant, the trial date etc.
• Promotes, protects and enforces human rights