Justice

• Justice is difficult to define because it changed through time and is subjective.
• There are four types of justice:

  1. Formal justice
  2. Substantive justice
  3. Distributive justice
  4. Corrective justice
• Formal justice is how legal institutions ensure justice through the treatment of individuals and the procedures in place.
• Substantive justice refers to actual legal rules that try to achieve fairness.
• Distributive justice is how the law ensures the fair allocation of resources among diverse members of society.
• Corrective justice is how the law deals with the wrong doing.
• Aristotle discussed distributive justice and corrective justice. He believes that fair shares doesn't necessarily mean equal shares. And that things wrong should be correct to it's original position.
• Utilitarianism was developed by Jeremy Bentham and the aim is to maximise happiness by increase pleasure and minimising pain.
• Utilitarianism has been influential in legal reform as it is based on democratic principles and in democratic societies, people follow laws made by Parliament.
• John Rawls said that justice could be defined as a hypothetical society where each individual would distribute resources in a disinterested manner.
• Rawls said human rights like free speech should be protected and social inequalities may exist but only if they benefit the least advantaged members of society.
• The formal process of justice can struggle to achieve justice as it is seen by Rawls. This can be considered from the aspect of legal aid availability.
• By having good legal aid, everyone can have a right to access justice and receiving a fair hearing and understanding of their rights.
• If a person cannot access legal representation, then their article 6 ECHR rights are being denied.

  In Rawls' society, legal aid is a must regardless of class.

  In Aristotle's society he would feel like there was no reason to allocate resources based on need.