Justice

In general, justice refers to what is owed or due to the individual members of society. The content given to the concept of justice, i.e. what one determines as actually being owed or due to another, will vary according to certain philosophical and methodological presuppositions from which one approaches the issue. For example, utilitarian conceptions of justice, Rawls’s theory of "justice as fairness," communitarian conceptions of justice, and Catholic teaching on social justice are all competing notions that depend on different views concerning the relationship between individuals and society, how society ought to be structured and what constitutes the appropriate goals of a just society, e.g., scientific and cultural advancement, equal distribution of resources, equality of welfare, etc.

When considering the concept of justice, it is important to distinguish between four different types of justice: (1) commutative justice, which refers to that which is owed between individuals, e.g., in conducting business transactions; (2) contributive justice, which refers to what individuals owe to society for the common good; (3) legal justice, which refers to rights and responsibilities of citizens to obey and respect the rights of all and the laws devised to protect peace and social order; and (4) distributive justice, which refers to what society owes to its individual members, i.e., the just allocation of resources.

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