Justice and its kinds
Jurisprudence · Unit II · Topic 9 of 24 · 4 min read
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Cases checked to exist. Read the judgment before quoting a holding.
Every case cited here has been checked to exist — the citation resolves and names the right parties. The propositions attributed to each case have not been verified line by line against the judgment. Case names link through to the full judgment: read it before quoting a holding in an examination answer, and never carry a proposition from notes into court on trust.
1. The meaning of justice
Justice has been defined in many ways, and the definitions reflect the theories of their authors.
- Plato: justice is each person doing the work for which he is fitted and not interfering with others; in the State, each class performing its own function.
- Aristotle: justice is a kind of equality: treating equals equally and unequals unequally in proportion to their inequality.
- Justinian (after Ulpian): “the constant and perpetual will to render to every man his due.”
- Salmond: justice is the end of law, and law is the instrument of justice. The administration of justice is the maintenance of right within a political community by means of the physical force of the State.
- Bentham and Mill: justice is what promotes the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
- John Rawls (A Theory of Justice, 1971): justice as fairness, the principles free and rational persons would choose behind a “veil of ignorance” about their own position in society. Two principles: (1) equal basic liberties for all; (2) social and economic inequalities are allowed only if they are attached to positions open to all under fair equality of opportunity and are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle).
- Amartya Sen (The Idea of Justice, 2009) distinguished niti (organisational propriety, rules and institutions) from nyaya (realised justice, how people’s lives actually go), drawing on early Indian jurisprudence.
2. Distributive and corrective justice
Aristotle’s division, still the first one examiners look for.
- Distributive justice concerns the allocation of benefits and burdens among members of the community: honours, wealth, offices, taxes. It follows proportionate (geometric) equality: each receives according to merit or need. Progressive taxation and reservations in public employment are modern instances. It is mainly the task of the legislature.
- Corrective (remedial) justice restores the balance when one person has wrongly taken from or harmed another. It follows arithmetical equality: the court takes from the wrongdoer what he gained and restores it to the victim, regardless of their merit. Damages in tort and restitution in contract are its instruments. It is mainly the task of courts.
3. Natural and legal justice
- Natural (moral) justice is justice as it ought to be, according to reason and conscience.
- Legal justice is justice as declared and enforced by law. It may fall short of natural justice because law must be general, certain and administered by fallible courts.
Salmond explains why legal justice is administered through fixed rules rather than the judge’s sense of natural justice in each case: rules give certainty and predictability, protect against the errors and partiality of judges, and carry the wisdom of experience. The cost is rigidity; equity and judicial discretion exist to soften it. The principles of natural justice in administrative law (the rule against bias and the right to be heard) are a narrower, procedural use of the phrase.
4. Substantive and procedural justice
- Substantive justice concerns the fairness of the result: whether the rights and duties the law confers are just.
- Procedural justice concerns the fairness of the process: notice, hearing, an impartial judge, reasons. A fair procedure is valued for itself and also because it makes a just outcome more likely. Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, 1978 INSC 16, (1978) 1 SCC 248, required that the procedure for depriving a person of liberty under Article 21 be fair, just and reasonable.
5. Social, economic and political justice
The Preamble to the Constitution promises all citizens justice, social, economic and political, and Article 38 directs the State to secure a social order in which such justice informs all institutions of national life.
- Social justice: removal of inequalities based on caste, sex, religion and birth. Articles 15(4), 16(4) and 17, and the protective legislation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
- Economic justice: fair distribution of wealth and the means of livelihood. Articles 39(b) and (c), minimum wages, land reform.
- Political justice: equal participation in government. Universal adult franchise (Article 326) and equal eligibility for office.
6. Other classifications
- Civil and criminal justice: the enforcement of rights by remedy, and the punishment of wrongs. Taken up in the next note.
- Private and public justice: in early societies a person redressed his own wrongs by self-help and private vengeance; public justice replaced it when the State took over the task. Salmond treats this as the origin of the administration of justice.
- Distributive justice in the modern welfare sense: Rawls’s difference principle and the Indian Directive Principles.
How this is examined
As a short note: “Kinds of justice” (February 2025, Q.2(b)). As an essay, combined with the next topic: “Explain the concept of justice and its relation to law.” Give three definitions, Aristotle’s two kinds with examples, natural and legal justice with Salmond’s reasons for fixed rules, and the Preamble’s three kinds with an Article for each.
Now try the real questions: Jurisprudence past question papers.