Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

Justice Delayed is Justice Denied

Introduction

Justice Delayed is a complex concept in both theory and practice whose precise meaning is subject to ongoing debate. Explicitly or implicitly, considerations of justice underlie most political discussions and debates. Equality, though a more straightforward concept, also has several meanings in current use. Considering these two concepts together opens many different lines of inquiry and discussion, more than can be included in a short reference piece. The discussion below will primarily emphasize distributive justice and its relation to economic (in) equality.

Procedural Justice Delayed concerns the process of determining and applying justice. Two common forms of procedural justice are justice as equal opportunity and justice as fair legal procedure. Justice as equal opportunity requires a fair race in which everyone starts in the same place, with the same set of advantages and disadvantages. Justice as fair legal procedure concerns the right to a fair trial, freedom from arbitrary arrest, adequate legal counsel, and access to information about rights, and rules of discovery and evidence. Procedural justice may be, and sometimes is, consistent with unjust outcomes. Even assuming equal opportunity, a fair race may result in radical inequality due to accident, talent, luck, and other factors. A procedurally just trial may convict the innocent or exonerate the guilty (Grusky, 2006).

Distributive justice is concerned with outcomes, with the distribution of rewards and resources in a society. The question of desert is often viewed as the central element in discussions of distributive justice: People should get what they deserve. But how do we determine what a person deserves? Some of the most commonly applied criteria include effort, talent, skill, educational attainment, and our common humanity. Like procedural justice, justice as desert allows for the possibility of radical inequality, as exemplified by professional athletes whose athletic talents entitle them (within the dominant contemporary framework of justice as desert) to exceptional material rewards and by CEOs who receive huge salaries while paying their employees minimum wages. A second approach to distributive justice emphasizes the priority of equality over other considerations. Some advocates of this approach argue that equality is inherently just because it accords with our equal moral status and equal human dignity. For example, most feminists argue that women deserve pay equal to men for equal or comparable work simply because they share the same moral status as men. Other proponents of equality value it for its positive individual and social benefits. A third, related approach applies the common humanity criterion and concludes that justice requires at least a minimal level of equality in the form of meeting basic human needs.

Several meanings of equality are commonly used today. Political equality means that each citizen has equal political power. This finds partial expression today in the principle of one-person-one-vote. Political equality also requires that the law applies equally to everyone, and everyone has equal political rights that include, for example, the right to assemble, the right to competent legal representation, and the right to free ...