Justice

Last week, I participated in a discussion on the topic of justice. My professor had the class do an exercise in which we had to create three principles of justice. Not quite understanding what he was asking for, some of the students asked him to clarify. He was attempting to focus the discussion around a particular authors’ work but did not want to give it away so he gave us the following explanation:

“Do you remember the game Jeopardy? class answers yes. You know how they give you a statement and you have to answer with a question so the clue will lead you to a certain conclusion right? class answers yes again. Okay well, you’re trying to create three statements to create a clue for which the Jeopardy answer would be ‘What is Justice?’ So it is not a definition of justice but a leading principle to Justice.”

I thought that this was a pretty decent description of the exercise. My professor has this way of being able to explain concepts in a contemporary way; it is nice to have a faculty member who knows how to relate to his students. Anyway, so the class broke up into groups of three and four and proceeded to complete the exercise.

The instructions for the exercise stated that we didn’t know which society our principles would pertain to, we had no idea what sort of value system, religious system, or ethics system that we had to work with. So essentially, a “veil of ignorance” was placed on us. So if you’re well versed with literature and justice theories, you probably already know the person that our lecture was based on. Yes, the lecture was supposed to be centered upon John Rawls’ Theory of Justice.

My group came up with the following principles:

1) All individuals are granted, by birth, the right to life.
So essentially, the greatest common denominator of all people is that they must be born and they must die. However, from the moment that they become a part of any society, they are subject to certain laws or restraints.

2) Rights may be revoked if one infringes upon anyone’s right to life.
All people should be granted their right to life unless they do something that hinders the life of another or perhaps their own. Each society may apply this differently however almost every culture has certain punishments for actions, which threaten the life of another. At the most primitive level, many societies had certain practices in place to bring justice to those who murdered or injured another person. Some societies use retribution methods, “an eye for an eye,” others have more developed laws to punish these actions. Even laws against theft would fall under this category because in a way, theft involves taking the resources that someone uses to live so that threatens his life.

3) Inequalities of Power, whether economic or political, are permissible as long as those with power must represent their constituents’ or subordinate’s right to life.

Admittedly we had a bit of help with this one. My professor asked us to think about “unfair” situations and when they would be allowed, a principle to govern exceptions. We decided that an inequality of power would be allowable if the people with greater power still represented the interests of the people with lesser power. Indeed there will always be those with more and those with less but what justifies the difference?

After our professor went around the room to see what each of the groups came up with, he revealed the theories that Rawls designed. The principles Rawls created were very similar to the ones that my group along with several others had defined.

First Principle: Liberty
Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties.

Now the first principle we defined differently because not everyone will have the same idea of equal. For a while, America was created upon principles that all men were created equal but the idea of who were men was different. We insist that all those who are born must be equal in the way that they have been given a chance to live. Whether they survive or what they do with their lives may be different from person to person but the fact that they are born should grant them the initial right to the same liberties as any other person. We assume that this applies only to people.

Second Principle: Wealth
I’m not quite sure why our professor had us come up with three principles because Rawls basically defines most of his ideas under two but our second was put in place to explain why not all people are given permanent rights. These rights may unfortunately be revoked at any time after birth, for some sooner, for some later, and for some not at all.

Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both:

(a) to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged

This is the part of his theory that Rawls usually gets criticized most for. Not everyone agrees that inequalities are permissible. But fundamentally, inequalities must always exist. This part of Rawl’s theory suggests that it is justifiable for some people to have more than others as long as the fact that they have more is universally improving the well being of those who have less. But here’s the catch, so what if one person who has a great amount of wealth is not doing anything that is visibly contributing to society? Does the fact that they are participating in the economy in some way improving society as a whole? What if these people aren’t intentionally improving society and their actions just create consequences that inadvertently improve society? Should they still be allowed wealth?

(b) attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

Now, what defines fair equality of opportunity? If we discriminate against those who are less intelligent, is that fair? What sort of criteria should be used to filter out those who are unsuitable to wield wealth?

Onna Bugeisha

Okay, so I'm not trained in martial arts. I can't wield a sword. I'm not Japanese. But I am a warrior. An "onna bugeisha" is a woman from the "buke" class of Japan, the same class which samurai come from. I am a woman. I am passionate, driven, and I refuse to let life get the best of me. I do what I can to change the world, to make an impact. Sometimes its good, sometimes its bad, but hopefully in the end I can leave it better than I found it. I try to live with honor. I'm not particularly religious but I have strong beliefs. I try to live every day with passion, purpose, and reason but alas...sometimes I can only be a survivor, a reactor. I can try to initiate change but sometimes you can just react to the changes around you. Play the cards your dealt. Cliches are terrible but so often true. Here are my writings. Some will be entertaining, some will be boring, some will be about life, some will be personal, and some may be absolutely whimsical but I hope you enjoy them.