Justice is a central concept in moral, legal and political philosophy concerning what people are owed, how competing claims should be treated and what makes institutions, laws, actions or distributions fair or rightful. The concept can apply to individual conduct, legal systems, social institutions and political structures. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy identifies several major contrasts within theories of justice, including corrective and distributive justice, procedural and substantive justice, comparative and non comparative justice, and conservative and ideal justice.
This diversity means that justice does not have one universally accepted substantive formula. A useful traditional formulation derives from Roman law and expresses justice as giving each person what is due, but determining what is due requires a theory of rights, needs, desert, equality, liberty, welfare or entitlement.
Distributive justice concerns the allocation of benefits and burdens among members of a society. Relevant goods can include income, wealth, education, healthcare, political opportunities, social status and access to essential resources, while burdens can include taxation, compulsory service, environmental costs and legal obligations. Different theories disagree about the appropriate basis of distribution.
Egalitarian theories emphasise equality in some dimension, prioritarian approaches give greater weight to improvements for people who are worse off, utilitarian approaches assess aggregate welfare, and libertarian theories can emphasise rights and legitimate acquisition rather than an intended distribution. The disagreement is therefore not merely about how much inequality exists but about which principles determine whether a distribution is justified.
Corrective justice concerns responses to wrongs and attempts to repair wrongful losses or injuries. It appears in private law through concepts such as compensation and restitution and can also inform broader theories of responsibility. Retributive justice concerns the justification and proportionality of punishment for wrongdoing, while restorative approaches focus more strongly on repairing relationships, acknowledging harm and restoring victims and communities. Procedural justice concerns whether decision making processes are fair, including impartiality, consistency, participation and appropriate hearing of affected parties. These dimensions can overlap but should not be treated as interchangeable. A society might have fair procedures while producing contested outcomes, or it might pursue desirable outcomes through procedures that themselves violate principles of fairness.
John Rawls's work transformed modern debates about Justice by making the structure of social institutions a central object of political philosophy. His theory of justice as fairness uses the original position and veil of ignorance as a device for considering principles without allowing people to choose rules based on knowledge of their particular social position. Rawls argues for principles concerning basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity and the distribution of social and economic inequalities. Robert Nozick developed a contrasting entitlement theory that focuses on legitimate acquisition, transfer and rectification rather than an imposed end state. These disagreements illustrate the depth of contemporary debate about whether justice should focus on outcomes, procedures, historical processes or individual rights.
Justice also has a long history before modern political philosophy. Plato treated justice as a central question concerning the proper organisation of the individual and political community, while Aristotle distinguished different forms of justice including distributive and corrective dimensions. Roman jurists connected justice with law and entitlement, and medieval thinkers incorporated justice into natural law traditions. Early modern philosophers developed theories connected with contract, rights and political authority. Contemporary theories then expanded the debate through egalitarianism, libertarianism, Marxist approaches, feminist theories, communitarianism, capability approaches and theories of global justice. This history demonstrates that the meaning of Justice has repeatedly changed as philosophers confronted different institutional and social problems.
Justice is not identical to equality. Equality can mean equal shares, equal rights, equal opportunities or equal political status, while justice may sometimes permit unequal outcomes if those inequalities are justified by other principles. Rawls, for example, permits social and economic inequalities under specified conditions rather than requiring complete material equality. Justice is also not identical to fairness, although fairness is an important component of many theories. Nor is justice identical to legality because laws themselves can be judged unjust. This distinction explains why political philosophy can ask whether an existing legal system is just rather than simply whether it is internally consistent or legally valid.
The scope of Justice extends beyond domestic distribution. Theories of global justice ask whether principles of justice apply across national borders and whether wealthy societies have duties concerning global poverty, migration, trade, climate change and international institutions. Other debates ask whether justice applies to future generations, non human animals or groups with distinctive cultural or historical claims. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that theories differ about the subjects and scope of justice, demonstrating that determining who belongs within the relevant moral community is itself a question of justice.
A common misconception is that Justice simply means treating everyone identically. Justice can require equal treatment in some circumstances and differentiated treatment in others when relevant differences or historical injustices matter. Another misconception is that one philosophical theory has settled the meaning of justice. Contemporary scholarship contains substantial disagreement among utilitarian, egalitarian, libertarian, Marxist, communitarian, feminist and other approaches. Justice is therefore best understood as a family of related normative questions concerning what people are entitled to, how institutions should distribute rights and resources, how wrongs should be addressed and what principles can justify coercive social arrangements.
