CW: This article discusses topics of mental illness, murder and suicide which could be distressing to some readers.
Controversial, is it not?! There are three main definitions of what justice means in the Oxford dictionary.
Have a read of them:
[1] The unfair treatment of people, [2] The quality of being fair or reasonable, [3] The legal system used to punish people who have committed crimes.
So, justice means treating people and situations fairly, coldhearted, and reasonably. Do we always behave like this?
The Concept of Justice
We always have found justice as a way of putting everything in the place someone or something belongs... Have you ever heard the phrase: "Give to Caesar, what is Caesar's...!", well Jesus said this famous quote mentioned in the Bible, Mathew 22:15. This phrase has a new meaning nowadays that is interpreted as giving someone what is his/hers, and that particular person deserves to have.
I used to want to study Law, but I ended up studying Literature, where I saw more justice than reading the constitution of the country I am from. Found up that studying law is a new season of the TV series "How to get away with murder!". However, I studied one semester of Law for Business, incredible...!
Justice does not exist! How come, you might wonder. Here is why: Justice is there after the injustice has occurred, therefore, justice should prevent injustice to happen. Let me illustrate with a very simple example... During the years of works of literature or art generally, painters, writers, and even sculptors got what they deserved while they were alive?! How about the wrongfulness of impersonating the wrong person, who did not even commit the crime, and being released after 30+ years, such as Archie Williams?! These are loopholes of justice, which will always contradict the ideal of justice.
Fairness and Goodness
A fair line separates fairness (justice) from goodness, and is the impact of fairness upon goodness. Being good has led people to believe that they are fair as well, but it does not go like that. Justice brings up a lot of sensitive topics along with it. The latest problem brought up was the ban on abortion in the USA. Did they do justice or did they not? One side of the poll would say yes, and the other would say no, but why is the part we all want to understand.
Many women and men wanted abortion to be legal. Did the law do them an injustice by denying their right of having an abortion? In my opinion, yes. Law and justice did not function the way they should have. However, other people got what they wanted, and justice functioned for them. So, let me ask the question again: "Does justice exist?".
Also, justice and freedom are two parallels that will always be in front of each other but will never meet. Our freedom stops when another person's freedom is being violated, meaning that we are not free, therefore, there has to be a system that keeps us under control for the safety of the public.
Justice 'unjust'
Here is a brave statement: Everyone can kill! However, there are consequences if someone commits a criminal act such as killing. But...there are exceptions, there is self-defence murder. Hence, justice sometimes is left to us to take into our hands to deal with. Who will serve justice to the person who was killed in that self-defence, who will serve the mother who lost her child? We will still say, if the person did not attack in the first place, would have not been killed.
So we are coming to the terms that a person deserves to be killed on the grounds of self-defense, or the killer committed a crime which should take the deserved punishment?
Status: In a complicated relationship!
Justice is extremely complicated, since ancient times. Plato, a Greek philosopher wrote the book where he 'examined' what justice is and the relationships between the citizen and the city The Republic.
I daresay that this book has the same purpose as religious books, to improve and to impact people's lives to do better. Plato's purpose was to prove that justice was just and a good thing for that time's society. But as he mentioned in his book, there is no such thing as only one justice. Self-justice, which was the self-defense case, and political justice, the one where the government can provide justice.
That is a reason behind Lady Justice being blindfolded. No matter who is the claimant or the defendant, they both should be 'scaled' equally in the scale of justice. Ideally, that is the ideal moral, practicality is where something is being done wrong.
In the end, justice has a wide notion as every other topic that dates BC era. However, we consider justice as part of our morals and use it whenever an injustice has occurred. This article is a controversial point of view on undogmatic ideas that were given to us without challenging them first.