> Does any one know the difference between justice and fairness.

I was talking to my learned roommate Jason about this last night, and he presented me with another reasonable alternative.

Trying to define the difference between the two is meaningless. Fairness is a PART of justice. Think of it this way: No truly just system could be just without fairness being considered. It is possible to have fairness without having justice, but it is not possible to have justice without having fairness.

I realize that this comes down to a matter of definitions. My definition, then, would state that justice which is not applied equally (i.e. fairly) to every individual is NOT justice.

Sam's one example of justice without fairness was:

"If you live in a society where theft is applauded and condoned in the courts, and you go steal something, and by some anomaly of the legal system, you get punished for the theft, then, in response to YOUR theft, there is justice but not fairness."

I would now disagree. If some anomaly in the legal system allowed one individual to be punished where others were not, then this would not create justice. The punishment of the one individual would be a just act, but the failure of the system to punish others similarly would be unjust. As for Sam's other two examples, they both describe situations in which fairness can exist without justice, but this situation is consistent with my position.

Basically, my statement is that fairness can exist without justice, but justice cannot exist without fairness. TRUE justice is built on fairness. If I had to describe a difference between the two, I would say that justice is larger than fairness-- It encompasses fairness.

That's all for now, I guess.

Don "Should get Jason to start reading the Forum so he can respond to the inevitable counterpoints which are coming" Monkey