It must be remembered that we are free to acknowledge and surrender our feelings, and we are free not to surrender. Legislation can never foresee all the cases that will fall under a rule, and it must be too rigid to do justice on every occasion. In some branches of law judges rely on standards rather than strict rules and precedents, enjoying, in effect, wide discretion, or the law authorizes administrators to decide cases on their merits in the light of very general canons of policy, subject only to procedural safeguards of impartiality. However, if the law can be too rigid to do justice, does this not imply some extralegal canons of justice, by which perhaps the rules of law themselves might be assessed? Or again, what help is it to say, as we did earlier, that doing justice consist in making only relevant distinction if the criteria of relevance are themselves in dispute? A judge may enforce a racial segregation law with strict impartiality and yet commit injustice if the distinctions embodied in the law are not themselves relevant. Is not the person guilty of a high degree of injustice who is more apt to give contradiction then able to bear it? #RyanPhillippe 1 of 9

Justice teacheth us not to love punishment, but to fly it for necessity. Legal positivists are skeptical of nonlegal criteria of justice. To use the word “just” as a description of a rule or general order, rather than of a particular decision in accordance with the rule, is merely to express emotion, like “banging on the table.” Justice is simply what is advantageous to the stronger. The modern more sophisticated; what is considered just, depends on the conflicting economic interest in a society, and law reflects those of the dominant class. “Just” and “unjust” presuppose a coercive power capable of enforcing obligations and that no complaint of injustice could be made against the sovereign may act inequitably, that is, contrary to natural law, canons of legal criticism beyond positive law do exist; it is only that the subject is not entitled to use them. The idea of a law behind the law, the standard of justice to which a positive law must conform, is exemplified in immutable and unwritten laws of Haven. Even if one could suppose that God did not exist, one would still be bound by the law of nature, since it derived from the two human qualities of sociability and rationality. Our need of society dictates the minimum conditions for social harmony. Natural law thus came to be regarded as a Universal test of the justice of positive law. #RyanPhillippe 2 of 9

Classical natural law theory took too little account, no doubt, of the variety of legal institutions and moral standards and of their dependence on social and economic conditions. Modern natural-law theorists admit this. What are constant, they would say, are formal criteria of justice rather than the substantive rules. They insist, however, that a just law formalizes a pre-existing, objective, juridical relationship, that it does not create justice but recognizes and attaches sanctions to what already exists, and that it can be rationally established independently of positive law. A highly abstract generalized theory put forward. It is based on the principle that a person subjected to legal norms must be respected as an end in himself, and treated as a participant in the community. However, this is really to abandon the notion of a law behind the law and to offer, instead, formal or procedural criteria for rational criticism of positive law. Justice, in this sense, would be objective in that it would not be a matter of fiat but would be the subject of reasoned argument and justification. However, it is doubtful whether there would now be any point in talking about justice as if it were something pre-existent—there to be discovered, like a new galaxy. #RyanPhillippe 3 of 9

Justice and injustice do not exist in relation to beings who have not been able to make a compact with the object of avoiding mutual harm. A compact, however, seems to imply that the duty to act justly stems from the duty to keep a promise, and that, is no easier to establish. The strength of the conventionalist position is illustrated by the view of a just order as that body of principles that anyone might recognize as in one’s interest to maintain, given that others, on whose acquiescence he depends, have interest that conflict with one’s own. Although the rules might appear to discriminate against one on some given occasion, one would be able to see the point, nevertheless, of having those rules. Justice is conventional in the sense of being necessary to society. Though there were discrepancies in detail, human ideas on justice corresponded in essentials because they arose from needs common to all social situations. To rob Peter to pay Paul would be unjust, even though Paul gained more in happiness than Peter lost. One could always argue against a change in the rules that people would be treated differently from the ways others similarly placed had been treated theretofore. #RyanPhillippe 4 of 9

A practice is just if it answers most fully to wants and interest. Justice is not the outcome but is presupposed by such a calculation. Any interest not compatible with justice ought not to be counted because it permits one to give as a reason why slavery is unjust that the advantages to the slaveholder do not outweigh the disadvantages to the slave and to society at large. Justice, understands fairness, and will not admit to the calculation the advantages of the slaveholder as such because one’s role could not be mutually acknowledged as part of an acceptable practice by all parties involved. It would not be thought relevant for one person, engaged with another in a common practice and accused by him of injustice, to answer that nevertheless it allowed of the greatest satisfaction of desire. Adhering to rules gives greater general satisfaction than deciding every case on its happiness-producing merits does not meet the objection that a rule would still be unjust which deprived a tiny minority of the basic conditions for a decent life, even though it gave great satisfaction to everyone else. Strong minds perceive that justice is the highest of the moral attributes; mercy is only the favorite of the weak ones. #RyanPhillippe 5 of 9

If the World is unjust, or rash, in one man’s case, why may it not be so in another’s? The Benthamite saving clause—each to count for one and for no more than one—attempts to write the principle of impartiality into the foundations of the system but does not meet the objection. One has to make the further assumptions that the more desires one has satisfied, the less one values the satisfaction and that there is an interpersonal equivalence of satisfaction and that there is an interpersonal equivalence of satisfaction all the way up the scale. One might then argue that the cost in satisfaction to a sacrificed minority would be so great that whatever the additional satisfaction to the majority, it must be less. However, this is a quite arbitrary postulate, to avoid the conflict between the theory and our moral sentiments. Things people have done out of constriction, gear, guilt, or a sense of duty may be suddenly thrown overboard. It would be generally agreed that doing justice means treating equals equally and unequals according to their relevant inequalities. #RyanPhillippe 6 of 9

Disagreements arise over the criteria of relevance—that is, over the rule to be applied. Distribution (for example, of income, taxation, social service benefits, rations) may be organized on any of at least three principles of justice: arithmetical equality, merit (or desert), or need. Where no good ground can be shown for treating people differently, they clearly ought to be treated alike. New levels of consciousness change perception and new horizons open up. Many of the motives that drive people may suddenly become meaningless. Such things as money, fame, esteem, position, prestige, power, ambition, competitiveness, and the need for security diminish. They are replaced by the motivations of love, cooperation, fulfillment, freedom, creative expression, expansion of consciousness, understanding, and spiritual awareness. There tends to be more reliance on intuition and feelings than on thinking, reason and logic. This is a form of procedural presupposition of justice. The principle “one human, one vote” asserts that there are no differences between people that would justify a differential franchise. This is not the case with progressive taxation, where capacity to pay is taken as a ground for discrimination. #RyanPhillippe 7 of 9

Some social reformers have believed that distribution according to works should be replaced entirely by distribution according to need. Need criteria presuppose some standard condition that a person would fall short of were the need not satisfied and that falling shot of it would be a bad thing—a hardship. Special disabilities involve special needs, calling for special treatment if the standard is to be reached. Needs are therefore claims, grounded on a standard to which a person is entitled simply as a person, irrespective of merit or desert. (There are also functional needs, like the plumber’s need for tools, which would have to be justified in utilitarian terms.) The working of need criteria in general bears out the criticisms made earlier of utilitarian theories based on the satisfaction of desires. If it is prima facie (based on the first impression; accepted as correct until proved otherwise) unjust to give well-fed millionaires a publicly funded sports arena ($255 million in public funds), while the fire department, police department, and school districts are underfunded, it is not because that is not the way to maximize satisfaction. #RyanPhillippe 8 of 9

Justice has been treated here as a particular virtue. Some philosophers, however, have meant by it an all-embracing virtue, closer to righteousness than to fairness. Contact with the narrower sense is t some extent preserved, however, in that justice is thought of as apportioning to each particular virtue or excellence its proper sphere.  Every person does the job to which one is best fitted, under the direction of the wisest; the just individual is the one in whom the parts of the soul are harmoniously governed by reason. This conception may not be so far from our notion of a just human as one who possesses integrity, who lives according to consistent principles and is not to be diverted from them by consideration of gain, desire, or passion. However, justice in this sense has been the preoccupation of moralists rather than moral philosophers. Letting go has a peculiar advantage in that the surrendering of one negative feelings also relinquishes the energy behind many other negative feelings, so is a constant across-the-board effect. Nothing, to the noble heart, is so afflicting as the consciousness of having done injustice. #RyanPhillippe 9 of 9