CHAPTER V

JUSTICE

1. Justice is especially difficult to define. The Just cannot be identified with the Legal, as laws may be unjust. Again, the Justice of laws does not consist merely in the absence of arbitrary inequality in framing or administering them. 264-268

2. One element of Justice seems to consist in the fulfilment of (1) contracts and definite understandings, and (2) expectations arising naturally out of the established order of Society; but the duty of fulfilling these latter is somewhat indefinite: 268-271

3. and this social order may itself, from another point of view, be condemned as unjust; that is, as tried by the standard of Ideal Justice. What then is this Standard? We seem to find various degrees and forms of it. 271-274

4. One view of Ideal Law states Freedom as its absolute End: but the attempt to construct a system of law on this principle involves us in insuperable difficulties. 274-278

5. Nor does the realisation of Freedom satisfy our common conception of Ideal Justice. The principle of this is rather ‘that Desert should be requited.’ 278-283

6. But the application of this principle is again very perplexing: whether we try to determine Good Desert (or the worth of services), 283-290

7. or Ill Desert, in order to realise Criminal Justice. There remains too the difficulty of reconciling Conservative and Ideal Justice. 290-294