Justice as Fairness: an Intellectual Faux Pas: 'Fairness' is Equalizing, 'Justice' is Disempowering

When we are wronged, we seek justice to remedy the wrong and we go after this justice through 'State Apparatuses'. By State Apparatuses I would include the Courts, Legislature, Military, Municipal Authorities, other Government Services, Police, Prison, Probation, and other Government installed or legislated services. During the process of pursuing justice, the word fair or fairness crops in. Someone would say "I expect the process to be fair" or another would say "the process will be fair". From either expression we are made to believe that fairness is a condition for justice. This is our first insight into understanding fairness as the process for achieving justice. Without fairness, therefore, there is no justice. Intellectually, not only is this a rearrangement of the relationship between fairness and justice it is also an inferential connection between the two notwithstanding that justice was devised as the "means to [the] end of fairness". Thus, in normative logic, justice is the process for achieving fairness rather than the other way round. In reality while fairness can be an outcome of justice, justice does not have to deliver fairness. Fairness and justice are parallel principles. Justice is a legal mechanism. It is manufactured. It could, at times, malfunction in the manner in which it is administered. This is its only intrinsic relationship with the concept of fairness. Justice is fair in application if it remains faithful to its processes but unfair in practice if it deviates from those processes. Whether truthful in application or wayward in practice justice can return an outcome that is fair or unfair notwithstanding the construction of justice to deliver fairness only. Fairness is a natural expectation, as old as life itself. It takes an almost imperceptible course. It is its absence in mutually entered and/or routine relationships that causes antagonism within such relationships. In primordial times, and in proto-historical times, and perhaps in early-historical times, if fairness the outcome was denied, it could be recovered in the 'state of nature'. By state of nature, I refer to what would today be described as "taking the law into one's hands" yet the state of nature is the perfect condition of, and for, fairness because of its mutual-deterrence. It is the state of perfect equity between persons. We can observe this state of nature between 'animals' ostensibly evenly placed. Nowadays, if fairness is mislaid it is not certain that it can be regained because of the imposition over it of justice the device. This is when the law says "do not take the law into your hands because if you do, that is revenge. Let justice take its course". Note that it is justice to be allowed to take its course, not fairness. Justice is today our utopic fairness. In truth, justice and fairness are divisible.

Author: Ipemndoh Pendoh Dan Iyan Phm

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Publication Date: Jul 03, 2014

Number of Pages: 50 pages

Binding: Paperback or Softback

ISBN-10: 1494855208

ISBN-13: 9781494855208