Words can mean so many different things to so many different people, it all depends on who is speaking it and who is listening. Maybe a word has a different connotation when used in a different context. However, there is not ever going to be one sure way to define any word, especially the word “justice.”
What does Justice mean to you? It probably has a different meaning that it might to me. It probably means something different to the judge. It probably means something different to your lawyer. It all depends on how far one is willing to take justice.
Here is a scenario to help one understand the different perspectives that there could be on justice:
There is a man who, in the middle of the night, breaks into an old woman’s house. He beats the woman badly, and finds out where she hid her money. Once he finds the money, he runs.
How do you prosecute this man? How do you serve him justice? It all depends on your definition for justice. If you define it using the ‘Golden Rule,’ (Do unto others as you would have them do unto you) then you should do to him exactly what he did to the woman, Beat him and make him pay an enormous fine. However, you might define justice as giving the suspect a punishment for what he did, and it doesn’t matter what it is. In that case, you might send him to jail for a few years. Some people might just want him to learn the error of his ways, no matter how much or little time it took. He might be sorry immediately, and therefore would receive no punishment. He also might never regret his action and therefore would deserve to live in prison for the rest of his life. Some would take it as far as to give him the death penalty. As you can see, justice can be kept on the ‘down low’ or taken to extreme. However it all falls under one unifying purpose; Do what’s right. You would want to give the man what he deserves, and that is where the opinion on how far justice should be taken comes in. A word can have a thousand meanings, but generally it all falls under one purpose.
As written by Russell Kirk, The heritage foundation, ” The word "justice" is on everyone's lips nowadays, and may signify almost anything. We hear the cry "Peace and Justice!" from folk who would destroy existing societies with fire and sword. Other folk fancy that perfect justice might readily be obtained by certain financial rearrangements -- as if anything in this world ever could be perfected. One thinks of the observation of William James: "So long as one poor cockroach suffers the pangs of unrequited love, this world will not be a moral world." At the end of the twentieth century, the liberal mentality demands justice for roaches, too.
All confusion about the meaning of the word "justice" notwithstanding, the latest edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica contains no article under the heading "Justice." Yet there is a succinct article about justices of the peace, of whose number I once was one, before the state of Michigan swept away that high office. My lecture today may be regarded as the attempt of a fool, rushing in where the angelic Britannica fears to tread. Yet possibly the nature of justice may be apprehended by a mere quondam justice of the peace: for the fundamental purpose of law is to keep the peace. "Justice is the ligament which holds civilized beings and civilized nations together," said Daniel Webster at the funeral of Justice Joseph Story, in 1845; and so say I today.
I propose in this series of four lectures to discuss first the signification of this word "justice"; in my second lecture, to examine natural law; in my third, to deal with criminal justice; in my concluding lecture, to quarrel with certain notions of justice that have been much puffed up during recent years. In the twenty-first century of the Christian era, will justice signify anything more than the state's rigorous enforcement of its edicts? Such questions I hope to raise in your minds.
Nowadays, near the close of the twentieth century, moral and political disorders bring grave confusion about the meanings of old words. As T. S. Eliot wrote in "Burnt Norton" -- Words strain.
But perhaps, ladies and gentlemen, I proceed too fast; I shall have more to say a little later about the Christian concept of justice. Just now a little about the classical idea of justice. The classical definition, which comes to us through Plato, Aristotle, Saint Ambrose, and Saint Augustine of Hippo, is expressed in a single phrase: suum cuique, or "to each his own." As this is put in Justinian's Corpus Juris Civilis, "Justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due with constant and perpetual will." Aristotle instructs us that the prevalence of injustice makes clear the meaning of justice. Also Aristotle remarks that it is unjust to treat unequal things equally -- a principle to which I shall return in my later lectures. Of the virtue called justice, Saint Augustine declares, "Justice is that ordering of the soul by virtue of which it comes to pass that we are no man's servant, but servants of God alone."
Upon such ancient postulates, classical or Christian, rests our whole elaborate edifice of law here in these United States -- even though few Americans know anything about the science of jurisprudence. For public order is founded upon moral order, and moral order arises from religion -- a point upon which I mean to touch later in this talk of mine. If these venerable postulates are flouted or denied -- as they have been denied by the Marxists in the present century, and were denied by sophists in Plato's time -- then arbitrary power thrusts justice aside, and "they shall take who have the power, and they shall keep who can."
Justice Has changed throughout history, but is defined by the common theme for righteousness.
