Law and Justice - Discuss the Meaning of Justice and Whether Justice Is Achieved

Law and Justice – Discuss the meaning of Justice and whether justice is achieved.

Law and justice should be the same thing, seeing as the purpose of law is promote justice and it can be concluded that finding justice is one goal towards which the law naturally strives. However it can be argued that it’s impossible for the law to provide justice in every case. This could be because laws are concerned with enforcement of legal rules and justice is not the primary consideration in every case.

Law is defined by Sir John Salmond as ‘the body of principles recognised and applied by the state in the administration of Justice’. It is also defined by John Austin as a command issued from a sovereign power to an inferior and enforced by coercion. Sovereign power is one with authority and in Britain it is Parliament; however it could also be that Judges are making legal rules. Conforming to these rules is compulsory as they are imposed upon all members of society, e.g. Offences against the Person Act (OAPA) 1861. Breach of these legal rules could potentially lead to negative consequences.

Justice is seen to have many different meanings to different people due to it being a subjective term. It’s subjective because the definition for individuals varies from age to age, person to person and economic relations. The definition given in the Oxford dictionary is ‘just conduct: fairness’ and is generally defined as fairness and equality. The word ‘just; is considered to be ‘acting or done in accordance with what is morally right or proper’. Fair is defined as being ‘free from discrimination, dishonesty…in conformity with rules or standards and fairness is seen to be conformity to applying rules in the same way.

Lord Lloyd emphasises the difficulty in defining justice he says ‘Justice, whatever its precise meaning may be, is itself a moral value, it’s one of the aims/purposes man sets himself in order to attain the good life. Moreover a rigid application of rules may actually...