Justice vs Fairness

There is fairness in justice but not justice in fairness. Double Jeopardy, a procedural defence that forbids a defendant to be tried twice for the same crime, is an example of fairness in the law that suggests leniency. Cooke entails that justice and fairness are fundamentally different ideas. It is possible for something to be fair, while being just, but the perception of fairness creates the notion of being just or unjust. Cooke is correct in the way that justice and fairness are two completely different concepts. Justice is more important than fairness because Justice is concrete, while fairness is a whimsical perception, and the public alters the views of fairness, while justice remains consistent.

When dealing with justice, we deal with an absolute truth. Its known statewide (different states vary), and isn’t easily changed. There are no perceptions of justice; it just is. For example, Mitchell Johnson, and Andrew Golden, both thirteen years old, stole their family’s minivan, took guns from their parents and shot at kids at their school because Johnson had been “really tired of them messing with me” Johnson and Golden were tried as children at that time, but at the age of eighteen the boys were tried as adults. This is a demonstration of how justice is concrete. The boys were convicted, and under the law of Arkansas, spent the maximum time that could be given to children in prison (21 years of age). Many people would disagree about the fairness of the situation, claiming that they were children at the time, and should not be retried for their mistakes as adolescents. While others may feel that they should have been tried as adults in the first place. This exemplifies that fairness is subjective to each individual. There is fairness in getting justice that’s deserved, but there is no justice in fairness to which there is no consensus.

Everyone conforms to the truth that is justice, but no one conforms to a single person's idea of fair. Concurring with...