Thread: Justice
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Old 2009-02-23, 19:52   Link #17
Clarste
Human
 
Join Date: Aug 2004
Age: 37
Quote:
Originally Posted by 0utf0xZer0 View Post
Actually, I'd go as far as to say that the law by definition can never be fully just, it's just too rigid.
How can this make sense, unless justice is arbitrary? Isn't it theoretically possible to write extremely detailed and complicated laws that cover all of our intuitions about justice? That is if justice exists at all. The only way justice could not be theoretically described by some kind of laws is if its always changing, based not on the circumstances of the case, but based on the person deciding what is just. Which means that its inherently biased and not objective at all.

Are you a moral relativist? Your judgment of some things as "clearly wrong" suggests you aren't, but...

Edit: Oh yeah, justice, haha. We can distinguish between "forward looking" and "backward looking" justice.

On one hand we have the pragmatic side of things, which is to make sure that it doesn't happen again. This can be done in several ways, but the important thing is generally to get the criminal off the streets, either temporarily or permanently. Deterrence is also important (scare off potential criminals with threat of punishment). Importantly for this kind of justice is the idea that the law must be infallible (or have self-correcting components within itself). Revenge or mitigating circumstances are almost irrelevant, because the whole point is to stabilize. Everyone "taking the law into their own hands" is bad for society. In fact, guilt is almost irrelevant. Punishing an innocent for someone else's crime is almost as good, if you can control the media well enough.

On the other hand we have the idea that someone is a bad person and deserves bad things, however those come about. The law is merely a way of ensuring those bad things will come. Well, that's pretty simple. Incidentally, this is completely useless for society, and as they always say "it won't bring your loved ones back." This is the emotional side of things.

Most societies use something between these two extremes.

Last edited by Clarste; 2009-02-23 at 20:02.
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