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A PROJECT ON

THEORY OF JUSTICE A JURISPRUDENTIAL

APPROACH

SUBMITTED TO

Ms. Poonam Singh

(Faculty- Jurisprudence-II.)

SUBMITTED BY

MAHIM RAJ

Semester-VRoll No. 21

DATE OF SUBMISSION-07.10.2008

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

RAIPUR (C.G)


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ACKNOWLEDGMENT

_______________________________________________________________________

_

I, Mahim Raj, feel myself highly elated, as it gives me tremendous pleasure

to come out with work on the topic, THOERYOFJUSTICEAJURISPRUDENTIAL . I am thankful

to my teacher, Ms.Poonam Singh, who gave me this topic. I am highly obliged for her

guidance in doing all sorts of researches, suggestions and discussions regarding my

project topic by devoting her precious time.

I thank to the H.N.L.U for providing Computer, library facility. And lastly I thank my

friends and all those persons who have helped me in the completion of this project.

Thanks,

Mahim Raj

V Sem

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TABLEOFCONTENTS__________________________________________________________________

METHODOLOGY 4

INTRODUCTION 5

CHAPTER-I- MAIN IDEA OF THE THEORY 7

CHAPTER-II- THE PRINCIPLES OF JUTICE 9

CHAPTER-III- CONCLUSION COMPARISON WITH THE

CLASSICAL DOCTRINE 12

BIBLIOGRAPHY 14

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METHODOLOGY

____________________________________________________________________

The methodology adopted in this project work is based on Doctrinal research. The

present project work is on Theory of Justice A Jurisprudential Approach.

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INTRODUCTION

Austin & Holland had defined law with reference to sanction without bothering

for the ends of law. They had excluded the idea of morality, ethics & justice from the

definition of law. It was then left to John Salmond to define law in terms of its purpose

i.e. with reference to justice. Law exists according to Salmond for the promotion of

justice within the framework of law. Salmond defines law as the body of principles

recognized & applied by the state in the administration of justice. He further amplifies

his definition saying that the law consists of the rules recognized & acted on by the

courts of justice.

Of course, Salmond does not specifically defined the concept of justice. He

merely said that the purpose of law is securing justice to all according to law of land. In

other words, the phrase justice according to law is used by him in the sense that

decision of the courts of law with respect to disputes should be based on legal principles

& the judges should apply established rules & principles of law in the administration of

justice.

In the words of Saint Augustine What are States without justice but robber bands

enlarged. The simple example of idea of justice is treat like cases alike & differentcases differently.

Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A

theory however elegant & economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue.

Similarly, laws & institutions no matter how efficient & well arranged must be reformed

or abolished if they are just. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice

that the welfare of society as a whole cannot be taken for a ride. It is for this very reason

that justice denies the loss of freedom to some & consequently it proves to be a greater

good shared by the society as a whole. Justice depends essentially on how fundamental

rights & duties are assigned & on the economic opportunities & social conditions in the

various sectors of society.

Now talking about the main body of my project, I intent to refer the main idea of

justice as fairness, a theory of justice that generalizes & carries the theory of social

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contract as founded by Locke, Rousseau, & Kant to a higher level of abstraction. The

compact of society is replaced by an initial situation that incorporates certain procedural

constraints or arguments designed to lead to an original agreements on principles of

justice. Then for the purposes of clarification & contrast, the classical utilitarian

conception of justice is considered along with the differences existing with that of the

conception of justice.

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MAIN IDEA OF THE THEORY

My aim in this project is to present a conception of justice which generalizes &

carries the theory of social contract as founded by Locke, Rousseau, & Kant, to a higher

level of abstraction. In order to do this we are not to think of the original contract as one

to enter a particular society or to set up a particular form of government. Rather, the

guiding idea is that the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are the

object of the original agreement. They are the principles that free & rational persons

concerned to further their own interests would accept in an initial position of equality as

defining the fundamental terms of their association. These principles are to regulate all

further agreements; they specify the kinds of social cooperation that can be entered into& the forms of government that can be established. This way of regarding the principles

of justice I shall refer as called by Rawls as Justice as fairness.

In justice as fairness1, the original position of equality corresponds to the state of

nature in the traditional theory of the social contract. This original position is not, of

course, thought of as an actual historical state of affairs, much less as a primitive

condition of culture. It is understood as a purely hypothetical situation characterized so as

to lead to a certain conception of justice.

Among the essential features of this situation is that no one knows his place in

society, his class position or social status, nor does any one know his fortune in the

distribution of natural assets & abilities, his intelligence, strength, etc.

Therefore, the principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance. This

ensures that no one is advantaged or disadvantaged in the choice of principles by the

outcome of natural chance or the contingency of social circumstances. Since all are

similarly situated, no one is able to design principles to favor his particular condition.

Thus it is crystal clear that because the principles of justice are the result of a fair

agreement or bargain the above mentioned situation is possible.

Now comes the question that in working out the conception of justice as fairness

one main task clearly visible is to determine which principles of justice would be chosen

in the original position. In the initial situated, two principles had come into picture: the

1 Conveys the idea that the principles of justice are agreed to in an initial situation that is fair.

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first required equality in the assignment basic rights & duties, while the second hold that

social & economic inequalities, for examples inequalities of wealth & authority, are just

only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone, & in particular for the least

advantaged members of the society.

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THE PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE

The theory of justice is being divided into two parts: (1) an interpretation of the

initial situation & a formulation of the various principles available for choice there, & (2)

an argument establishing which of these principles would in fact be adopted. It is because

of this that we have to include principles of justice as it being a part of the theories of

justice & thereby rightly discussed in the above-mentioned sub topics too.

Mentioning about what principles of justice mean is that they deal with

conflicting claims upon the advantages won by social cooperation; they apply to the

relations among several persons or groups. The word contract suggests this plurality as

well as the condition that the appropriate division of advantages must be in accordance

with principles acceptable to all parties.

Now moving with the principles they are again divided into two

1) Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive basic liberty

compatible with a similar liberty for others.

2) Social & economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both (a)

reasonably expected to be to everyones advantage, & (b) attached to positions &

offices open to all.

These principles primarily apply to the basic structure of the society. They are togovern the assignment of rights & duties & to regulate the distribution of social &

economic advantages.

Taking the first principle into account i.e. primarily liberty, the basic liberties of

citizens are, roughly speaking, political liberty (the right to vote & to be eligible to for

public office) together with freedom of speech & assembly; liberty of conscience &

freedom of thought; freedom of the person along with the right to hold (personal)

property; & freedom from arbitrary arrest & seizure as defined by the concept of the rule

of law. These liberties are all required to be equal by the first principle, since citizens of a

just society are to have the same basic rights.

The second principle applies, in the first approximation, to the distribution of income

& wealth & to the design of organizations that make use of differences in authority &

responsibility, or chains of command. While the distribution of wealth & income need

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not be equal, it must be to everyones advantage, & at the same time, positions of

authority & offices of command must be accessible to all. One applies the second

principle by holding positions open, & then, subject to this constraint, arranges social &

economic inequalities so that everyone benefits.

Now these principles are to be arranged in a serial order with the first principle prior

to the second. This ordering means that a departure from the institutions of equal liberty

required by the first principle cannot be justified by, or compensated for, by greater

social & economic advantages. The distribution of wealth & income, & the hierarchies of

authority, must be consistent with both the liberties of equal citizenship & equality of

opportunity.

It is also to be observed that the two principles are a special case of a more general

conception of justice that can be expressed as follows

All social values liberty & opportunity, income & wealth, & the bases of self-

respect are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of

these values is to everyones advantage.

Injustice, then, is simply inequalities that are not to the benefit of all. Of course,

this conception is extremely vague & requires interpretation.

In developing justice as fairness, it is required that we examine the two principles

in a serial order. The advantage of this procedure is that firstly, the matter of priorities isrecognized & thus an effort is made to find the principles to deal with it. So first of all,

the rights & liberties referred to by the first principle are those, which are defined by the

public rules of the basic structure. Whether men are free is determined by the rights &

duties established by the major institutions of society. Liberty is a certain patter of social

forms. The first principle simply requires that certain sorts of rules, those defining basic

liberties, apply to everyone equally & they allow the most extensive liberty compatible

with a like liberty for all. The only reason for circumscribing the rights defining liberty &

making mens freedom less extensive than it might otherwise be is that these equal rights

as institutionally defined would interfere with one another.

Another thing to bear in mind is that when principles mention persons, or require

that everyone gain from an inequality, the reference is to representative persons holding

the various social positions, or offices, or whatever, established by the basic structure.

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Thus in applying the second principle, it is to be assumed that it is possible to assign an

expectation of well being to representative individuals holding these positions. This

expectation indicated life prospects as viewed from their social station. In general, the

expectations of representative persons depend upon the distribution of rights & duties

throughout the basic structure. When this changes, expectations change. It is to be again

assumed that the expectations are connected by raising the prospects of the

representative man in one position & we presumably increase or decrease the prospects

of representative men in other positions.

Since it applies to institutional forms, the second principle refers to the

expectations of representative individuals. Neither principle applies to distributions of

particular goods to particular individuals who may be identified by their proper names.

The situation where someone is considering how to allocate certain commodities to

needy persons who are known to him is not within the scope of the principles. They are

meant to regulate basic institutional arrangements. We must not assume that there is

much similarity from the standpoint of justice between an administrative allotment of

goods to specific persons & the appropriate design of society. Our common sense

intuitions for the former may be a poor guide to the latter.

Now the second principle insists that each person benefits from permissible

inequalities in the basic structure. This means that it must be reasonable for each relevantrepresentative man defined by this structure, when he views it as a going concern, to

prefer his prospects with the inequality to his prospects without it. One is not allowed to

justify differences in income or organizational powers on the ground that the

disadvantages of those in one position are out weighed by the greater advantages of those

in another. The two principles require that everyone benefit from economic & social

inequalities. It is obvious however that there are indefinitely many ways in which all may

be advantaged when the initial arrangement equality is taken as a benchmark.

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CONCLUSION

(COMPARISON WITH THE CLASSICAL DOCTRINE)

Classical Utilitarianism talked of a rational & impartial sympathetic spectator

who is a person who takes up a general prospective, i.e. he assumes a position where his

own interests are not at stake & possess all the requisite information & powers of

reasoning. So situated he is equally responsive & sympathetic to the desires &

satisfactions of everyone affected by the social system. His own interests do not thwart

his natural sympathy for the aspirations of others & he has perfect knowledge of these

endeavors & what they mean for those who have them. Responding to the interests of

each person in the same way, an impartial spectator gives free reign to his capacity for

sympathetic identification by viewing each persons situation as it affects that person.

Thus he imagines himself in the place of each person in turn, & when he has done this for

everyone, the strength of his approval is determined by the balance of satisfactions to

which he has sympathetically responded. When he has made the rounds of all the

affected parties, so to speak his approval expresses the total result. Sympathetically

imagined pains cancel out sympathetically imagined pleasures, & the final intensity of

approval corresponds to the net sum of positive feeling.But Classical Utilitarianism had failed to take seriously the distinction between

persons. The principle of rational choice for one man was taken as the principle of social

choice as well. And this is where the Classical Utilitarianism fails. The doctrine as

including a classical impartial sympathetic spectator who is one self-including all desires

& satisfaction within one experience as he imaginatively identifies in turn with the

members of the society. It is he who compares their aspirations & approves them

according to the extent to which they satisfy the one system of desire that he constructs

as he views everyones desires as if they were his own. The classical view results, then,

in impersonality, in the conflation of all desires into a system of desire.2

2 The most explicit & developed statement of this view is found in C.I.Lewis, The Analysis of Knowledge

& Valuation (La Salle, III., Open Court Publishing Co.,1946.

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From the standpoint of justice as fairness, there is no reason why the persons in

the original position would agree to the approvals of an impartial sympathetic spectator

as the standard of justice.

Some philosophers though have accepted the utilitarian principle because they

believed that the idea of an impartial sympathetic spectator is the correct interpretation of

impartiality. Indeed, Hume thought that it offered the only perspective from which moral

judgments could be made coherent & brought into line. Now moral judgments are, or

should be, impartial; but there is another way to achieve this, another point of view by

reference to which our judgments of justice may be organized.

Justice as fairness provides what we want. An impartial judgment, we can say, is

one rendered in accordance with the principles, which would be chosen in the original

position. An impartial is one whose situation & character enable him to judge in

accordance with these principles without bias & prejudice. Instead of defining

impartiality from the standpoint of a sympathetic observer who responds to the

conflicting interests of others as if they were his own, we define impartiality from the

standpoint of the litigants themselves. It is they who must choose their conception of

justice once & for all in an original position of equality. They must decide by which

principles their claims against one another are to be settled, & he who is to judge between

men serves as their agent. The fault of the utilitarian doctrine is that it mistakesimpersonality for impartiality.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

PJ Fitzgerald, Salmond on Jurisprudence, (Universal Law Publishing Co. Pvt.

Ltd., 12th Ed., 2003.)

SN Dhyani,Jurisprudence & Indian Legal Theory, (Central Law Agency).

John Rawls, Theory of Justice.

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