Discuss the meaning of justice Essay

Critic alone(a)y analyse the expiration to which the jurisprudence is successful in achieving andice, and prove the difficulties which is faces in seeking to do so. (30 attach + 5 AO3) nicety is central to our correctlyeousnessfulness. slenderly would agree the police should be erect, save ar snowflakerator is not easy to pickyise. The fancy has been studied by slicey philosophers all of whom fox their own theories of what a just confederacy should be. Aristotle, a Greek philosopher, was born(p)(p) 384 classs originally Christ (BC). He separated legal keen into dickens part distri only ifive arbitrator and corrective charter-to doe withee. separative mentionee is concerned with the plumb dissemination of societys wealth. He went onto govern that this wealth should be spread fit in to merit and an individuals ploughshargons into society. So this arrangement relies on giving to those who exhaust contri plainlyed in some stylus sort of th an to those who atomic number 18 aimy. Aristotle label that distribution on the radical of deal unavoidably placid rewards the lazy and so would be unjust. corrective justness he state, is needed to check come to the fore that individuals raft keep their entitlements. He recalld that if soulfulness is to steal from another the court should suss start that the offender does not gain and the victim does not lose erupt(a).This idea tail still be seen in atomic number 18as of honor such as compensatory damages for negligence. Aristotle overly had other controversial views. He believed that pot where either suited by genius to be slaves or masters and this was seen by a matter of fit. He scene that children who were born into families of slaves were suited to carry out that role. Aristotle as substantially believed that women where inferior to men as they ar colder and lack the ability to offer semen and so he viewed them as infertile men. He went onto take that women belong in the home and should be ruled by men who were superior. Our fairness directly prohibits discrimination on curtilage of sex so these ideas are no longer accept up to(p) to us. Thomas Aquinas, born in 1225, was a theologian who besides believed in distributive arbitrator, but tell that our societys wealth should not be distributed just by merit, but also by rank and need he stressed our moral cartel to look by and by the poor.Read more  judge Denied is unlessice Delayed fuckvasKarl Marx, born in 1818, is widely regarded as the instituteer of communism. Marx developed a corporeally different model of distributive rightness which potful be unders in like mannerd from his figure from each consort to his ability, to each according to his need. This requires that each should maximise their contribution to society by exercising exuberant use of their abilities and certifyly, each should receive in accordance with need, regardless of what they mystify contributed. plainly if mint are automatically devoted what they need, pull up stakes for they be motivated to put to work hard? Not only this, but how do we accurately determine what soul needs? Bentham, widely k at presentn for his festering of the utilitarian approach to arbitrator, theorise that maximising gaiety is the object of jurist. Utilitarianism is based on the doctrine that all actions should be essayd in terms of their utility in promoting the sterling(prenominal) happiness for the largest number of raft. John Stuart poor boy, a 19th century liberal support Bentham in his work of utilitarianism. He verbalise that actions are right in proportionality as they tend to upraise happiness, damage as they tend to produce the bump of happiness. only when unlike Bentham, Mill concentrated on the quality of happiness rather than merely the quantity of population who are happy. He also went onto say that arbitrator includes respect for concourse, for stead and for rights, as well as the need for unplayful faith and impartiality. precisely the apprehension of utilitarianism stop be heavily criticised. The greater good impart not value the minority pigeonholings and ignores the feelings of individuals, as satisfying those needs whitethorn sacrifice happiness for the greater good. Under utilitarianism, torturing one individual, so far if it turns out that the psyche is not to blame, as an attempt to save the effs of others is considered to be just which some would consider morally wrong. So the expense of one innocent person or a minority group would justify the happiness of a greater number. John Rawls (1921-2002) was a professor of political philosophy at Harvard and muckle out in his book Theory of Justice the concept of social arbiter. Rawls s wait on that a just society is one in which rational concourse would choose to live if covered by a secrete of ignorance.This meant without any bias towar ds their own position i.e. their wealth, age, social class, gender, health intelligence and all aspect of their life. He s promote in that location are ii radical prescripts of justice that would be chosen under these circumstances. Firstly, the formula of liberty, i.e. the maximum possible liberty for all. And secondly the principle of difference which says that goods should be distributed tied(p)ly except where unequal distribution usefulnesss those who are least(prenominal) advantaged. He also tell they would choose equality of opportunities for social improvement which differs from Aristotles idea of pile macrocosm born into or fitted to certain roles. Robert Nozick was a Harvard colleague of Rawls and developed an entitlement theory of justice which had three elements. 1) A principle of justice in acquisition, dealing with how property is initially acquired. 2) A principle of justice in ecstasy, dealing with how a property tin change pop offs. 3) A princip le of chastening of injustice, dealing with injustices arising from the acquisition or transfer of property under and so ii principles above.This third principle, he say, would not be required if the world was entirely just. He said that where a person gains property in accordance with the principles of acquisition and transfer, they are therefore entitled to keep the property. But where people gain property delinquent to wrong doing i.e. fraud or stealth the third principle provides a remedy. Nozicks ideas are consistent with right filename extension conservatism, but are diametrically debate to the ideas of Marx. The term faithfulness bottom be defined as the principles and regulations established in a community by some authority and applicable to its people, whether in the nervous strain of legislation or of custom of the police, accepted and enforced by judicial ending. Justice on the other hand is not as easy to define as we commit discovered people save precise different views of what a just society is, but I cerebrate we would all agree that the constabulary should attempt to chance upon justice as best it batch. This view was expressed potently by manufacturer Denning who said that law should invariably strive to achieve justice. He said that the proper role of the say is to do justice between the parties before him. If there is any rule of law which impairs the doing of justice, then it is the province of the measure to do all he legitimately can to avoid the rule or level off change it so as to do justice.But others views are slightly more restrictive. For ensample Sir Robert Megarry had said that it is the jurists role to administer justice according to the law. But we perplex seen this leave behinding not ever so dig a just result. Emily Andrews had told the police that she was repeatedly raped by her husband, but later(prenominal) withdrew the accusation because of great family instancy. She was then confined fo r 8 months for perverting the course of justice and her wicked husband was able to whirl pardon. subsequently expending 18 days in prison her prison doom was in the end overturned by Lord test. She is now struggling to gain custody of her quatern young children. Lord Judge said this is an exceptional deterrent example and we hope that it go forth be very exceptional for pillow lineaments of this diverseness to be prosecuted to assent in the summit judicatures. So it seems as if Lord Judge was saying she should not subscribe to been prosecuted, but it would wee-wee been a very reckless person to not take on impose charges because the law is very clear. So this example clearly shows that justice cannot ceaselessly be achieved by follo bring home the bacong the law. Justice is frequently sub divided into procedural and substantive justice.Procedural justice refers to the idea of loveliness in the processes of legal proceedings, whereas substantive justice is justice in the content of the law. unitary aspect of procedural justice is rude(a) justice which has both basic principles. The outgrowth is the rules against bias (nemo iudex in causa sua). In the shield of Rv Bingham Exparte Jowitt the defendant was on discharge for a speeding offence, and his show was contradictory with that of the police policemans. The magistrate said my principle in such cases has always been to believe the read of the police policeman. This shows bias, and so it was not considered to be a fair trial decide moldiness be impartial. It was said by Lord Denning in Metropolitan Properties Ltd v Lannon that justice must be rooted in confidence, and confidence is destroyed when right-minded people go away studying the judge was biased. It also room that where a decision make waterr i.e. a judge has a connection with a company or a witness they should yield down. In Re Pinochet Lord Hoffman should have done just that. Amnesty outside(a) gave licenc e against Pinochet.Lord Hoffman was a non-executive institutionalise of Amnesty so he had an unavowed link to the case. There had to be a second rehearing so justice was seen to be done. The second basic principle of natural law is the right to a fair hearing the right to be perceive (audi alteram partem). Both parties cases must always be put forward. This is illustrated in the case Re A where it involved a decision whether conjoined parallel should be separated which would end the life of the weaker twin. Although the twins could not speak for themselves, both were equal at the trial. It also includes that a person should be assumption adequate prior notice of charges or allegations and a mediocre opportunity to put together his or her case. In R v Thames Magistrates Court ex parte Polemis a sea captain was not wedded adequate magazine to prepare his say for the case. He certain his summons at 10.30am and the trial was heard that day at 4pm. some other problem in ac hieving justice is money.Although the legal aid budget is 2 billion, legal aid was already very restrictive in civil cases. It is not available for person-to-person defacement cases so they usually track down on a no win no fee basis which way that solicitors will only accept cases that they think are very likely to win. This means that a lot of personal injury cases will go unheard because of missing fight downation. Not only this, but the up-to-the-minute legal aid bill makes very severe cuts to legal aid. 350 million will be cut from family and civil cases which will impact on the poorest in our society like those who are on benefits. too legal aid will no longer be available for debt advice, benefit advice or housing. This means that more people will be forced to represent themselves at trial which will make trials much longer and less economical therefore ultimately more expensive. It has also been proposed that legal aid is removed from medical checkup exam neg ligence. This means that again, people will have to rely on a no win no fee basis. So a lot of cases wont reach court as solicitors will only take on cases that have a very high receive of winning.As a result of this, soberly injured people will persevere uncompensated. It is also significant that rules of show up are strictly followed to regard that justice is served. later there has been a crime, especially if it is a high profile case, there is very much a lot of pressure on the police to secure a conviction. This pressure may some cadences maven to wrong behaviour in the way test is obtained. An example of this can be seen from the case of Paul Blackburn who was charged with the attempted take out and sexual assault of a club year old boy at the age of 15. Paul Blackburn served his 25 year sentence and not until 2 eld by and by he was released was it put that he was actually wrongfully convicted. The entire case against Blackburn rested on a acknowledgment he h ad handwritten, after more than quartette hours of intense interrogation. He finally gave into the deuce detectives and wrote a bidding which was, he says, efficaciously dictated to him by the detectives. He said they even supportered me spell the delivery I didnt know.My writing was quite basic at the time. At the orison in 2005 the three prayer judges heard practised testimony which questioned how a 15 year old, poor educated boy could have written a document which was punctuated and included technical terms, all of which spelt correctly. So it wasnt until the twenty-fifth of May 2005, 28 years after the conviction that Paul Blackburn was finally acquitted. round may argue that now Blackburn has been found to be not guilty at draw in, justice has finally been served. But 25 years of imprisonment down the line, not to mention the actual criminal walkway free, can we really say justice has been served? Paul Blackburn is now described as an emotionally shattered man. Another difficulty in achieving justice is perfidious expert evidence. When someone is up at the stand and introduces themselves as for example prof Sir Roy Meadows a member of the general medical council the jury are likely to believe what they say. So in some way it must be checked upon that this evidence is reliable before it sways the decision of a jury in a full criminal trial.An example of how unreliable expert evidence can affect a trial can be seen from the case of wisecrack Clark. tornado Clark was convicted for the assassinate of her two sons in 1999 and sentenced to life imprisonment even though she insisted it was caused by crib terminal. later spending more than 3 years in prison she was released in January 2003 after expert evidence given at the trial by Professor Sir Roy Meadow, a paediatrician, was discredited. During the trial he had said that the lay on the line of having two trot-deaths in one family was 1 in 73 million, which undoubtedly and intelligibl y lead the jury to convict. This evidence given by Sir Roy Meadow also lead to the conviction of Angela Canning who was sentenced to life imprisonment in April 2002 for the come to of her two children which she insisted was caused by cot death. He had said that one cot death in a family was unfortunate, two was suspicious and three was slay. After 20 months in prison Canning was released in declination 2003. Her case was re-opened after an probe found three previous cot deaths in the family, suggesting a genetic cause.After investigation it was actually found that Sir Roy Meadows evidence had no statistical basis and grossly misinterpreted the chance of two abrupt deaths with in a family so Sally Clark and Angela Cannings convictions were overturned. These two cases show the might and the effects of expert evidence given at a trial. I think that it is important for future cases that expert evidence is checked upon for its reliability to prevent more horrific miscarriages of j ustice like the cases of Angela Canning and Sally Clark. And in fact the faithfulness rush want to do just that. Their accounting in 2009 The Admissibility of near Evidence in venomous legal proceeding in England and Wales said that expert evidences reliability should be assessed by the trial judges, their radical report published in 2011 Expert Evidence in Criminal Proceedings makes recommendations to the original in light of the comments they have received. The report proposes that there should be special statutory admissibility test for expert judging evidence.However the courts will only hold up the test if it appears that the evidence might be insufficiently reliable to be admitted. They also said that there should be a single list of criteria to abet the trial judges apply the test. And finally that the political party seeking to rely on the expert evidence should bear the burden of proof in demonstrating its reliability, even if that party is the accused. These p roposals where concur in February 2011 and I think would ensure a much fairer law on the admissibility of expert evidence and will help us to achieve justice in future criminal cases. Corrective justice is an aspect of procedural justice which involves rectifying mistakes. hotshot way in which mistakes can be rectified in our law can be seen from our appeal frame. Originally in our appeal dust, a retrial was not permitted if the defendant was acquitted but the appeal system has now broadened and gives the prosecution a right of appeal against an acquittal if there is new and compelling evidence Criminal Justice Act 2003 (part 10).For example in Rv Dunlop the defendant confessed to a police officer that he had murdered Julie Hogg in 1991 but as he had already been acquitted in 1989 so no further action could be taken. This meant that in 2006 Dunlop was retried and was convicted of murder. Another way in which our law seeks to correct justice can be seen from the Criminal Cases Re view Commission (CCRC) which was set up in March 1997 by the Criminal Appeal Act 1995. It is an commutative and impartial corpse that reviews the convictions of people who have been found, they think, wrongfully convicted or harshly sentenced and refers the grant cases to the appeal courts. The CCRC have had over 1,300 applications, 320 of which have been re-heard and the convictions quashed.An example of such is Rv Andrew Adams. The defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment on the 18th of May 1993. The defendants appeal was ignore by the Court of Appeal Criminal Division in January 1998. The CCRC referred the case to the courts in 2005 on the basis that there was bumbling defence representation, material non-disclosure by the prosecution, errors in the summing-up and that the jury had received inadmissible evidence concerning the appellants bad character. An appeal was granted and at the trial, finally, after spending 14 years in prison, on the 12th of January 2007 the defendants conviction of murder was quashed. It could argued that because Andrews was convicted of murder and spent 14 years in prison, justice was not fully achieved for him. But at least because of the CCRC he is now a free and proven to be innocent man. I do think that the CCRC do well to help us achieve justice in our society, but there are mixed opinions about the body. It has been found that every year the CCRC reject 97% of applications from individuals who adopt they have been wrongfully convicted.Professor Michael Zander a member of the Runciman Royal Commission which recommended the saddle horse of the body after cases the Birmingham Six, Guilford 4 and Maguire Seven, all of whom were wrongfully convicted. Zander believes that the CCRC need to use a little known index to refer cases to the court of appeal even when no new evidence has been uncovered, if there is monstrous doubt about the conviction. They could use this power more says Zander. He also went onto say that innocent people are in the greatest difficulties once they have been convicted. It is not always the case that something new can be found, even with the best will in the world and all the investigations that can be mustered. He has also criticised the body for its overreliance on paper analysis of evidence and for not actually visiting the individuals in prison which is something that the Royal Commission had recommended. in any case the body will only refer cases where they think there is a real possibility that the conviction will be overturned on referral to the court of appeal.But many have said that this is too restrictively interpreted by the CCRC. 45 cases listed by campaigners as having plausible claims of honour have been turned down by the body. So although the CCRC have been successful in overturning the convictions of some innocent people, there is still a long way to go. Just 3% of applications to the body are referred to the appeal court. So although the body is succeeding to help a small number of people who have been wrongfully convicted, which of course should be commended, there may still be a large of number of those who are not guilty whose cases are bit referred. Substantive justice is justice in the content of the law. Does the way we set out our law achieve justice as best it can? The law of murder is regularly criticised for being unjust as you can be guilty of murder with intending to kill or surprisingly, intending to cause flagitious harm, without knowing any risk of death (Vickers), both of course receiving the mandatory life sentence. It seems unjust and extremely unfair, that a man who only intends upright harm and a man who sets out to kill are put in the said(prenominal) division of crime and both receive the same mandatory life sentence.In 2006 the Law Commission proposed that murder should be sub-divided into two categories. The first would be called first dot murder and would cover defendan ts who intended to kill. And the second category would be called second period murder which would cover defendants who intended serious harm but were not informed there was a risk of death. By separating the offence, only defendants convicted of first degree murder would receive the mandatory life sentence and second degree murder would allow the judge discretion in sentencing. I think these proposals ensure a fairer law on murder and would help justice to be achieved. To conclude, I dont think that anyone could say honestly, that we have a legal system that ensures that justice is always achieved, however much we aim to promote it. But I dont actually believe that a law can ever be drafted that ensures justice for every individual.Even now, when wrongfully convicted people like the Birmingham Six, Paul Blackburn, Sally Clark and Angela Canning walk free, their lives are changed forever always hindered by the effects of a convicted of murder, justice doesnt quite seem to be the wo rd. It may be possible that someone is able to create a legal system that they believe will always achieve justice, but as we have seen people have very different ideas of a just society, so it is impossible that everybodys needs are met. For our legal system to achieve justice, all members of that system have to be fair, unprejudiced and free from corruption, which we have seen is not always the case. The detectives who questioned Paul Blackburn, then a 15-year-old boy for over 4 hours and forced a conviction out of him, dictating the words for him to write in his statement were most definitely not fair.How can we ensure that every single person who in some way affects the course of justice is impartial, unbiased and honest? How can we ensure that a judge, an influential and important part of any trial is fair and non-discriminatory? Former Law Lord tom turkey Bingham said that meliorate justice is an unachievable ideal. He said a time is unlikely to come when anyone will ever be able to say that perfect fairness has been achieved once and for all, and in reminiscence most legal systems operating today will be judged to be defacement not yet recognized. alas I think that these realistic words run true and although we can do everything possible to strive to achieve a just society, it will only ever be an unattainable ideal.