Abstract
What is the use of defining justice? One could argue that a definition of justice should be the product of reflections about justice, rather than a starting point. In the case of evaluative concepts such as liberty, democracy and justice, the distinction between defining and advocating is extremely hard to make. Any such definition presupposes certain values and those values should be defended rather than contained in an inevitably arbitrary definition.
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Notes
For a not dissimilar account of concept/conception distinction, see John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972), pp. 5, 9–10
Ronald Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously ( London: Duckworth, 1978 ), pp. 134–136
On definitions of ethical concepts, see Richard Robinson, Definition ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950 ), pp. 165–170.
John Stuart Mill, `Utilitarianism’, in Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Essay on Bentham, ed. by Mary Warnock ( London: Collins, 1962 ), p. 306.
Iredell Jenkins, Social Order and the Limits of Law ( Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980 ), p. 324.
Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962; Ist. ed. 1874), pp. 265–266.
Brian Barry, Political Argument ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965 ), p. 44.
Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 98–99, and in a much more developed form in his essay Noncomparative Justice’, in Rights, Justice, and the Bounds of Liberty (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), reprinted from The Philosophical Review (1974). Subsequent references in brackets in the main text discussing Feinberg’s views are to the pages of this essay.
Phillip Montague, `Comparative and Non-Comparative Justice’, Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1980), p. 132.
This example of `absolute’ (as opposed to `comparative’) principle of justice is given by Barry, op. cit.,p. 44 in connection with p. 96.
Rachel Karniol and Dale T. Miller, `Morality and the Development of Conceptions of Justice’, in Melvin J. Lerner and Sally C. Lerner, eds., The Justice Motive in Social Behavior ( New York and London: Plenum Press, 1981 ), p. 76.
See Wojciech Sadurski, “Non-Comparative Justice” Revisited’, Archiv für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie 69 (1983), pp. 504–514, esp. 505–507.
Eugène Dupréel, Traité de morale,Vol. 2 (Bruxelles: Presses Universitaires de Bruxelles, 1967; 1st ed. 1932), pp. 485–491.
Friedrich A. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, Vol. 2 ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1976 ), p. 31.
Friedrich A. Hayek, New Studies in Philosophy, Politics, Economics and the History of Ideas ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978 ), p. 58.
See excellent discussion by John Kleinig, `Good Samaritanism’, Philosophy and Public Affairs 5 (1976), pp. 382–407, esp. pp. 391–398.
James Gordley, `Equality in Exchange’, California Law Review 69 (1981), p. 1589.
Georges Burdeau, Traité de science politique,Vol. V (Paris: Librarie générale de droit et de la jurisprudence), p. 89.
Halsbury’s Laws of England (London: Butterworths, 1977), 4th ed., Vol. 18, p. 344. On the development of this doctrine in the United Kingdom, see S. M. Waddams, ‘Unconscionability in Contracts’, Modern Law Review 39 (1976), pp. 369–393.
Horwood v. Millar’s Timber and Trading Co. Ltd. [1917] 1 K.B. 305, 311.
This Act has been replaced by the Consumer Credit Act (1974).
Contracts Review Act, 1980 (N.S.W.), s.7(1)
John Goldring, Joan L. Pratt, D. E. J. Ryan, `The Contracts Review Act (N.S.W.)’, University of N.S.W. Law Journal 4 (1981), pp. 1–16.
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A. Schroeder Music Publishing Co. Ltd. v. Macaulay [1974] 3 All E.R. 616. 36. Ibid., at p. 623. See also Lloyds Bank Ltd. v. Bundy [1974] 3 All E.R. 757.
See Lord Denning M. R. in Clifford Davis Management Ltd. v. W.E.A. Records Ltd. [1975] 1 All E.R. 237, a case concerning two musicians who signed an evidently unfair contract with their manager. He said (at p. 240): “They were composers talented in music and song but not in business. In negotiation they could not hold their own”.
U.S. V. Bethlehem Steel Corp., 315 U.S. 289, 326–328 (1941), Frankfurter, J., dissenting.
See a recent powerful restatement of this proposition by Anthony T. Kronman, `Contract Law and Distributive Justice’, Yale Law Journal 89 (1980), pp. 472–511.
Scott v. U.S., 79 U.S. 443, 445 (1870). On the recent development of this doctrine in the U.S., see particularly M. P. Ellinghaus, `In Defense of Unconscionability’, Yale Law Journal 78 (1969), pp. 757–815
John E. Murray, `Unconscionability: Unconscionability’, University of Pittsburgh Law Review 31 (1969), pp. 1–80.
See, e.g., Richard E. Epstein, `Unconscionability: A Critical Reappraisal’, Journal of Law and Economics 18 (1975), pp. 293–315 and Arthur Allen Leff, `Unconscionability and the Crowd — Consumers and the Common Law Tradition’, University of Pittsburgh Law Review 31 (1970), pp. 349–358.
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan,ed. by C. B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981, 1st ed. 1651), p. 208.
John Austin, Lectures on Jurisprudence or the Philosophy of Positive Law (London: John Murray, 1920, 1st ed. 1832), p. 108.
Hans Kelsen, What Is Justice? ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971 ), p. 430.
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), in particular pp. 363 —366.
Lon L. Fuller, The Morality of Law (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972, 1st ed. 1964), pp. 33–39.
L. L. Fuller, `Positivism and Fidelity to Law’, Harvard Law Review 71 (1958), p. 474.
See also Peter P. Nicholson, `The Internal Morality of Law: Fuller and His Critics’, Ethics 84 (1974), pp. 307–320.
H. L. A. Hart, The Concept of Law ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961 ), p. 206.
See A. M. Honoré, `Social Justice’, McGill Law Journal 8 (1962), p. 82.
Dupréel, op. cit., pp.485–489; D. D. Raphael, Justice and Liberty (London: Athlone Press, 1980), pp. 80–93; Sidgwick, op. cit., p. 293; Chaim Perelman, The Idea of Justice and the Problem of Argument ( London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963 ), p. 63.
See Julius Stone, Legal System and Lawyers’ Reasoning (Sydney: Maitland Publications, 1968, 1st ed. 1964), pp. 263–267.
W. J. Wagner, `Equity and Its Socialist Equivalent in the Polish Legal System’, Review of Socialist Law 1 (1975), pp. 151–169.
Hans Kelsen, General Theory of Law and State (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1946), p. 410 (trans. A. Wedberg).
Ronald Dworkin, ’ “Natural” Law Revisited’, University of Florida Law Review 34 (1982), p. 165.
See, in particular, Neil MacCormick, Legal Right and Social Democracy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), ch. 7.
See, e.g., Norman P. Barry, An Introduction to Modern Political Theory ( London: Macmillan, 1981 ), p. 119.
See also William Nelson, `The Very Idea of Pure Procedural Justice’, Ethics 90 (1980), pp. 502–511.
David Resnick, `Due Process and Procedural Justice’ in J. Roland Pennock, John W. Chapman, eds., Due Process, Nomos XVIII ( New York: New York University Press, 1977 ), p. 213.
Rupert Cross, Evidence, Australian Edition by J. A. Gobbo (Sydney: Butterworths, 1970 ), p. 288.
Hawkins v. United States, 358 U.S. 74, 75 (1958).
Carl J. Friedrich, `Justice: The Just Political Act’, in Carl J. Friedrich, John W. Chapman, eds., Justice, Nomos VI (New York: Atherton Press, 1963), pp. 27–28, 43.
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Sadurski, W. (1985). The Concept of Justice. In: Giving Desert Its Due. Law and Philosophy Library, vol 2. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7706-9_2
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