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Retributive Justice

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Encyclopedia of Global Justice

People usually speak of two broad senses of justice: procedural justice and substantivejustice. Procedural justice has to do with a just process. We think that a process is unjust if it is biased or skewed in some way or on some basis that we believe is inappropriate or irrelevant. A just process is one that is not unjust. For example, if we are playing a game and the referees or umpires seem to be favoring one team over another (say, by calling fouls on only one team even when both teams perform the same actions), then we think that this is unjust. That is, we think the rules of the game are not being applied to both teams justly. Or, in an election, if we think that some ballots or voters are being excluded for inappropriate or irrelevant reasons, we think that there is an injustice happening. (Not all exclusions would necessarily be unjust; if a particular person has failed to register to vote, then that person’s ballot might be excluded, but this would not necessarily be an...

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© 2011 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

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Boersema, D. (2011). Retributive Justice. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_381

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_381

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