Injustice

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
"Unjust" redirects here. For the 2010 South Korean film, see The Unjust. For other uses, see Injustice (disambiguation).
Ducal Palace in Venice

Injustice is a quality relating to unfairness or undeserved outcomes. The term may be applied in reference to a particular event or situation, or to a larger status quo. In Western philosophy and jurisprudence, injustice is very commonly—but not always—defined as either the absence or the opposite of justice.[1][2][3]

The sense of injustice is a universal human feature, though the exact circumstances considered unjust can vary from culture to culture. While even acts of nature can sometimes arouse the sense of injustice, the sense is usually felt in relation to human action such as misuse,

legal system
or fellow human beings.

The sense of injustice can be a powerful motivational condition, causing people to take action not just to defend themselves but also others who they perceive to be unfairly treated. Injustice within legal or societal standards are sometimes referred to as a two-tiered system.[4]

Relationship with justice

Professor Judith Shklar has written that Western philosophers tend to spend much more time discussing the concept of 'justice' rather than 'injustice'. On the other hand, she states that both historical writing and fiction use instances of injustice as their subject matter far more often than they use justice.[5]

In philosophy and jurisprudence, the dominant view has been that injustice and justice are two sides of the same coin: that injustice is simply a lack of justice. This view has been challenged by professors including Shklar, Thomas W Simon and Eric Heinze, who consider that justice and injustice are independent qualities. So, in this minority view, you can increase the justice of a situation without reducing the injustice. Heinze has even gone as far as to argue that an increase in justice can actually cause an increase in injustice.[2][3][5]

A relatively common view among philosophers and other writers is that while justice and injustice may be interdependent, it is injustice that is the primary quality. Many writers have written that, while it is hard to directly define or even perceive justice, it is easy to demonstrate that injustice can be perceived by all.[6] According to von Hayek, the earliest known thinker to state that injustice is the primary quality was Heraclitus, whose view was echoed by Aristotle and dozens of others down the centuries. Hayek said that writers often express the idea that injustice is the primary concept "as though it were a new discovery", suggesting the view is rarely directly expressed in theories on Justice. But Hayek went on to say that legal positivism has proved that injustice, not justice, is the primary quality.[7]

Sense of injustice

A metaphorical injustice eating the innocent in Guillaume Rouillé's Justicie atque Iniusticie. On the twelve legs of the beast is inscribed a variation of the twelve abuses of the De duodecim abusivis saeculi, claimed causes of injustice.[8]

Scholars, including Judith Shklar, Edmond Cahn and

human universal.[5][9][10]
These writers, and others like Simone Weil, Elizabeth Wolgast and Thomas W Simon, hold that the sense of injustice is a powerful motivational condition — unlike the sense of justice, which tends to be conceived in more abstract ways, and tends to inspire contemplation rather than action.[2][11][12][13]

Cahn held that, for evolutionary reasons, humans who witness others being subjected to injustice can respond as though it was an act of aggression towards themselves. There can be an immediate, visceral activation of the flight or fight system. As American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, in 1963, "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere".[14] Spinner-Halev spoke about enduring injustices where it will still persist to this day without any action to address them.[15] A 2012 study published in Psychological Science found that even babies have a sense of injustice and dislike having it violated, even when they witness events that do not directly effect them.[16][17]

In the field of jurisprudence, Cahn has argued that lawyers should know how to rouse a jury's sense of injustice — something best done by appeals to the particular, not by abstractions or

boilerplate type statements. Barrington Moore asserts that the reasons why populations often submit to oppression for long periods of time is that they consider it inevitable and so their sense of injustice is not aroused. He says that a widely shared sense of injustice is an essential, though not sufficient, cause of rebellion. Writers including Simone Weil, Elizabeth Wolgast and Judith Shklar have said that an aroused sense of injustice can be an essential prerequisite to action needed for protecting the weak and afflicted.[5][9][10][11][12]

Causes

A common cause of injustice is human selfishness. As

decision making. With the hungry judge effect for example, studies have found that judges sitting on review boards are less likely to reach decisions favorable to applicants depending on how long it is since the judges had their last food break.[18][19] Misuse and abuse with regard to a particular case or context may represent a systemic failure to serve the cause of justice (cf. legal vacuum).[2][9]

Popular culture

See also

Notes and references

  1. ISBN 1-85431-582-X
    . Page 276.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0847679386
    .
  3. ^
    ISBN 978-0415524414
    .
  4. ^ "Want to Know How to Build a Better Democracy? Ask Wikipedia". Wired. 2019-04-07.
  5. ^
    ISBN 978-0253200556
    .
  6. JSTOR 792700
    .
  7. ^ See Chapter 8 "THE QUEST FOR JUSTICE" in volume 2 of von Hayek's The mirage of social justice (University of Chicago Press, 1978). For a list discussing dozens of writers who have stated down the centuries that injustice, not justice, is the primary concept, look out for the long footnote under the sub-heading, "Rules of just conduct are generally prohibitions of unjust conduct".
  8. ^ Mike Widener (July 28, 2010), More images in our Flickr galleries, Yale Law Library
  9. ^
    ISBN 978-0253200556
    .
  10. ^
    ISBN 978-0333247839
    .
  11. ^
    ISBN 978-0847690800
    .
  12. ^
    ISBN 978-0801494024
    .
  13. ISBN 978-0820351520
  14. ^ Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from Birmingham Jail (1963).
  15. ^ Spinner-Halev, Jeff (2012). Enduring Injustice. Cambridge University Press.
  16. ^ Maia Szalavitz (2012-02-20). "Even Babies Can Recognize What's Fair: Babies as young as 19 months are affronted when they see displays of injustice". Time. Retrieved 2016-07-14.
  17. PMID 22258431
    .
  18. PMID 21482790
    .
  19. ^ For more on the substantial difference in judges' decisions depending on time since last food break, see chpt 3 of Thinking, Fast and Slow.

Further reading

External links

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