Law is often thought of as the ultimate expression of justice in society.

But, justice is truly more

than just the law. What constitutes justice vary from society to society, person to person, from
time to time and from place to place. It has thus been subject to various philosophical, legal, and
theological reflections and debates along the years. The Study of the theory of Justice is a part of
Jurisprudence.
Macquarrie (1967) in the “Dictionary of Ethics” opines that several meanings can be actually
given to justice, namely: Justice in the oldest sense; justice in the narrow sense; and justice in the
proper sense. Justice in the oldest sense was explained as contained in the Ancient Egyptian
Wisdom Literature and Old Testament, justice means moral “righteousness, rectitude or moral
excellence, or perfection”. In the narrow sense, justice means conformity with the law. However,
the limitation of this sense of justice is two-fold. One, an unjust law is no law at all. Two,
conforming to written or legal law without the spirit of justice shows the inadequacy and defects
of justice in the narrow sense. While in the proper sense, justice is understood as the “harmonious
functioning of the constituent parts in the individual, or in the state. It is in this sense that Plato
understands and defines justice. Plato accepts justice as the basis of society and goes on to
emphasize another aspect of it. “Justice is keeping what is properly one’s own and doing one’s
own job”.
According to Thomas Aquinas justice is “a perpetual and constant will of giving everyone his due”.
The angelic doctor (St Thomas Aquinas) recognizes justice as a moral virtue rooted in the will
which includes other’s welfare. This is essential because since the will necessarily seeks the good
whether the good in itself or the proximate good of the individual, it would need a virtue that
will make it possible for the respect of the other. Readen (1979) recognizes this conception of
justice as one of the classical accounts of justice found in the institute of Justinian.
From the foregoing, almost all the definitions of justice (in its proper sense) we have considered
point to the conclusion that justice is giving one his or her due. Although, the concept of ‘giving
one his or her due’ raises a fundamental problem here, for instance, what determines rights and
dues or what justifies claims? If individuals are the true representatives of their individual
interest, how then do we know what is due to people. Often times we have as a society
misunderstood or misrepresented a person’s interest and thus misrepresented it. However, it
seems that the concept of right or natural right or is what we have generally accepted worldwide
to be the fundamental human right has answers to this question. Chapter 5 of the 1992
Constitution of the Republic of Ghana enshrines these basic rights of the individual. The place of
right in the understanding of justice and its application cannot be overemphasized such that the
notion of justice and its applications become a mere play on words, without recognition of the
concept of right.
Justice has often times been classified to be of two types - Natural or Moral Justice and Legal
Justice.
The concept of justice is based upon and is equated with moral rightness (ethics), rationality, law,
natural law, fairness, righteousness, equality, goodness, and equity. Natural or Moral Justice is
revealed by the divine reason implanted in the human mind. All human beings endeavor towards
conforming it. Natural or Moral Justice is said to be the ideal justice.
The history of justice is as old as the history of man. This follows, therefore, that justice is natural
to man. Man has never bothered himself with what justice means since it is a natural law. Instead
the problematic of natural justice has bordered on its hermeneutics. It borders on justice calculus
– what natural justice is and what it is not (Dukor 2003). Whatever differences there may be in
the definition of justice by scholars, broadly speaking, the concept pictures integrity, impartiality,
rightness and fairness as constituting the notion of justice. However, more fundamental to the
concept of natural justice are natural rights, which constitute the most original, inalienable and
natural, form of justice.
Early legal systems, such as the early American legal system are based on this theory. This system
was popular for a long time but lost its shine because of the changes that came in during the
eighteenth century. Rapid industrialization, migration of people, mixture of cultures and
communities forced people to move to a judicial system that is more than the plain Naturalist
Theory.
Aristotle is one of the outstanding proponents of natural right theory. This theory holds that
natural right is the ultimate basis of justice. Man has right not primarily because he has received
them by society, but because his nature as a human being confers right upon him. The rights that
are to be respected by justice primarily derive from the laws inherent in nature itself. Men and
human communities have a natural right to well-ordered existence, self-realization and progress.
On a secondary level man’s rights also derive from the further determination of natural rights by
the positive law of a community. The demands of natural right can usually be complied with in
different ways. For example, property and inheritance rights and it is left to the community to
determine in which concrete forms these demands shall be met with. His secondary law principle
brings us to the concept of legal justice.
Justice has been said to be the basic structure of society, or more exactly, the way in which the
major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of
advantages from social cooperation. By major institutions such as the political constitution and
the principal economic and social arrangements. Thus the legal protection of freedom of thought
and liberty of conscience, competitive markets, private property in the means of production, and
the monogamous family are examples of major social institutions. Taken together as one scheme,
the major institutions define men’s rights and duties and influence their life prospects, what they
can expect to be and how well they can hope to do.
Aristotle regards justice as the sovereign virtue and the major purpose of the state. Justice is
treating equals equally and unequals unequally and in proportion to their relevant differences
(Aristotle 1976). He further maintains that “unjust means either lawless or unfair; therefore,
justice means either lawful or just”. However, if positive law theory is anything to go by, then
Aristotle’s definition of justice as conformity to law reduced the concept of justice to legality. The
implication is that the concept of justice could as well be replaced by legality. On the contrary, it
can be argued that justice is also appealed to in matters where there is no positive law. More so,
it is justice that supplies the criteria of law as well as judges its justification. Therefore, justice
cannot be synonymous with legality since it transcends it and gives it its justification. However,
positive law must agree with demands of natural right as much as possible and may never
contradict it, if it wants to be legitimate and binding.
Legal Justice is an approximation to the revised theory (early American legal system). When the
State finds that certain portions of natural justice cannot be left for the good sense of each
individual, it formulates legal rules that become obligatory to the subjects to conform to it. Courts
generally deal in accordance to the legal justice of justice according to law. Administration of
Justice is a function of the State. Law is the instrument of justice. Legal Justice has its own
advantages and disadvantages.
Often when people think of the study of justice they think immediately of crime, perhaps a
particular crime, the arrest of a person by the police, the courts and the eventual incarceration
of an offender in jail and their possible rehabilitation. Another common theme is to describe
justice in terms of the laws and rules of society. Crime and laws are part of the study of justice,
but only part. Studying how these processes work together is the study of the criminal justice
system. However, the study of justice entails more than just the operation of our criminal justice
system and how to respond to a particular action by passing a law to make that activity a crime.
Justice is a basic imperative for good human relationships and co-habitation. Justice is the first
virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and
economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions no matter
how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person
possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot
override. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a
greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are
outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many.
The backbone of Ghana’s Political glory is our mantra; Freedom and Justice. US also uses “equal
justice for all”. In Velazquez v. LSC (2001); the U.S Supreme Court found to be unconstitutional
certain State restrictions on civil legal aid programs that received federal funding. The notion is
to ensure that every American citizen has a right to an attorney when they go to court. In Fisher
V. University of Texas (2012), the Supreme Court in an affirmative action before it, had to rule on
a racial justice case where the University’s admissions program considered race as one of the
many factors in its review of student applications. Society thrives when rule of law, which is in
itself a subset of Justice operates free and fair. Certain Scholars have regarded Justice as
“Fairness”. What is regarded as fairness is also relative, and differs from society to society, person
to person, etc. But the agreed position is that everyone has a right to what they are due. Whether
we chose to use the formal courts or our local chop bar parlance debates to assert our rights and
demand for justice to be done by us or for us; we can all agree on one thing: Justice is a virtue
that Society thrive upon.