What is Justice

Justice can be defined a lot of different ways depending on who is enforcing it. It’s not always good under some circumstances. My personal definition of justice is the enforcement of social, religious, and cultural norms. In Plato's Republic They define justice as "the advantage of the stronger" which I think means that whoever has power decides what justice is and will shape it to their ideals. This could be good or bad depending on the person in power. Someone with good intentions, who is in power, will probably try to improve the society by enforcing what he thinks are good morals, but someone with bad intentions might enforce morals that help their own personal gain.

According to dictionary.com, justice is “the quality of being just; righteousness, equitableness, or moral rightness” or “the administering of deserved punishment or reward. “ The second definition is very similar to my definition of justice; except they do not say what decides if something deserves a reward or a punishment. Their definitions of justice also imply that justice is always good when they describe it as “moral rightness”. I personally believe that justice is only as just as its enforcers. For example, before slavery was abolished whenever a slave escaped it was considered justice when they were caught and returned.

One good way to find out what we think justice is, is by looking at how we portray heroes in movies, TV shows, comics, etc. Almost every hero has some sort of ability that everyday people lack, whether it be a super hero who can fly, or a super spy with a razor sharp mine. I think this shows that people believe that only people more powerful than them can enforce justice, and a typical person cannot do it themselves. The problem is, in the real world where there are no heroes, people still have the same assumption that they cannot enforce they look to their leaders to take up the role, and their leaders then get to decide how to enforce it.