Justice and Fairness, and Taxation

Arguments about justice or fairness have a long tradition in Western

civilization.
In fact, no idea in Western civilization has been more consistently linked
to ethics and morality than the idea of justice.
From the Republic, written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, to A
Theory of Justice, written by the late Harvard philosopher John Rawls,
every major work on ethics has held that justice is part of the central core
of morality.
• Justice means giving each person what he or she deserves or, in more
traditional terms, giving each person his or her due. Justice and fairness are
closely related terms that are often today used interchangeably. There have,
however, also been more distinct understandings of the two terms. While
justice usually has been used with reference to a standard of rightness, fairness
often has been used with regard to an ability to judge without reference to
one's feelings or interests; fairness has also been used to refer to the ability to
make judgments that are not overly general but that are concrete and specific
to a particular case. In any case, a notion of being treated as one deserves is
crucial to both justice and fairness.
• When people differ over what they believe should be given, or when
decisions have to be made about how benefits and burdens should be
distributed among a group of people, questions of justice or fairness
inevitably arise. In fact, most ethicists today hold the view that there would
be no point of talking about justice or fairness if it were not for the conflicts
of interest that are created when goods and services are scarce and people
differ over who should get what. When such conflicts arise in our society,
we need principles of justice that we can all accept as reasonable and fair
standards for determining what people deserve.
• But saying that justice is giving each person what he or she deserves does
not take us very far. How do we determine what people deserve? What
criteria and what principles should we use to determine what is due to this
or that person?
 Principles of Justice
• The most fundamental principle of justice—one that has been widely accepted since it
was first defined by Aristotle more than two thousand years ago—is the principle that
"equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally." In its contemporary form,
this principle is sometimes expressed as follows: "Individuals should be treated the
same, unless they differ in ways that are relevant to the situation in which they are
involved." For example, if Jack and Jill both do the same work, and there are no
relevant differences between them or the work they are doing, then in justice they
should be paid the same wages. And if Jack is paid more than Jill simply because he is
a man, or because he is white, then we have an injustice—a form of discrimination—
because race and sex are not relevant to normal work situations.
• There are, however, many differences that we deem as justifiable criteria for treating people
differently. For example, we think it is fair and just when a parent gives his own children
more attention and care in his private affairs than he gives the children of others; we think it is
fair when the person who is first in a line at a theater is given first choice of theater tickets; we
think it is just when the government gives benefits to the needy that it does not provide to
more affluent citizens; we think it is just when some who have done wrong are given
punishments that are not meted out to others who have done nothing wrong; and we think it is
fair when those who exert more efforts or who make a greater contribution to a project receive
more benefits from the project than others. These criteria—need, desert, contribution, and
effort—we acknowledge as justifying differential treatment, then, are numerous.
• On the other hand, there are also criteria that we believe are not justifiable grounds
for giving people different treatment. In the world of work, for example, we
generally hold that it is unjust to give individuals special treatment on the basis of
age, sex, race, or their religious preferences. If the judge's nephew receives a
suspended sentence for armed robbery when another offender unrelated to the judge
goes to jail for the same crime, or the brother of the Director of Public Works gets
the million dollar contract to install sprinklers on the municipal golf course despite
lower bids from other contractors, we say that it's unfair. We also believe it isn't fair
when a person is punished for something over which he or she had no control, or
isn't compensated for a harm he or she suffered. 
Different Kinds of Justice
• There are different kinds of justice. Distributive justice refers to the extent
to which society's institutions ensure that benefits and burdens are
distributed among society's members in ways that are fair and just. When
the institutions of a society distribute benefits or burdens in unjust ways,
there is a strong presumption that those institutions should be changed.
For example, the American institution of slavery in the pre-civil war South
was condemned as unjust because it was a glaring case of treating people
differently on the basis of race.
• A second important kind of justice is retributive or corrective justice. Retributive
justice refers to the extent to which punishments are fair and just. In general,
punishments are held to be just to the extent that they take into account relevant criteria
such as the seriousness of the crime and the intent of the criminal, and discount
irrelevant criteria such as race. It would be barbarously unjust, for example, to chop off
a person's hand for stealing a dime, or to impose the death penalty on a person who by
accident and without negligence injured another party. Studies have frequently shown
that when blacks murder whites, they are much more likely to receive death sentences
than when whites murder whites or blacks murder blacks. These studies suggest that
injustice still exists in the criminal justice system in the United States.
• The foundations of justice can be traced to the notions of social stability, interdependence, and
equal dignity. As the ethicist John Rawls has pointed out, the stability of a society—or any
group, for that matter—depends upon the extent to which the members of that society feel that
they are being treated justly. When some of society's members come to feel that they are
subject to unequal treatment, the foundations have been laid for social unrest, disturbances,
and strife. The members of a community, Rawls holds, depend on each other, and they will
retain their social unity only to the extent that their institutions are just. Moreover, as the
philosopher Immanuel Kant and others have pointed out, human beings are all equal in this
respect: they all have the same dignity, and in virtue of this dignity they deserve to be treated
as equals. Whenever individuals are treated unequally on the basis of characteristics that are
arbitrary and irrelevant, their fundamental human dignity is violated.
• Justice, then, is a central part of ethics and should be given due consideration in our
moral lives. In evaluating any moral decision, we must ask whether our actions treat
all persons equally. If not, we must determine whether the difference in treatment is
justified: are the criteria we are using relevant to the situation at hand? But justice is
not the only principle to consider in making ethical decisions. Sometimes principles
of justice may need to be overridden in favor of other kinds of moral claims such as
rights or society's welfare. Nevertheless, justice is an expression of our mutual
recognition of each other's basic dignity, and an acknowledgement that if we are to
live together in an interdependent community we must treat each other as equals.
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