Is Distributive Justice Dead

Introduction

The domain of justice is often divided into distributive and retributive justice. Since retributivism is only one of several competing theories of just punishment, it is better to distinguish between distributive and criminal justice. A just distribution is one in which each receives that which is her due. Generosity might speak in favor of giving someone more than her due. At least in the modern era (beginning roughly with the natural rights theorists, the tendency has been to identify one's due with that to which one has a right. In addition to the relatively uninformative claim that what is just is giving each her due or that to which she has a right, there is also near universal agreement among competing theories on the formal principle of justice: equals are to be treated equally.

The latter principle is not to be confused with a material principle of justice that states a presumption in favor of equality: distribution is to be equal unless morally decisive reasons can be given for unequal treatment. Some theorists, including Michael Walzer, however, in emphasizing the differences among principles at different levels (or in different spheres) of distributive justice, have cast doubt on the assumption that higher-order material principles can be found which provide genuine coherence. Distributive justice in the narrow sense concerns only the distribution of material goods such as food, health care, and shelter, as well as income and wealth. In what follows, 'distributive justice' is to be understood in the narrow sense. The most influential rival theories of distributive justice for basic social institutions are these: utilitarianism, John Rawls's “justice as fairness,” rights-based libertarian theories, and Marxist-egalitarian theories.

Thesis Statement

The distributive justice is not dead and that it is very much part of our everyday life as long as there is government.

The Theory of Distributive Justice

The competing theories of distributive justice can be seen as alternative accounts of what the material principles of justice are. Distributions may occur at many levels: from a parent's division of candies among her children, to the awarding of a prize to the winner of a race, to the distribution of income and wealth across the entire class of citizens through the operation of complex institutional rules. As a rough generalization, it can be said that ancient moral philosophy focused primarily, or at least initially, upon the justice of individual actions and upon justice as a virtue of individuals, while contemporary theories have tended to take the primary subject of justice to be the basic institutions of the nation-state, devoting scant attention to the justice of micro-level distributions and to justice as a virtue of individuals rather than of social institutions (Nozick, 55).

For example, as Nussbaum has argued, Aristotle. Politics contains suggestive remarks toward a theory of distributive justice at the level of political institutions, and the contemporary libertarian theorist Robert Nozick's most basic principles of justice apply directly to individual acts of acquisition and exchange. Since it cannot be assumed that the same material principles will be ...