Egalitarians' view

A few egalitarians have tried to strengthen their position by distinguishing two different types of equality: political equality and economic equality. Political equality relates to an equal participation in and treatment by the means of controlling and directing the political system. This includes equal rights to civil liberties; participate in the legislative process and equal rights to due process. Economic equality refers to equality of earnings and wealth and equality of opportunity. The criticisms leveled against equality as per some egalitarians, only apply to economic equality not to political equality.

Capitalists fight that a society's benefits should be circulated in proportion to what each individual gives to society. According to this capitalist view of justice when people slot in economic exchanges with each other, what a person gets out of the swap should be at least equal in worth to what he or she contributed. Justice requires that the benefits a person receives should be comparative to the value of his or her contribution. Quite simply:

"Benefits should be distributed according to the value of the contribution the individual makes to a society, a task, a group, or an exchange."

The focal question raised by the contributive principle of distributive justice is how the "value of the contribution" of each individual is to be considered. One long-lived tradition has held that contributions should be calculated in terms of work effort. The more effort people put forth in their work, the greater the share of benefits to which they are entitled. The harder one works, the more one deserves. A second significant tradition has held that contributions should be calculated in terms of productivity. The better the quality of a person's contributed product, the more he or she should obtain.

Socialists deal with this concern by stating that the benefits of a society should be distributed according to need and people should contribute according to their abilities. Critics of socialism contend that workers in this system would have no motivation to work and that the principle would wipe out individual freedom.

The libertarian view of justice is clearly different. Libertarians consider it wrong to tax someone to offer benefits to someone else. No way of distributing goods can be just or unjust apart from an individual's free choice. Robert Nozick, a foremost libertarian, suggests this principle as the crucial principle of distributive justice:

"From each according to what he chooses to do, to each according to what he makes for himself (perhaps with the contracted aid of others) and what others choose to do for him and choose to give him of what they've been given previously (under this maxim) and haven't yet expended or transferred."

"If I choose to help another, that is fine, but I should not be forced to do so." Critic of this view point out that freedom from bullying is a value, but not necessarily the most important value and libertarians seem incapable to prove outright that it is more important to be free than,  to be fed. If each person's life is valuable, it seems as if everyone should be cared for to some extent. A second allied criticism of libertarianism claims that the libertarian principle of distributive justice will produce unjust treatment of the disadvantaged. Under the libertarian principle, a person's share of goods will depend totally on what the person can produce through his or her own efforts or what others choose to furnish the person out of charity.

John Rawls' theory of justice as fairness is an effort to bring many of these disparate ideas together in an inclusive way. According to his theory, the distribution of benefits and burdens in a society is just if:

1.   Social and economic inequalities are arranged so that they are both:

a)  To the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle), and

      b)  Attached to offices and positions open fairly and equally to all (the principle of                                          equal opportunity).

2.   Each person has an equal right to the most extensive basic liberties compatible with equal liberties for all (the principle of equal liberty)

Rawls tells us that Principle 2 is supposed to take priority over Principle1 should the two of them ever come into conflict, and within Principle 1, Part b is supposed to take priority over Part a.

Principle 2 is called the principle of equal liberty. Essentially, it says that each citizen's liberties must be confined from attack by others and must be equal to those of others. These basic liberties include the freedom of speech, right to vote and conscience and the other civil liberties, freedom from arbitrary arrest and freedom to hold personal property. Part of Principle

1 is called the difference principle. It assumes that a productive society will incorporate inequalities, but it then asserts that steps must be taken to improve the condition of the neediest members of society such as the sick and the disabled, unless such improvements would so burden society that they make everyone including the needy, worse off than before. Part b of Principle 1 is called the principle of fair equality of opportunity. It says that everyone should be provided with an equal opportunity to qualify for the more privileged positions in society's institution.

Thus, according to Rawls a principle is moral if it would be tolerable to a group of rational, self-interested persons who know they will live under it themselves. This frames the Kantian principles of reversibility and universalizability and treats people as ends and not as means. Some critics of Rawls spot out, however, that just because a group of people would be willing to live under a principle does not signify that it is morally justified.

Two last types of justice are retributive and compensatory justice, both of which deal with how to deal with wrongdoers in best way. Retributive justice concerns blaming or punishing those who do wrong while compensatory justice concerns restoring to a harmed person what he lost when someone else wronged him. Conventionally, theorists have held that a person has a moral responsibility to compensate an injured party only if three conditions pertain:

1.   The action was the real cause of the injury.

2.   The action that inflicted the injury was wrong or negligent.

3.   The person did the action voluntarily.

The most controversial forms of compensation are the preferential treatment programs that attempt to medication past injustices against groups.