justice each getting what he or she is due. Formal justice is the impartial and consistent application of principles, whether or not the principles themselves are just. Substantive justice is closely associated with rights, i.e., with what individuals can legitimately demand of one another or what they can legitimately demand of their government (e.g., with respect to the protection of liberty or the promotion of equality). Retributive justice concerns when and why punishment is justified. Debate continues over whether punishment is justified as retribution for past wrongdoing or because it deters future wrongdoing. Those who stress retribution as the justification for punishment usually believe human beings have libertarian free will, while those who stress deterrence usually accept determinism. At least since Aristotle, justice has commonly been identified both with obeying law and with treating everyone with fairness. But if law is, and justice is not, entirely a matter of convention, then justice cannot be identified with obeying law. The literature on legal positivism and natural law theory contains much debate about whether there are moral limits on what conventions could count as law.
Corrective justice concerns the fairness of demands for civil damages. Commutative justice concerns the fairness of wages, prices, and exchanges. Distributive justice concerns the fairness of the distribution of resources. Commutative justice and distributive justice are related, since people’s wages influence how much resources they have. But the distinction is important because it may be just to pay A more than B (because A is more productive than B) but just that B is left with more after-tax resources (because B has more children to feed than A does). In modern philosophy, however, the debate about just wages and prices has been overshadowed by the larger question of what constitutes a just distribution of resources. Some (e.g., Marx) have advocated distributing resources in accordance with needs. Others have advocated their distribution in whatever way maximizes utility in the long run. Others have argued that the fair distribution is one that, in some sense, is to everyone’s advantage. Still others have maintained that a just distribution is whatever results from the free market. Some theorists combine these and other approaches.
See also ETHICS, KANT, RIGHTS, UTILITARI- ANIS. B.W.H.