Aristotle is generally regarded as a ethicist par excellence, but his account of justice as a virtue is less purely ethical than Plato's because it anchors individual justice in situational factors that are largely external to the just individual. Situations and communities are just, according to Aristotle, when individuals receive benefits according to their merits, or virtue: those most virtuous should receive more of whatever goods society is in a position to distribute. This is what we would today call a desert-based conception of social justice; and Aristotle treats the virtue of individual justice as a matter of being disposed to properly respect and promote just social arrangements.

Both Plato and Aristotle were rationalists as regards to both human knowledge and moral reasons, and what they say about the virtue of justice clearly reflects the commitment to rationalism. Much subsequent thinking about justice (especially in the Middle Ages) was influenced by Plato and Aristotle and likewise emphasized the role of reason both in perceiving what is just and in allowing us to act justly rather than give in to contrary impulses or desires. One has to do with the inadequacy of natural motives like benevolence or prudence for grounding the requirements of justice. In primitive or simple societies, there may always be reasons of prudence to act justly with respect to the property of others: violations of justice are always likely to be detected by others and to lead to consequences one would prefer to avoid. In such circumstances honesty (a term Hume tends to use narrowly as synonymous with “justice”) really is the best policy.

Hutcheson and Hume treated morality as grounded in something other than reason, and the influence of Christian ideas and ideals of agapic love on Hutcheson (at least) is well documented. For Hutcheson, universal (i.e., impartial) benevolence is the highest and best of human motives, but we know this, not through reason, but through a moral sense (or sensitivity). Also, according to Hutcheson, the individual virtue of justice (ultimately) consists in being motivated by universal benevolence, and he explicitly denies that benevolence can ever conflict with true justice.

It is possible to question this, and Bentham, for example, claimed that his disagreement with Hume's view was what initially led him to utilitarianism.

Such a conclusion has also led many subsequent ethical thinkers to think that justice cannot be based in sentiment but requires a more intellectually constructive rational(ist) basis, and in recent times this view of the matter seems to have been held, most influentially, by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice. Rawls makes clear his belief in the inadequacy of benevolence or sympathetic human sentiment in formulating an adequate conception of social justice. Rawls's positive view of justice is concerned primarily with the justice of institutions or what he calls the “basic structure” of society: justice as an individual virtue is derivative from justice as a social virtue defined via certain principles of justice. Rawls deliberately invokes Kantian rationalism (or anti-sentimentalism) in explaining the intellectual or theoretical motivation behind his construction, and the two principles of justice that he argues would be agreed upon under the contractual conditions he specifies represent a kind of egalitarian political liberalism. Roughly, those principles stress basic liberties and opportunities for self-advancement over considerations of social welfare, and the distribution of goods in society is then supposed to work to the advantage of all especially the worst-off members of society. Rawls argues that a utilitarian principle of justice dictating simply the maximization of overall social well-being would not be accepted in his original position and is accordingly less plausible than the conception of justice embodied in his own two principles and the construction that leads to them. He also says that the idea of what people distributively deserve or merit is derivative from social justice rather providing the basis for thinking about social justice.

According to Rawls, individual justice is theoretically derivative from social justice because the just individual is to be understood as someone with an effective or “regulative” desire to comply with the principles of justice. This is very close to the Kantian view of justice as an individual virtue, and it also makes that virtue an artificial one in Hume's sense. But, in part because he (like Kant) doesn't assume virtue ethics, Rawls doesn't get caught up in the Humean circle we described above. Other questions about Rawls's (or any) rationalist account of the virtue of justice, however, can lead us back in the direction of a non-circular and non-Humean form of sentimentalism about that virtue.

Stages of Moral Development

Rawls is far from being the only thinker to conceive of moral development in terms substantially derived from Jean Piaget's work, and at the time Rawls was writing A Theory of Justice, educational psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg was working out a Piaget-inspired conception of moral development that postulated six stages of human moral development. Kohlberg claimed that the highest stage of such development involves a concern for justice and human rights based on universal principles, and he relegated sheer concern for relationships and for individual human well-being to lower stages of the process.

This treats utiltarianism as less cognitively advanced (more primitive) than rationalist views like Rawls's and Kant's, and utilitarians like Hare have naturally called into question the objectivity and intellectual fairness of Kohlberg's account. More significantly, perhaps, the evidence for Kohlberg's stage sequence was drawn from studies of boys, and when one applies the sequence to the study of young girls, it turns out that girls on average end up at a less advanced stage of moral development than boys do.

What came next is well known. In her 1982 book In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women's Development, Carol Gilligan responded to Kohlberg's views by questioning whether a theory of moral development based solely on a sample of males could reasonably be used to draw conclusions about the inferior moral development of women. Gilligan argued that her own studies of women's development indicated that the moral development of girls and women proceeds and ends in a different fashion from that of boys and men, but that that proves nothing about inferiority or superiority: it is merely a fact of difference. In particular, Gilligan claimed that women tend to think morally in terms of connection to others (relationships) and in terms of caring about (responsibility for) those with whom they are connected; men, by contrast and in line with Kohlberg's studies, tend to think more in terms of general principles of justice and of individual rights against (or individual autonomy from) other people.

Theories of Justice:

Understandings of justice differ in every culture, as cultures are usually dependent upon a shared history, mythology and/or religion. Each culture's ethics create values which influence the notion of justice. Although there can be found some justice principles that are one and the same in all or most of the cultures, these are insufficient to create a unitary justice apprehension.

Justice as harmony: In his dialogue Republic, Plato uses Socrates to argue for justice that covers both the just person and the just City State. Justice is a proper, harmonious relationship between the warring parts of the person or city. Hence Plato's definition of justice is that justice is the having and doing of what is one's own. A just man is a man in just the right place, doing his best and giving the precise equivalent of what he has received. This applies both at the individual level and at the universal level. A person's soul has three parts – reason, spirit and desire. Similarly, a city has three parts. Socrates uses the parable of the ship to illustrate this point: the unjust city is like a ship in open ocean, crewed by a powerful but drunken captain (the common people), a group of untrustworthy advisors who try to manipulate the captain into giving them power over the ship's course (the politicians), and a navigator (the philosopher) who is the only one who knows how to get the ship to port. For Socrates, the only way the ship will reach its destination – the good – is if the navigator takes charge.

Justice as trickery: In Republic by Plato, the character Thrasymachus argues that justice is the interest of the strong—merely a name for what the powerful or cunning ruler has imposed on the people.

Divine command theory: Justice as a divine law is commanding, and indeed the whole of morality, is the authoritative command. Killing is wrong and therefore must be punished and if not punished what should be done? A famous paradox called the Euthyphro dilemma essentially asks: is something right because God commands it, or does God command it because it's right? If the former, then justice is arbitrary; if the latter, then morality exists on a higher order than God, who becomes little more than a passer-on of moral knowledge. Some Divine command advocates respond by saying that the dilemma is false: goodness is the very nature of God and is necessarily expressed in His commands. Another response is that the laws and moral principles are objective and self evident in nature. God embodies these laws and is therefore neither higher nor lower than the law. He sets an example for the good people among men to follow His way and also become an embodiment of the highest principles and morals.

Natural law: For advocates of the theory like John Locke justice is part of natural law. It involves the system of consequences that naturally derives from any action or choice. In this, it is similar to the laws of physics: in the same way as the Newton's laws of Motion that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Justice requires according individuals or groups what they actually deserve, merit, or are entitled to. Justice, on this account, is a universal and absolute concept: laws, principles, religions, etc., are merely attempts to codify that concept, sometimes with results that entirely contradict the true nature of justice.

Justice as human creation:

In contrast to the understandings canvassed so far, justice may be understood as a human creation, rather than a discovery of harmony, divine command, or natural law. This claim can be understood in a number of ways, with the fundamental division being between those who argue that justice is the creation of some humans, and those who argue that it is the creation of all humans.

Social contract: According to thinkers in the social contract tradition, justice is derived from the mutual agreement of everyone concerned; or, in many versions, from what they would agree to under hypothetical conditions including equality and absence of bias. This account is considered further below, under ‘Justice as fairness’.

Justice as a subordinate value: According to utilitarian thinkers including John Stuart Mill, justice is not as fundamental as we often think. Rather, it is derived from the more basic standard of rightness, consequentialism: what is right is what has the best consequences usually measured by the total or average welfare caused. Mill tries to explain our mistaken belief that justice is overwhelmingly important by arguing that it derives from two natural human tendencies: our desire to retaliate against those who hurt us, and our ability to put ourselves imaginatively in another's place. So, when we see someone harmed, we project ourselves into her situation and feel a desire to retaliate on her behalf. If this process is the source of our feelings about justice, that ought to undermine our confidence in them.

Theories of distributive justice: Distributive justice is directed at the proper allocation of things : wealth, power, reward, respect among different people. Hans von Aachen in “Allegory” or The Triumph of Justice has opined that theories of distributive justice need to answer three questions:

1. What goods are to be distributed? Is it to be wealth, power, respect, some combination of these things?

2. Between what entities are they to be distributed? Humans (dead, living, future), sentient beings, the members of a single society, nations?

3. What is the proper distribution? Equal, meritocratic, according to social status, according to need, based on property rights and non-aggression?

Distributive justice theorists generally do not answer questions of who has the right to enforce a particular favored distribution. On the other hand, property rights theorists argue that there is no "favored distribution." Rather, distribution should be based simply on whatever distribution results from non-coerced interactions or transactions (that is, transactions not based upon force or fraud).

This section describes some widely held theories of distributive justice, and their attempts to answer these questions.

Egalitarianism: According to the egalitarians, justice can only exist within the coordinates of equality. This basic view can be elaborated in many different ways, according to what goods are to be distributed—wealth, respect, opportunity—and what they are to be distributed equally between—individuals, families, nations, races, species. Commonly held egalitarian positions include demands for equality of opportunity and for equality of outcome. It affirms that freedom and justice without equality are hollow and that equality itself is the highest justice.

At a cultural level, egalitarian theories have developed in sophistication and acceptance during the past two hundred years. Among the notable egalitarian philosophies are socialism, communism, anarchism, left-libertarianism, and progressivism, all of which propound economic, political, and legal egalitarianism, respectively. Several egalitarian ideas enjoy wide support among intellectuals and in the general populations of many countries. Whether any of these ideas have been significantly implemented in practice, however, remains a controversial question. One argument is that liberalism provides democracy with the experience of civic reformism. Without it, democracy loses any link to a coherent design of public policy endeavoring to provide the resources for the realization of democratic citizenship.

In one sense, all theories of distributive justice claim that everyone should get what they deserve. Theories disagree on the basis for deserving. The main distinction is between theories that argue the basis of just deserts is held equally by everyone, and therefore derive egalitarian accounts of distributive justice—and theories that argue the basis of just deserts is unequally distributed on the basis of, for instance, hard work, and therefore derive accounts of distributive justice by which some should have more than others. This section deals with some popular theories of the second type.

According to meritocratic theories, goods, especially wealth and social status, should be distributed to match individual merit, which is usually understood as some combination of talent and hard work. According to needs-based theories, goods, especially such basic goods as food, shelter and medical care, should be distributed to meet individuals' basic needs for them. Marxism can be regarded as a needs-based theory on some readings of Marx's slogan "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need".^[10] According to contribution-based theories, goods should be distributed to match an individual's contribution to the overall social good.

Fairness: A Theory of Justice:

(J. L. Urban, statue of Lady Justice at court building in Olomouc, Czech Republic)

John Rawls in his A Theory of Justice, used a social contract argument to show that justice, and especially distributive justice, is a form of fairness: an impartial distribution of goods. Rawls argues that each of us would reject the utilitarian theory of justice that we should maximize welfare because of the risk that we might turn out to be someone whose own good is sacrificed for greater benefits for others. Instead, we would endorse Rawls's two principles of justice:

Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.
Social and economic inequalities are to be arranged so that they are both

o to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, consistent with the just savings principle, and

o attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity.

This imagined choice justifies these principles as the principles of justice for us, because we would agree to them in a fair decision procedure. Rawls's theory distinguishes two kinds of goods – (1) liberties and (2) social and economic goods, i.e. wealth, income and power – and applies different distributions to them – equality between citizens for liberties and inequality if it improves the position of the worst.

Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, where punishment is forward-looking. Justified by the ability to achieve future social benefits resulting in crime reduction. The moral worth of an action is determined by its outcome. According to the utilitarians, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. This may require sacrifice of some for the good of others, so long as everyone's good is taken impartially into account. Utilitarianism, in general, argues that the standard of justification for actions, institutions, or the whole world, is impartial welfare consequentialism, and only indirectly, if at all, to do with rights, property, need, or any other non-utilitarian criterion. These other criteria might be indirectly important, to the extent that human welfare involves them. But even then, such demands as human rights would only be elements in the calculation of overall welfare, not uncrossable barriers to action.

According to the utilitarian, as already noted, justice requires the maximization of the total or average welfare across all relevant individuals. Punishment is bad treatment of someone, and therefore can’t be good in itself, for the utilitarian. But punishment might be a necessary sacrifice that maximizes the overall good in the long term, in one or more of three ways:

1. Deterrence. The credible threat of punishment might lead people to make different choices; well-designed threats might lead people to make choices that maximize welfare.

2. Rehabilitation. Punishment might make bad people into better ones. For the utilitarian, all that ‘bad person’ can mean is ‘person who's likely to cause bad things (like suffering) ’. So, utilitarianism could recommend punishment that changes someone such that they are less likely to cause bad things.

3. Security/Incapacitation. Perhaps there are people who are irredeemable causers of bad things. If so, imprisoning them might maximize welfare by limiting their opportunities to cause harm and therefore the benefit lies within protecting society.

So, the reason for punishment is the maximization of welfare, and punishment should be of whomever, and of whatever form and severity, are needed to meet that goal. Worryingly, this may sometimes justify punishing the innocent, or inflicting disproportionately severe punishments, when that will have the best consequences overall (perhaps executing a few suspected shoplifters live on television would be an effective deterrent to shoplifting, for instance). It also suggests that punishment might turn out never to be right, depending on the facts about what actual consequences it has.^[12]

Retributive justice:

The protagonists of retributive justice will think the utilitarian's argument disastrously mistaken. If someone does something wrong, we must respond to it, and to him or her, as an individual, not as a part of a calculation of overall welfare. To do otherwise is to disrespect him or her as an individual human being. If the crime had victims, it is to disrespect them, too. Wrongdoing must be balanced or made good in some way, and so the criminal deserves to be punished. Retributivism emphasizes retribution – payback – rather than maximization of welfare. Like the theory of distributive justice as giving everyone what they deserve (see above), it links justice with desert. It says that all guilty people, and only guilty people, deserve appropriate punishment. This matches some strong intuitions about just punishment: that it should be proportional to the crime, and that it should be of only and all of the guilty. However, it is sometimes argued that retributivism is merely revenge in disguise. Despite this criticism, there are numerous differences between retribution and revenge: the former is impartial, has a scale of appropriateness and corrects a moral wrong, whereas the latter is personal, unlimited in scale, and often corrects a slight.

Restorative justice:

Restorative justice (also sometimes called "reparative justice") is an approach to justice that focuses on the needs of victims and offenders, instead of satisfying abstract legal principles or punishing the offender. Victims take an active role in the process, while offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions, "to repair the harm they've done—by apologizing, returning stolen money, or community service". It is based on a theory of justice that considers crime and wrongdoing to be an offense against an individual or community rather than the state. Restorative justice that fosters dialogue between victim and offender shows the highest rates of victim satisfaction and offender accountability.

Mixed theories:

Some modern philosophers have argued that Utilitarian and Retributive theories are not mutually exclusive. For example, Andrew Von Hirsch, in his 1976 book Doing Justice, suggested that we have a moral obligation to punish greater crimes more than lesser ones. However, so long as we adhere to that constraint then utilitarian ideals would play a significant secondary role.

Justice and rule of law in Indian context:

Having discussed the march of justice as an institution by embodying the essence of valuable contribution of thinkers of different ages, now I come to the second part of my paper: role of justice in India or the notion of justice for common men in present day India.

India is presently passing through a transitional period in its history, transition from feudal agricultural society to modern industrial society. This is a very painful and agonizing period in history. The old feudal society is being uprooted and torn apart, but the new, modern, industrial society has not yet been entirely established. Old values are crumbling, everything is in turmoil. We may recollect the line in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth: “Fair is foul and foul is fair”. What was regarded good earlier e.g. the caste system is regarded bad today (at least by the enlightened section of society), and what was regarded bad earlier, e.g. love marriage, is acceptable today (at least to the modern minded persons).

The real issues in India are socio-economic, the terrible poverty in which 80% of our people are living, the massive unemployment, the price rise, lack of medical care, education, and backward social practices like honour killing and caste oppression and religious fundamentalism etc.

Recently ‘The Hindu’ published that a quarter million farmers committed suicide in the last fifteen years. In Europe the displaced peasants got jobs in the factories which were coming up because of the Industrial Revolution. In India, on the other hand industrial jobs are now hard to come by. Agricultural lands are acquired by government at cheaper rates to pass on the benefit to the real estate developers and builders. Many mills have closed down and have become real estate. On the contrary, the job trend in manufacturing sector has seen a sharp decline over the last 15 years. Where then do these millions of displaced peasants go? They go to cities where they became domestic servants, street hawkers, or even criminals. It is estimated that there are 1 to 2 lac adolescent girls from Jharkhand working as maids in Delhi. Prostitution is rampant in all cities, due to abject poverty.

In the field of health care, it may be pointed out that the number of quacks in every city in India is several times the number of regular doctors. This is because the poor people cannot afford going to a regular doctor. In rural areas the condition is worse. The government doctors posted to primary health centres usually come for a day or two each month, and run their private nursing homes in the cities the rest of the time.

In ‘Shining’ India, the child malnutrition figures are the worst in the world. According to U.N. data, the percentage of under weight children below the age of 5 years in the poorest countries in the world is 25 per cent in Guinea Bissau, 27 per cent in Sierra Leone, 38 per cent in Ethiopia, and 47 per cent in India. The average family in India is consuming 100 kilograms of food grains less than it did 10 years ago (see P. Sainath’s article ‘Slumdogs and Millionaires’). The law makers are far away from the realities formulating policies sitting in air conditioned rooms and acting largely like Queen Marie Autoinette, who when told that the people have no bread, said that they could eat cake. The idea of justice has to sit deep in all of us as citizens of this country, and ought to manifest itself in our daily lives, writes Aditya sondhi. The victims of corruption are fundamentally the poor. Both in terms of denial of resources meant for equitable distribution, and denial of the benefits of welfare schemes.

The Indian Supreme Court has led the way in galvanizing the crusade against injustice to the weakest sections of society. Over time, the jurisprudence has developed to such an extent that a simple letter of a destitute or a telegram of an under trial is sufficient to set the law in motion. And the instances of the courts being ‘activist’ in such matters are frequent. Most recently, the Karnataka High Court took suo motu cognizance of the malnutrition deaths in Raichur (and other districts) based on media reports. Separately, the High Court set aside a Government of India notification that paradoxically provided wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) that were lower than the wages prescribed under the Minimum Wages Act! The gross injustice of an enactment was corrected by judicial diktat. Gandhi had said that the tears in the eyes of the weakest ought to drive our collective consciousness. This mantra applies to all institutions of democracy — the courts, the executive, the government and the media.

Access to justice

The Constitution treats all citizens as being equal and provides them equal protection under the law. Yet, the common person faces barriers to ‘access to justice.' Illiteracy, lack of financial resources and social backwardness are major factors that hinder the common person from accessing justice. There are other invisible barriers: lack of courage to exercise legal rights, the proclivity to suffer silently the denial of rights, and geographical and spatial barriers are examples. Such barriers keep people disempowered and subjected to exploitation by powerful people. This results in their being shoved away from the mainstream, and they become constrained in becoming potential economic actors contributing to the nation's development.

Parliament enacted the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 in order to give effect to Article 39-A of the Constitution to extend free legal aid, to ensure that the legal system promotes justice on the basis of equal opportunity. (November 9 is observed as National Legal Services Day, to commemorate the enactment of the legislation.) Those entitled to free legal services are members of the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes, women, children, persons with disability, victims of ethnic violence, industrial workmen, persons in custody, and those whose income does not exceed a level set by the government (currently it is Rs.1 lakh a year in most States). The Act empowers legal services authorities at the district, State and national levels, and the different committees (legal services institutions) to organise Lok Adalats to resolve pending and pre-litigation disputes. It provides for permanent Lok Adalats to settle disputes involving public utility services. Under the Act, “legal services” have a meaning that includes rendering of service in the conduct of any court-annexed proceedings or proceedings before any authority, tribunal and so on, and giving advice on legal matters. Promoting legal literacy and conducting legal awareness programmes are functions of legal services institutions.

The Act provides for a machinery to ensure access to justice to all through the institutions of legal services authorities and committees. These institutions are manned by judges and judicial officers. Parliament entrusted the judiciary with the task of implementing the provisions of the Act, as the other pillars of the government, particularly the executive, were neither inclined nor had the expertise to take up the responsibility to provide access to justice to the weaker sections.

However, one of the problems faced by legal services institutions is their inability to reach out to the common people. This hiatus between them and the common people was perceived as indirectly defeating the objectives of the Act. It is in this context that the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) has come up with the idea of para-legal volunteers to bridge the gap between the common person and legal services institutions.

The scheme seeks to utilise community-based volunteers selected from villages and other localities to provide basic legal services to the common people. Educated persons with commitment to social service and with a record of good character are selected. The volunteers are trained by district legal services authorities. The training equips them to identify the law-related needs of the marginalised in their locality. Such needs include assistance to secure legal rights, benefits and actionable entitlements under different government schemes that are denied to them. Coming as they do from the same locality, they are in a better position to identify those who need assistance and bring them to the nearest legal services institutions to solve their problems within the framework of law. They can assist disempowered people to get their entitlements from government offices where ordinary people often face hassles on account of bureaucratic lethargy and apathy

There has been a widespread grievance that lawyers engaged by legal services institutions do not perform their duties effectively and that the lawyers are not paid commensurately for their work. In order to solve these problems, NALSA has framed the National Legal Services Authority (Free and Competent Legal services) Regulations, 2010 to provide free and competent legal services. Scrutiny of legal aid applications, monitoring of cases where legal aid is provided, and engaging senior lawyers on payment of regular fees in special cases, are the salient features of the Regulations. In serious matters where the life and liberty of a person are in jeopardy, the Regulations empower legal services authorities to specially engage senior lawyers.

Children's rights, a neglected field

Juveniles including children constitute more than a third of India's population. Yet, children and their rights are neglected. The problems of children are often seen through the spectacles of an adult. Consequently, the rights of children who are orphaned abandoned and in conflict with the law are not properly handled by government officials and juvenile justice institutions. Denied care and protection, they may end up as children in conflict with law. At the same time, children in conflict with the law need care and protection. In October 2011, the Supreme Court, in Sampurna Behrua v. Union of India, a public interest litigation, directed the Directors General of Police of the States to designate one police officer in each police station as juvenile/child welfare officer. The capital cities.

Legal services to the mentally-ill and the mentally-retarded, to workers in the unorganised sector, and to solve disputes arising out of the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, are other schemes drawn up by NALSA for implementation by legal services institutions. A web-based monitoring system is in place to monitor their activities. NALSA works with civil society organisations, specialised statutory bodies and government departments.

Legal services institutions have until now functioned in uncharted waters, often making their presence felt only at certain ports of call like court-based legal services, organising legal literacy camps and Lok Adalats. Now, with a paradigm shift in the concept of legal services, legal services authorities are reaching out to the people to facilitate ‘access to justice' to all in the most practicable and economical manner.

There is no doubt that the noble initiative taken by NALSA is worth appreciable when there is need to eradicate the impediments that come in the way of providing justice to everyone and realizing the state of 'rule of law'. Again it can be termed as Judicial Activism with a long term vision to formalize and revamp the access able and affordable legal help/institutions. The courts are vital pillars of justice and ought to be accessible to the weakest and the poorest. Here, the sub-sects of justice delivery owe a responsibility to these under-privileged segments of society The concept of para-legal volunteers on the lines of Primary health centers is quite innovative. But again when enduring policy initiative are formulated, why anyone as a common citizen looks with a cynical attitude towards the implementation of these noble initiatives. When legal institutions enacted 'Right to health', 'Right to food' and 'Right to education' and gave them the status of Fundamental Rights, everyone was hopeful for radical changes, but little has happened on the ground. We as an Indian citizens expect more comprehensible guidelines to state actors from legal institutions at the implementation stage.

In a world where people are interconnected but they disagree, institutions are required to instantiate ideals of justice. These institutions may be justified by their approximate instantiation of justice, or they may be deeply unjust when compared with ideal standards — consider the institution of slavery. Justice is an ideal the world fails to live up to, sometimes despite good intentions, sometimes disastrously. The question of institutive justice raises issues of legitimacy, procedure, codification and interpretation, which are considered by legal theorists and by philosophers of law. Surpassing all hurdles, the journey of justice, in India and world over, continues getting reincarnated in every changing phases of human development recognizing essential changes and helping the civil society to help in turn all round growth of humanity.

Received on 20.11.2011

Accepted on 10.03.2012