Chapter 2 Justice and the Law

Again, there is that question that is asked by many people, "what is justice?" There are so many ways justice can be defined as. As we learned from the dictionary definition of justice it says that it is the maintenance or administration of what is just. Well it goes further and beyond maintenance and administration. It is an ideal meaning, it is not something we can touch, but it is something that is written. I learned that within justice, the ideal part of it, we as humans will strive to learn and comprehend and practice in order to reach a legal goal. Being just might mean to be fair. So in this case that is why when I think of justice I think of how we treat people equally if they treat us equal and vice versa, if people treat us unequally we treat them unequal. It's all about being fair..
There are two types of justice I learned about and one is distributive justice. It is basically interested with how the politcal views like nation-state distributes certain goods or resources to other people. I think that distributive justice is all about doing something for its own good. We have this type of justice because it gives value to our society. The other type of justice is retributive justice which concentrates on how a society's system of law determines whether a person is guilty or innocent and then it concentrates on the proper punishment for the guilty party.
When we discussed legal realism, I understood the fact that we practice the law instead of just reading the written law.
There are 2 perspectives we talked about in class that are:

• Natural Law: A law within the law that are moral authoritative actions that are not formal statutes or procedures. They are just "God given."
• Positivist Law: Human made laws that were brought up by social norms.

The evolutionary perspective views natural law as being originated in our evolved human nature. It is something that we evolve into over time. We just know what the law is without reading it or seeing it.

We talked about mala in se which are crimes that are evil in themselves and mala prohibita which are crimes that are evil because they are forbidden. In mala prohibita, prostitution, gambling money, and drug and alchohol abuse are all crimes that are considered to be forbidden. Crimes like rape, murder, and assualt are all considered to be evil in themselves.

Due Process is a process that is due to us. You don't have to earn due process. Due process is a right that protects an individuals rights, therefore it does not deprive anyone of their liberty, property, and life. So everyone is intitled to have protected rights.