Women Present:
Alexis (A),
Patricia (P),
Robin (ℜ),
Viki (V)
Scribe:
Gavin (G)
Apologies:
Colin (C),
David (D),
Howard (H),
John (J),
Margie (M),
Ray (R)
The homework set
On Tuesday we decided that our next meeting, on Tuesday 6th May, would focus on 'Justice'. We will interrogate this very broad concept, just as we have in the past rewardingly explored other abstract concepts such as freedom/liberty and friendship. Plato devoted his Republic to the subject, so in two hours we're bound to crack it!
Basically, there are four types of justice:
Distributive: to determine who gets what in a society. Fairness (definition needed). What Rawls focused on behind his 'veil of ignorance'...
Procedural: determining how people are people are treated fairly. Through laws primarily.
Retributive: how people are punished for wrongdoing. Maybe based on the notion of 'an eye for an eye...' The victim feeling that the perpetrator has paid their price...
Restorative: determining how balance can be achieved after a crime. Restoring 'rightness' to a relationship, which may or may not involve forgiveness.
Across these four types of justice it can either be pre-planned, as in distributive and procedural, or post-event/'crime' as in retributive and restorative forms.
Defining justice involves determining who precisely is in need of justice. What are the 'rights' involved?
At our meeting we will use the case described on Tuesday as a means of facilitating discussion. Just to refresh our memories, this case involves:
a middle-aged man remembering being abused by his uncle in childhood and feeling angry: wanting some action to be taken.
The police being informed? But what would be the implications of this?
For the victim, potential future victims, for the alleged abuser, for other family members?
Does the time which has elapsed since the activity have any relevance; the changing social, cultural context?
What ethical structure might underlie the decision to proceed or not?
Value ethics; that sexual/other abuse of a child, or anyone, is simply wrong, and therefore must be followed up and punished in some way?
Or the consequentialist approach, where the pros and cons of effects on all those involved are part of a calculus.
We ask everyone to do some wide-ranging research around this topic and come prepared with their definition of 'justice' in its various manifestations. And, more broadly, to describe what a 'just society' looks like.
Introduction(S)
There is a strong relationship between justice and freedom, and between justice and virtue.
In politics, justice is called distributive or social justice.
Aristotle wrote about proportionate justice.
Retributive justice is about the remedies against those who do wrong.
And restorative justice tries to make things right after the offence.
How does justice interact with our rights?
There is also natural justice.
In Roman law, iustitia is defined as "the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due".
Discussion
The Nature of Justice
For some of us, justice can be a visual symbol: The sword represents force, which may be needed to implement justice. The blindfold shows that it will be administered without bias. The balance shows that the judgement will be fair.(V)
Is there a mean in justice?(S)
Yes, in the sense of the proportionate application of legal resources: don't call the police if the matter is trivial enough to be resolved within the family.(G)
Proportionality also means you don’t execute a person for stealing a loaf.(V)
Laws vary according to the situation: DO NOT KILL applies throughout peacetime, but not in times of war.(V)
Small children have a strong sense of justice, of being wronged. “That’s not fair.”
Some children may not be able to defend themselves or realise they have been wronged. Everyone processes abuse differently. The justice process can be incredibly stressful for the victim.(ℜ)
Sen’s capabilities framework provides a way of looking at the freedom to generate capabilities. Children suffer so many injustices in war. Popper's concept of things not working in science can be applied a wider set of things. The biblical notion that we are free to pillage the environment no longer works in a world of insufficient resources.(L)
There needs to be justice in relation to how we treat people.(A)
That's what Aristotle calls political justice.(S)
Cuts to the justice system mean that the restorative side isn’t always properly funded.(ℜ)
We should also not overlook the idea of justice for the perpetrator, if they really want to change.(S)
If perpetrator has written a letter of remorse to their victim, that helps reduce their sentence.(V)
The Post Office scandal wasn’t justice, because the Post Office could launch prosecutions itself and, unlike the accused, could throw seemingly endless amounts of money at the problem.(V)
Are young people less able to have a sense of justice?(S)
The introduction of school councils was an important development.(P)
Some thieves can be reformed over time.(V)
A robber may have legitimate reasons for their crime.(L)
Sexual Abuse
In Victorian times, the husband had greater responsibility for rectifying what had happened in his household.(L)
In Aristotle’s time, men sleeping with boys was normal behaviour.(G)
In some case of child sexual abuse outside the family, the child may not have recognised it as sexual abuse at the time. For some, love and sexual abuse may have been associated and hard to distinguish.(ℜ)
In the Netherlands where the father is the abuser, the social services work to keep the father in the household.(L)
One abuse victim was further victimised when her abuser was convicted and went to jail.
If the abuse happened a long time ago, it is not at all easy to work out exactly what happened.
Where offences were one-on-one, there may be no witness evidence of what happened. The CPS today, viewing this often as character-driven crime, tries to make up for the lack of evidence with a substantial list of accusations against the same person from multiple victims.(G)
The evidential requirement for criminal conviction is beyond reasonable doubt.
Children can make false accusations. Caretakers at school can be blackmailed with this threat by malicious pupils.(V)
Sometimes adults should act on their instincts. We should listen to children more.(L)
We should not forget epistemic justice, which relate to testimony. Hume says we should not necessarily always believe what people say.(L)
Epistemic justice refers to the idea of fairness and equity in the realm of knowledge and knowledge production. It concerns itself with ensuring that all individuals have equal opportunities to access, contribute to, and have their knowledge recognized and valued. This includes challenging power imbalances that can lead to the silencing or marginalization of certain voices and knowledge system.
Alan Turing was guilty of a criminal offence at the time: that of active homosexuality.
Homosexuality is what people are. It's not a lifestyle choice.(L)
Ditto paedophiles. Can they be 'cured'?(V)
The difference is in the exerting of power over the other.(S)
Some abusers can continue for the rest of their lives.(ℜ)
That was the view of Ray Wyre.(G)
Many abusers were themselves abused.(L)
In a small closed community it is harder for child abuse to go unnoticed.(L)
Schools have been given responsibility for monitoring pupils for signs of abuse.(V)
In small religious communities this sometimes doesn’t work. The Pitcairn Islands saw widespread child abuse this century.
Philosopher Miranda Fricker uses the movie The Talented Mr. Ripley to illustrate her concept of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice. In the scene where Herbert Greenleaf dismisses Marge Sherwood's suspicions about Dickie's disappearance with the comment, "Marge, there's female intuition, and then there are facts," Fricker argues that Greenleaf is exhibiting a form of injustice based on Marge's gender. This dismissal is not just a matter of disagreeing with her, but a failure to give her the credibility she deserves as a knower, due to a prejudicial stereotype, in this case, sexism.(L)
Sometimes it’s safer to tell your story when an adult. Perhaps you didn’t understand at the age of seven that it was abuse. Any police officer in the family would predictably advise reporting the incident.(L)
Does the passage of time matter if there have been no further offences?(S)
Political Justice
What is the relationship between morality and justice? The world seems much more transactional and materialistic.(S)
Do we have the right to overconsume if it prevents others from consuming what they need to survive? Has natural justice changed for the worse?(S)
It is horrendous what is happening in, for example, Israel. The UN seems to be falling apart.(A)
Justice is eroded where power is being abused.(L)
When Princess Diana died, people felt she had done a lot of good and had been a victim of injustice.(S)
Recent UK governments haven't been all bad. Disabled people, for example, have many more facilities than they used to. Many politicians working very hard to improve society.(V)
Americans don’t understand that Canada has a parliamentary democracy.
(Parliamentary democracy is a system of government where the executive branch (the government) is drawn from and accountable to the legislature (the parliament). The head of government (like a Prime Minister) gains legitimacy by holding the support of a majority of the legislature, which can remove them through a vote of no confidence. This contrasts with presidential systems where the executive is directly elected and not solely accountable to the legislature. [source: Wikipedia])
Other Fragments
The quirky Sussex town of Lewes has granted rights to the River Ouse. The Indus river is shared between India and Pakistan is a resource which must be handled sensitively.(S)
Rivers shared between two or more countries will be a major battleground.(A)
Angola's battle over Okavango Delta is about economics. The drive to survive and provide for one's own species is creating this battle.(V)
Books referenced
[1] JRR Tolkien (1955). 'Lord of the Rings'. Allen & Unwin.
[2] William Golding (1954). 'Lord of the Flies'. Faber & Faber.
[3] Michael Sandel (2010). 'Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?'. Penguin.
[4] Patricia Highsmith (1955). 'The Talented Mr. Ripley'. Penguin.
