Two tails of justice

Chatterjee, Pranab

SOCIAL JUSTICE

Abstract

it Is argued that justice is a form of group behavior, and that there are basically five types of justice: protective, corrective, restorative, distributive, and representational. Corrective and protective justice, for the most part, help attain social control and strengthen existing social order. Distributive and representational justice often help the marginalized and disadvantaged members of a group. Restorative justice Is In the middle, and performs both functions. Thus, justice seems to have two tails, similar to that found In a normal curve In statistics. One of these tails, where corrective and protective justice help support the existing social order of groups, provides social stability. The other tail, where distributive and representational justice support the vulnerable and the marginalized members of a group, generates the thrust for social change. Social workers need to understand the proper role of both of these tails.

THE BASIC THESIS IN THIS PAPER is that justice is a form of group behavior, and that there are five different types of justice: distributive, representational, correctional, protective, and restorative. We further argue that at times this group behavior deals with social change. At other times it represents social control, which strengthens existing social order and contributes to its stability. For example, at times distributive justice may call for highly taxing Peter to pay Paul, because Peter has plenty and Paul has nothing. On the other hand, a form of protective justice calls for helping Peter to keep his plenty as long as he acquires his plenty through legitimate means, and any attempt to take his legally acquired assets becomes a form of theft. At such times, protective justice to help Peter to keep his plenty may result in corrective justice toward Paul if he keeps demanding some, or all, of Peter's legally acquired assets.

In the above examples of group behavior, group norms dictate how justice is socially constructed. In the first example, distributive justice, a norm of mutual aid (cf Kropotkin, 1902) forms the foundation of justice. It requires some form of flow of resources from those (like Peter) who have plenty, to those (like Paul) who have very little. The other consideration in this situation is whether Paul is entitled to such redistribution. That is, does Paul have a right to receive help from Peter, or is this help a form of gratuity?

In the second example, protective justice, a norm of social or deviance control (Durkheim, 1950; Nozick, 1974) forms the foundation of justice. Peter has acquired property by the existing rules of the group. He is entitled to keep it, and the group must protect him from others who may want to take it away. In order to protect Peter's property rights, the group may have to engage in correctional justice toward Paul.

The norm of social control is often tied to a norm of boundary maintenance. All groups engage in some form of boundary maintenance, which means defining who is eligible for membership in it and who is not, what should be the appropriate roles of group members, and what kinds of rewards or punishments should be meted out to persons not conforming to these boundaries and roles.

In the examples given above, both Peter and Paul are members of the group. For the group to retain its integrity, Paul cannot be allowed to starve or become destitute. A starving or destitute person within a group may become a dangerous person. Besides, this type of destitution may be embarrassing for the group as a whole. To prevent such starvation or destitution scenarios, the group needs to balance two tasks: how to create incentives for Peter to give away a portion of his holdings (the norm of mutual aid), and simultaneously, how to encourage Paul to become self-sufficient (the norm of self sufficiency), so no income or asset transfer from Peter will be needed.

What if, at some later date, Peter needs a favor (his fence needs repair)? Should Paul offer to mend Peter's fence, because he owes a favor to Peter for having received help when he was destitute? If Paul feels that he should, and other group members also feel that he should, then a norm of reciprocity also exists in that group. On the other hand, if Paul feels that he was entitled to receive what Peter gave in the past, then at least in this situation no norm of reciprocity can be invoked. Peter has to find someone else to repair his fence.

All of these five norms evolve over time to give shape to all types of justice. They are inherent in group behavior. At times, these norms create further ambiguity and contradiction. How a group sets up procedures to reduce these ambiguities and contradictions are often called a justice system. At any given time within a group, these ambiguous and contradictory reductions are artifacts of past situations and become historically important in the culture of the group. They reflect a group's adaptations to its internal and external environments over a period of time.

Further Illustrations

Norms are rules of behavior in groups (Feldman, 1984). Sully Prudhomme (1900), the first Nobel laureate in poetry, thought that they are undertaken to undo undesirable behaviors from the past. Such undoings evolve over time to maintain the social integration of the group. They are an integral part of group behavior. They form the foundations of justice, which, at times, are a form of social control (or correction of norm violation). At other times, justice means providing support to the disadvantaged persons in a group, and rests on the norm of mutual aid.

Figure 1 summarizes this discussion. In Figure 1, Box A represents a composite of two strong norms: the norm of reciprocity and the norm of self-sufficiency. When a dispute occurs, it usually means that an individual is seen as an offender and the offense committed is seen as an offensive act against another individual. The offense committed may be a form of contract violation, or a form of dispute over property ownership. Here the process of justice may look like a civil procedure, and justice involves the protection of individual interests. In such cases, justice is a balancing act, or an act of arbitration, undertaken by a designated third party in the group (or in a state).

In Box B, the individual is still the offender, but the offense is seen as an assault against the entire social group. Such is the case when the offense involves the protection of a person or property. Here the process resembles a criminal procedure, and justice is both a protective act and a corrective act, again undertaken by a designated third party (or a state). The dominant norms here are social control (or deviance control), boundary maintenance, and reciprocity (which may translate as "an eye for an eye").

In Box C, a larger subgroup is the offender. It can be a situation in which individual members of a subgroup become the victims of some offensive procedure. In such cases, justice involves equity procedures, and becomes a restorative or reinstating act-for example, recompense to individual Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Resolution of many class action suits in many societies are another example of this. This situation reflects a tension between the norms of self-sufficiency and mutual aid.

Finally, Box D represents situations in which one part of the entire social group is the offender against another part of the group, or against the entire group. Here it is important to change society. Justice calls for redistribution of resources or special representation of the subgroups wronged. In these settings, the process of justice is called social justice, and the objective is social change. Here the dominant norm is the norm of mutual aid.

Groups highly committed to the situations in Box A may be seen as primarily individualistic (George & Wilding, 1977; Chatterjee, 1999), whereas groups closer to Box D may be called as primarily collectivistic (George & Wilding, 1977; Chatterjee, 1999). Table 1 summarizes the five basic norms that form the foundations of justice. Table 2 defines and outlines the basic types of justice.

Justice Is Inherent in Group Situations

A review of the literature on group behavior (Bales, 1950; Bales 1970; Bales, Cohen, & Williamson, 1979; Forsyth, 1990; Gouldner, 1969; Homans, 1950; Homans, 1959; Schein, 1992; Wheelan, 1994; Whyte, 1981) reveals the following principles:

* that groups, by interacting over time, develop a culture or a subculture of their own;

* that as a part of that culture, there emerge certain norms and values specific to that group;

* that the emergent norms prescribe how group boundaries are to be maintained (how new members should be recruited and initiated, how offending members should be punished, how new members should be socialized; and how social control should be exercised);

* that the norm of reciprocity is one of the few norms that is almost universal in all groups;

* that there emerges a set of norms about how conformity should be rewarded and how deviance should be punished;

* that there may emerge a division of labor; and

* that these attributes (as outlined above) can be observed as one looks at groups such as the family, small voluntary groups (like a street corner group or a gang or a hobby group), large voluntary groups (like a nonprofit firm), small or large for-profit corporations, unions, political parties, clans, tribes, or nation states.

Given the above properties of human groups, it follows that justice as a concept is embedded in the cultural templates of groups:

* that the norms and values of the culture define when and how the process of justice is to be initiated;

* that the norms and values of the culture define treason, what constitutes a major offense to the group, and what constitutes a minor norm violation;

* that engaging in justice means preserving group boundaries by setting normative conflicts within groups, and preventing outbursts that may destabilize the group;

* that groups with strong solidarity norms may develop a form of "groupthink" ("the tendency of members of highly cohesive groups led by dynamic leaders to adhere to shared views so strongly that they totally ignore external information inconsistent with these views" (Johnson & Johnson, 1994, p. 565), and then groupthink demands there is only one norm of justice;

* that at times, and as a result of groupthink, situations develop in groups where some things are done but not talked about, and some things are talked about but not done;

* that the process of rendering and enforcing justice is done either by a subgroup of peers or by a subgroup of social superiors, or by a combination of both; and

* that these elements of justice are found in all human groups, ranging from the family group to the nation state.

Examples From Empirical Works

Three published examples show how the above principles operate in group situations. Whyte's classic study (1981) of street corner gangs, examines the group behavior of working-class Italian boys in Boston during the late 1930s. Kluckhohn's (1944) famous work on how witchcraft became active in Navajo groups and MacLeod's (1995) recent study of lower-class American peer groups of youth and their view of what that society owes them, are others. All three show how group norms prescribe the very concept of justice, and its view of distribution of goods and services, the concept of what kinds of behavior entail what kinds of rewards or punishments, and how the group should protect its members from predators from without or within. It can be suggested that the studies cited incorporate distributive justice, correctional justice, and protective justice. They are also examples of boundary maintenance in groups, task and socioemotional behavior in groups (Bales, 1950), division of labor in groups (Bales, 1970), age and gender roles in groups, and of human group behavior in diverse situations (Bales, Cohen, & Williamson, 1979).

Norms of Justice May Vary From Group to Group

The dominant norms that form the foundations of justice, as we have observed, may vary from group to group. At times, a behavior that may call for correctional justice in one group may be seen in another group as behavior that calls only for restorative justice. For example, in Whyte's study (1981), respect for property is an important norm in one group of college boys but is not that important in a street gang. Consequently, the destruction of or theft of someone else's property, that calls for correctional justice in one group of boys may lead to rewarding that behavior by conferring high status (a form of distributive justice) in the second group. In certain modern industrial states, the usage "knows right from wrong" forms the foundation of a protective or correctional justice system. Using Whyte's example, what is "right" in one group may be "wrong" in another. It should also be noted that at times a group culture may claim that its norms and the subsequent justice systems developed from it are divine in origin. For example, group leaders like Moses and Mohammed were involved in developing norms in certain nomadic groups. Later, these norms were given the status of commandments, and now they form the foundations of justice for the followers of those groups, called faiths. Whereas these norms were developed for insiders of the groups, subsequently, key members of these groups could claim that their rules of dealing with norm violation should apply to outsiders as well.

Norms of Justice in Family Groups

One of the most natural of human groupings is the family. It is possible to see a microcosm of a justice system in such groups. In some family groups, a norm that evolved from past generations was that children should receive an equal amount of affection and artifacts from their parents. This is a rudimentary form of distributive justice. If parents favor one child over another, then it may be seen as a violation of the principles of distributive justice. However, in some cultural settings a norm may develop allowing a principal family residence to be inherited only by the firstborn male child. In such settings, the norms of distributive justice call for an unequal (but just in the eyes of the members of this group) form of distribution. Parenthetically, we should note here that in at least three major world religions or faith groups (Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam), certain inheritance-related disputes within families were seen as unjust and led to major wars. The subsequent settlements of these inheritance disputes over time and through wars continue to define what is just and what is unjust in these groups.

Also in families, parents are expected to protect their children from starvation, abuse, and destitution. In such cases, when parents are protective of their children, their acts are in compliance with the norms of protective justice. In industrial states, parents unable or unwilling to provide such protection to their children are seen as deviants, and a justice system may provide protective justice for these children. Similarly, in most preindustrial states, where there is no organized social insurance system to support aged parents, grown children may be expected to protect their aged parents from starvation, abuse, and destitution. In most industrial societies, these protection functions of vulnerable populations like young children or the elderly are often shared by the state.

Norms of Justice Within the Clan or Tribe

It seems that two forms of human groupings are rather primitive in existence: the family and the community (Chatterjee, 1999, p. 57; Sahlins, 1972, 1985, 1995; Tonnies, 1957). It should be noted that all major world religions existed for many years as communities, tribes, or clans. The norms of justice evolve in tribes or clans through their adaptation in a given environment. These norms govern the relationship between men and women, between senior and junior generations, between the able and the disabled, and between the governing and the governed. They also govern group boundaries, and prescribe how justice should be done if certain group members do not respect those boundaries. Such disrespect for group boundaries may involve marrying or romancing ineligible outsiders, or helping outsiders at a cost to tribal insiders. Examples of these norms of justice can be found in the nomadic or pastoral groups that evolved into Judaism and Islam, or the agricultural societies that evolved into Hinduism, Buddhism, and Christianity. Today, legal traditions prescribing justice systems called Jewish law, Islamic law, Hindu law, or common law are derived from these group adaptations in each setting (Maine, 1970; Sahlins, 1975).

Stories about King Solomon dealing with child custody issues also tell us that canons of restorative justice are also a part of the justice system here. The laws of Hammurabi, as found on a limestone tablet near Iraq (Gadd, 1965), lead us to speculate that justice at that time ("an eye for an eye") was at least partially dependent on what modern sociologists call the "norm of reciprocity" (Homans, 1950, 1959; Gouldner, 1960).

All five of the basic norms outlined earlier can be found in the social interactions of the tribe or clan. The norm of maintaining group boundaries serves the purpose of identity defining. The norm of reciprocity creates the foundation of the social network. Inherent in this norm are mechanisms of protection (of the weak and the vulnerable, who are not capable of reciprocity), correction (of deviants, who break the norm of reciprocity), distribution (of goods and services, and their ownership through the idea of reciprocity), restoration (of goods and services to their legitimate owners if they get placed in the wrong hands), and representation (of groups that require special consideration or protection). However, the norm of social control, unlike the provisions of social control in the family or other small groups, manifests itself in both a formal and informal manner. The formal one is often written down or codified, and may come to be known as the justice system. In large groups like the clan or tribe, the norms of boundary maintenance, reciprocity, social control, and self-sufficiency often form the foundations of the protective, corrective, and restorative justice systems. The norms of mutual aid, on the other hand, form the structures of distributive and representational justice (Kropotkin, 1902; Malinowski, 1927; Maine, 1970), as shown in Figure 1.

Norms of Justice in Macro Groups: Ethnicity and Religion

From the clans and tribes of prehistory, two types of macro groups can be discerned: the great religions, and ethnicity. It seems that religions with strong norms of proselytizing to outsiders (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) are more multiethnic than religions that are not (Judaism and Hinduism). Most of these world religions seem to have originated within specific ethnic groups in given locations. Over time, proselytizing, conquest, trading, and other intergroup activities made the followers of the great religions into ethnically diverse groups.

One form of group behavior, earlier referred to as insider-outsider differentiation (for a detailed theoretical discussion of this form of group behavior, see Merton, 1972), is worth recalling here. In this form of group behavior, boundaries are drawn very clearly about who the insiders are and who the outsiders are (it can be called the rule of membership). Almost all great religions have builtin social control mechanisms for those who step outside this type of group boundary (that is, for those who disobey rules of membership, leave the group, or fail to honor the basic norms of the group). Often there is a symbol or a word that designates the outsider-like heathen (outsiders to Christianity), kafir (outsiders to Islam), or yavan (outsiders to Hinduism). Once the insider-outsider boundary is clearly drawn, a second norm of group behavior emerges around how outsiders are to be treated. Depending on location and time, the following norms for dealing with outsiders are identifiable: proselytizing (turning outsiders into insiders); banishing (chasing outsiders out into faraway territories); enslaving (turning outsiders into slaves so that their labor is available for certain important tasks), and vanquishing and executing (only insiders have a right to live; outsiders do not).

The above-described ways of retaining insider-outsider boundaries are known in group behavior as "coercive" power (French & Raven, 1959; Raven, 2001). In contrast, "reward" power for obeying the boundaries (Raven, 2001) is also used. For example, both in Judaism and Islam there exist norms of distributive justice, which are respectively called tzedakah and zakat. Both reflect a form of taxation whereby less-fortunate insiders are supported variants of a public assistance system. In contrast, the Sanskrit word daya is used in Hinduism and Buddhism. It means charity. In Christianity, the less-fortunate are also maintained by charity. A fundamental difference in supporting the less-fortunate insider seems to exist here: tzedakah in Judaism and zakat in Islam reflect obligatory giving; whereas daya and charity are voluntary. The latter norm (i.e., charity) appeals to the human emotion of mercy. The former two examples resemble what Wilensky & Lebeaux (1958) and Titmuss (1968) later called "institutional" forms of social welfare (i.e., universalistic giving to create a safety net), whereas the latter three resemble what they call the "residual" form (i.e., means-tested giving in crisis situations).

Norms of Justice In Macro Groups: The Preindustrial State

The preindustrial state has had a long history in human existence (Spengler, 1980; Hall & Ikenberry, 1989). Earher forms of the state, in all likelihood, originated from the forced settlement of agricultural communities by nomads (Chatterjee, 1999, p. 57; Oppenheimer, 1975; Eberhard, 1965). Land is seen as the primary asset here, and the amount of landholding forms the basis of social stratification (Tonnies, 1957). Maine (1970) observed that one's "status" in society was the basis on which he or she was dealt with by the ancient state, and a person was seen as the "subject" of the state. In contrast, the relationship between the individual and the state in post-Renaissance societies in Europe, argued Maine (1970), began evolving to be based on "contract," and the individual began to be seen as either a "citizen" or an "alien." The preindustrial (and pre-Renaissance) states also involved formalization of the norm of reciprocity: protection from internal and external predators was offered to subjects in exchange for taxes, loyalty, and acceptance of ideological (albeit religious) indoctrination. One may speculate that the canons of protective justice and corrective justice existed here. That is, protective justice provided for those who were loyal, paid taxes, and were ideologically compliant, and corrective justice was applied to those who were not.

It would seem that the idea of justice as a part of group behavior also holds here. The conquest of one tribe or ethnic group by another led to the beginnings of a multigroup or multiethnic state, and that also meant that there were many situations in which the norms of justice could be in conflict. If one of these ethnic groups was racially different, then the roots of ethnic discrimination and racism could have begun. It is a situation in which one group may have become the victimizer, and the other group the victim (Farley, 1988).

One attribute, however, seems to be universal in the preindustrial state, at least in the European context, and it can be termed "the professionalization of advocacy." A group of persons with specialized knowledge, a group cultore dedicated to advocacy for the client, a fee-for-service mercantile orientation, and granted legitimation by the state emerged in almost all types of European states (Maine, 1970). Today, in most states influenced by this tradition, this form of professionalized advocacy is known as the law profession.

Norms of Justice in Macro Groups: The Industrial State

The term the industrial state was popularized by Galbreath (1967). Whether coincidentally or not, industrialization began in the early part of nineteenth century in the sovereign states where there had been an earlier movement for separation of church and state (England and the United States). It is possible that "the rational motif" that is responsible for industrialization (Blauner, 1990) was also responsible for the demand for secularization of the state.

The industrial state manifests the following properties: secularity, dependence on constitutions rather than commandments, codification of insiders as citizens and outsiders as aliens (rather than as believers and nonbelievers), and extension of protection of citizens from internal and external predators to protection from ignorance, ill health, and poverty. These extended protection functions came to be known as social welfare. How social welfare was programmed, however, varied with time of onset, sponsorship, and the nature of elite groups and their interests in the industrial state (Rimlinger, 1971). For example, norms of protective justice in the industrial states included prevention of child abuse, domestic violence, child prostitution, and use of child labor. New forms of protective justice (as in child welfare or juvenile justice), distributive justice (as in income maintenance of various groups), and representative justice (such as affirmative action for designated groups) emerged (Chatterjee, 1999). These forms of protection, on the other hand, are not that readily available in preindustrial states.

With the emergence of new norms of justice, a second type of professionalization of advocacy began to emerge. In most preindustrial states, professionalization of advocacy meant the evolution of a specialized occupational group practicing law. In industrial societies, a second type of professionalization of advocacy emerged, called professional social work. Both groups use justice metaphors in their advocacy work. The concepts of restorative and corrective justice are reflected, at least in the ideal, by the state's justice policy and programs. The law profession is active in this system, and so is the social work profession. On the other hand, distributive and representational justice are attempted more frequently in the state's labor policy, welfare policy, and other types of domestic policies. The social work profession aspires to be active here, but everyday jobs (protective services, income maintenance, etc.) are more frequently in the areas of corrective and protective justice arenas.

Norms of the Advocate Groups: The Profession of Law

Over time, norms contribute to the development of customs. Eventually, some customs become laws. Some laws are developed by religious groups, and some by the state. A new vocabulary emerges in the professionalized advocacy group known as the law profession. In the European context, this vocabulary began during the Medieval Ages in the preindustrial state and has continued into the industrial state.

An important differentiation within the profession of law emerged between the criminal versus the civil law system (see Figure 1). In relation to the ideas of protective and corrective justice, another differentiation emerged around the concept of "evil by itself' (mala in se) and "evil as defined by the cultural group" (mala in prohibita). Other emergent concepts include incapacitation (of the wrongdoer to protect the social group from recurrence of the wrongful behavior), retribution to the victim (incapacitating the wrongdoer and compensating the victim, which also means restorative justice), rehabilitation (of the wrongdoer, so he or she does not repeat the wrongful act), and deterrence (wherein the wrongdoer is punished in such a way so that he or she is in no position to repeat the wrongful act, and no one else in the group imitates that act). In the industrial state, juvenile justice (justice norms applied to juveniles) is often separated from justice systems designated for adults. Table 3 provides selected illustrations of law practices and their relationships with the various types of justice.

Norms of the Advocate Groups: The Profession of Social Work

The second professionalized advocacy group, social work, has a main purpose: to deal with vulnerable persons who are easily endangered. Social work engages in advocacy on behalf of the vulnerable, victimized, and marginalized persons and groups. Approximately four types of failures in the environment necessitate the advocacy process engaged in by this professional group (Chatterjee, 1999). The first type of failure is nature failure. In this type of failure, nature is the offending agent, and the offending act may be a typhoon, a flood, or other natural disaster. Nature failure also happens when a child is born with a severe development disability, or a person contracts a severe illness requiring prolonged engagement into what Parsons (1951) called "the sick role." The second type of failure, family failure, occurs when a person's family is not capable of providing care to that person. Family failure is sometimes combined into a term called "family and community failure," meaning that neither the immediate family nor the adjacent community of the victim is capable of caregiving to that person. A third type of failure occurs when market participation to earn a living becomes impossible due to "market failure." The Great Depression that began in 1929 was an example of a market failure, and it required massive intervention by the state. The fourth type of failure, distributrion failure, occurs when the distribution system fails (Sen, 1992). Here, due to political or military reasons, the regular distribution system becomes incapacitated. During the twentieth century, many severe famines and other food shortages (the Bengal Famine of 1942-1943 and the Ethiopian Famine of the 1980s) occurred, not because of nature failure, but because of distribution failure. Table 3 provides some selected illustrations of social work practices that interface with the various types of justice.

Norms of Justice In Macro Groups: The World System

Between the years of 1945 (the end of World War II) and 1975, there emerged two models of how to view the global village: the first of these is called the Three Discrete Worlds Model, and the second is called the Three Concentric Worlds Model. In the Three Discrete Worlds Model, First World refers to the capitalistic industrial states of Western Europe, North America, and Australia; Second World refers to the former communist industrial states led by the Soviet Union; and the Third World refers to the nonindustrialized, poor, developing states in Africa, Asia, and parts of Latin America (Chatterjee, 1996, pp. 45-46). In the view of the Three Concentric Worlds (Shils, 1975; Snyder & Kick, 1979; Bollen & Appold, 1993; Wallerstein, 1976, 1980, 1989), the global village (i.e., the world system) as it stood in the 1990s began in the seventeenth century. Today it has a core (Western Europe, North America, and Japan), a semiperiphery (Eastern Europe and Russia), and a periphery (the poor regions of Africa, South America, and Asia).

In both models, First World or the core industrial states emerge as the dominant states in the world. Some authors (Frank, 1969; Furtado, 1970; Wallerstein, 1989; Lenski, Lenski, & Nolan, 1991) view this dominance by the First World or the core states of the world as exploitive. These same authors think that the entire world should be subjected to the norms of distributive justice, whereby the unevenly distributed resources are redistributed. Such redistribution would flow from the First World or the core states to the semiperiphery and periphery states (the Second and the Third Worlds). The basic argument here is that the First World or core states have benefited substantially by using raw materials and labor from the semiperipheral or peripheral states, and the norms of distributive justice require that there be wealth transfer to the exploited nations.

Whether or not such wealth transfer is politically feasible, certain moves, especially championed by the wealthy countries of the First World, seem to be in compliance with the norms of distributive justice at the global scale. Such moves include political and economic support of the Third World by the various agencies of the United Nations, the efforts by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and the various levels of private and governmental efforts in technology transfer.

Norms of Justice: Dream and Reality

Justice is understood as equal protection by the law. It means that all citizens, regardless of origin, are to be treated equally by the justice system, and that the process of justice should be blind to any privileged or nonprivileged status of citizens. If one wishes to differentiate between the realm of "should or ought" from that of "is," it would appear that in market societies, justice, like most other things, is two-tiered. These two tiers include a "decommodified" form (as Esping-Andersen, 1990, calls them, referring to goods and services provided by the state); and a "commodified" form (goods and services provided by the market). For example, in most industrial states, a person accused of having committed a crime, if without the means to afford a professional advocate in law, can obtain the services of a professional advocate provided by the state. On the other hand, the same accused person, if a person of means, can purchase the services of a professional advocate from the marketplace. Most of the time, the services of a professional advocate purchased at the marketplace are likely to be superior to those provided by the state, and seem to cover the areas of protective, restorative, and correctional justice.

Concerning distributive justice, a debate during the 1970s took place around the theme of equality (Rawls, 1971; Nozick, 1974). This debate between Rawls (1971) and Nozick (1974) highlighted the issues related to distributive justice. Rawls advocated state intervention for disadvantaged populations, and for some redistribution from the privileged to the less privileged. Nozick (1974), on the other hand, argued that once people acquired income or property in a lawful manner the state could not take it even for the purposes of redistributive justice. Property, and especially private property, argued Nozick, should be protected as a part of the social contract, since from this basic contract comes the incentive to build the artifacts and foundations of a culture (Reiman, 1990; Roemer, 1996). Sandel (1982) sharply dissented from both Rawls and Nozick on this matter, arguing that people do not enter into a social contract, but instead, grow up as members of a certain type of community in which a social structure is already prevalent. This notion is similar to the position advanced by Geertz (1983) a year later. These debates illustrated, it seems, the problems inherent in distributive justice.

The discrepancy between dream and reality can also be seen in the efforts of several countries to pursue representational justice, a programmatic version of which is affirmative action. The basic objective of this form of justice is to attain equality of groups that are underrepresented in the political or market arenas. However, this form of justice creates a sense of unfairness among many other groups that have been socialized to think that access to key positions in an industrial state must be on the basis of individual merit rather than group membership (Pelton, 1999).

Norms of Justice in Capitalism

By the end of the twentieth century, capitalism as an economic ideology seemed triumphant, and socialist visions of justice seemed to be falling on the wayside. Isbister (2001) has provided us with a list of issues about capitalism and the norms of justice it generates. We list most of them below. Income equality is not a norm in capitalism. However, there seems to be a dispute over how much inequality is tolerable. Should there be a tremendous gap between what is considered low income and high income (as is prevalent in American capitalism) or should the norms of justice require "solidaristic wages," a term used by Gunnar Myrdal (Chatterjee, 1999), that describes the wage structure in Japan or Sweden? Should the state engage in taxation with the philosophy that all persons should pay the same tax (the same proportion of their income), or should they pay an increasing percentage of tax as they earn more? Should inheritance be taxed and at what level? Without inheritance tax there is no way of correcting inequality at birth (Sen, 1992). However, taxing inheritance means taxing what has already been taxed and is now the lawful property of a given party.

Should the state provide an income floor under a group trapped in a culture of poverty? Or, is it the personal responsibility of the groups trapped in a culture of poverty to engage in market participation to get out of poverty? Should the state engage in affirmative action to attain representational justice, or is affirmative action like a steroid, to be used only for a limited time to create a new middle class that should survive in a market society solely out of its own efforts? Should foreign aid be given as a reward, that is, to get political compliance from another sovereign state, or should it be given because of the needs in that sovereign state? Should immigration laws be made that will allow intake according to the proportion of ethnoracial groups already within the country (the claim that maintaining a certain ratio of ethnic balance serves the requirements of distributive justice), or should they be made on the basis of the needs of the labor market? Should certain industries be allowed to be somewhat destructive to the environment, as long as those industries are doing something socially useful or creating jobs for a number of people?

Conclusion

In modern market-governed societies, there appears to be an inherent conflict within the social contract. It is a conflict between the pull to optimize liberty and a pull to optimize equality. [T]hose who are relatively successful in the marketplace want the state to pursue policies that enhance liberty so they can enjoy their success. Those who are not successful (or those who have clients who are not) want the state to do everything possible to pursue policies that foster equality, so they have second or subsequent chances to re-enter the game. (Chatterjee, 1999, p. 75)

Seen from this perspective, justice, like the normal curve in statistics, is two-tailed. One tail (Boxes A and B in Figure 1) spreads out into the realms of liberty, and the other (Boxes C and D in Figure 1), toward equality. Social work supports the equality end more often than the liberty end.

Justice, as we have shown, is more than redistribution, or pursuit of equality! At times, it contributes to the stability of the existing social order (as shown by Boxes A and B in Figure 1). In this form, the function of justice is to conserve the existing social structure (including the inequalities inherent in it) and is by nature, conservative. This tail of justice, thus, spreads out to the political right. At other times, it supports social change (as shown by Boxes C and D in Figure 1). In this form, justice is close to being liberal, and spreads out to the political left.

Summary

In this paper, we have proposed that justice is essentially a form of group behavior, that as a form of group behavior, it reflects the culture of the group, that there appear to be five different types of justice which, in turn, rest on various combinations of five basic norms in group behavior, and that justice at any given time period reflects the group's history of adaptation over time in its internal and external environment.

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by Pranab Chatterjee & Amy D'Aprix

Pranab Chatterjee is professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University; e-mail: pxc6@po.cwru.edu.

Amy D'Aprix is a doctoral student at the same school.

Authors' note: We are thankful for the many contributions made by Michelle Riske and Jane Wu during the preparation of this paper. We are also indebted to Richard Caputo for his comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

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