A simple talk about JUSTICE

Have you ever tried to make a definition about justice?

Commonly, people defines justice as equilibrium, in order to fairly judge people based on their deeds. Justice means that everyone treated as the same, no one get thing more than other's get. That's what people understand justice as.

After studied for 10 months on the faculty of Law UGM, I learned something. I suddenly realize that justice is not that simple. Justice has a complicated meaning, it could be vary from one teaching with another. In other word, I'm trying to say that 'justice' is abstract and should be interpreted differently in accordance with the case.


King Salomo Judgement

Aristotle had it, a long long time ago, tried to define what is justice. He is a Greek philosopher on Athens that lived during the Macedonian occupation. He ended up with a conclusion that justice itself can't be define on a single meaning. Justice is divided into two forms: justitia distributiva and justitia commutativa.
Justitia distributiva considers each of everyone to get their allocation. This kind of justice is required for the legislative branch of government while they make a provision for society. Our society is built by people from different backgrounds and interests, therefore the gov't need to understand the diversity and giving each person a proporsionil and fair share.

The second one, Justitia Communtativa, demand each person to be treated the same on a par. This form of justice gives birth to 'equality before the law' principal. Everyone, despite their religion, color, property, etc. is just the same on the eye of the law. This kind of justice is what people has on their common thoughts.

Now, it is the duty of the judge to understand and read the case. He can't choose between those two type of justice, he has to elaborate both of them and using it to create a just judicial decision.

Since the Goddes of Law is blind, our job to make sure she walk on the right way and keep her from stumbling.