# Contested concept: Justice

_**What you are reading**: one contested-concept page in Deliberus's deliberation graph. Deliberus maps human reasoning — including claims that are contested, mistaken, or extreme — so that disagreement can be examined precisely. A claim's presence here is not an endorsement: the graph records that someone argued it, how it connects to other reasoning, and how far scrutiny has gotten. The metadata on this page describes the state of that scrutiny, not the truth of the claim._

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- **Contestedness**: criterion
- **Diagnosis**: The conflict masks a deep disagreement between retributive justice (focusing on desert) and distributive justice (focusing on systemic parity). Van den Haag prioritizes the former; critics (implied in the counter-arguments) prioritize the latter.
- **Canonical**: `/concept/Justice` (data: `/concept/Justice.json`)

## Senses in use
- **Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.** — used in 5 claim(s)
- **Justice as equality or consistency: the moral necessity that like cases be treated alike, where discriminatory or capricious application invalidates the punishment.** — used in 4 claim(s)

## Claims using this term
- [Arguments that the death penalty should be abolished based on the maldistribution of the penalty among guilty parties are fallacious for bo…](/claim/claim_0b9ddb778d8b.md) _(sense: Justice as equality or consistency: the moral necessity that like cases be treated alike, where discriminatory or capricious application invalidates the punishment.)_
- [The fact that the death penalty is distributed in a discriminatory or capricious manner is not a valid justification for abolishing it.](/claim/claim_0dc544e31770.md) _(sense: Justice as equality or consistency: the moral necessity that like cases be treated alike, where discriminatory or capricious application invalidates the punishment.)_
- [Justice necessitates that as many guilty individuals as possible receive punishment, regardless of whether other guilty individuals have su…](/claim/claim_398255e76d3e.md) _(sense: Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.)_
- [The demands of justice require that the legal system punish as many guilty individuals as possible, regardless of whether some other guilty…](/claim/claim_5db603e15d67.md) _(sense: Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.)_
- [The problem of maldistribution is as inherent in other forms of legal punishment as it is in the death penalty.](/claim/claim_6a614c5b99ac.md) _(sense: Justice as equality or consistency: the moral necessity that like cases be treated alike, where discriminatory or capricious application invalidates the punishment.)_
- [In the context of the legal system, justice is morally more important than equality.](/claim/claim_7582f58dbae7.md) _(sense: Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.)_
- [The principle of equal justice requires that justice [the punishment of the guilty] be applied uniformly, rather than allowing the pursuit …](/claim/claim_8f7e8733bc42.md) _(sense: Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.)_
- [Making the distribution of the death penalty more equal does not increase the justice of the sentence for the individual convicts who are e…](/claim/claim_e3752a545c5b.md) _(sense: Justice as equality or consistency: the moral necessity that like cases be treated alike, where discriminatory or capricious application invalidates the punishment.)_
- [The concept of justice is independent of whether a punishment is distributed with equal statistical regularity.](/claim/claim_ef3855a1931b.md) _(sense: Justice as retributive proportionality: the moral necessity of punishing guilty individuals according to their desert, regardless of the fate of other guilty parties.)_