What is justice?

[Tacitus]

I feel like I hear this word all the time: "We want justice," "No justice, no peace," "Justice for [cause celebre]," etc. But what constitutes justness? Is a just punishment fair or is it retributive, an "eye for an eye"? When people say they want justice, what are they seeking exactly? Discuss.

[LightHouse89]

a figment of everyone's imagination.

[Tacitus]

Bump

[barbatus]

What is justice?
Baby don't hurt me, don't hurt me.... no more

[Dictator]

Justice isn't fair. It's not meant to be.

[de Burgh II]

I guess the only true "justice" is when a person defines it themselves because we have some many institutions that say their "fair" or "just" when the only thing that benefits the people in the court are corrupt judges and lawyers to push their own leftist media onto others so they can earn a quick buck.

[Linebacker]

http://prisoncellphones.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/prison-cell-cellphone.jpg
https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/75/183625130_0668088f49.jpg
http://www.quickmeme.com/img/74/74045bac628948fa942b2f7dceece2dd02799e6021587852fb 057f7c99691f3d.jpg

[Unome]

Justice is the rationale people create through imagination in order to 'redistribute' pain or pleasure. Revenge is the common concept associated with justice. But doing good, morality, ethics, law, are also derivatives of justice. People also believe in cosmic karma, that the universe or nature has means of redistributing events, actions, and choices. So if somebody is bad then bad will be done in return. Or if somebody is good then good will be done in return.

Justice is one of the most ancient philosophical concepts. And I personally associate justice with both Causation and Reasoning.

[Darth Revan]

It's too difficult to answer this in words.

I can add however, that what can be understood for justice in a communal level, is categorically different than what could be referred to as 'authenticity' in an individual sense, which is after all, justice and truth with the self.

Remember that when meditating on this matter in the future, along with my own proposal for the starting point you should consider (one of the most fertile ones I've discovered so far):

The adequate solution for the right moment.

[Poorman]

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due. 3
Source: Justinian
Address : http://www.humanistictexts.org/justinian.htm#_Toc483882740

[Darth Revan]

Justice is the set and constant purpose which gives to every man his due. Jurisprudence is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of the just and the unjust.

The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due. 3
Source: Justinian
Address : http://www.humanistictexts.org/justinian.htm#_Toc483882740

That only addresses the communal/social aspect of justice. Attempt to conceive a code where the question of what must be done is answered simply like this: "The precepts of the law are these: to live honestly, to injure no one, and to give every man his due."

It would entail the end of all quest for greater knowledge, clarity, power or freedom; as these are the result of individual accomplishment, often against the will of others.

[LouisFerdinand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0CTHVCkm90

[DavidMackey]

I agree with Poorman.

[mix mash]

Definitely not police department. There should be no such thing as police. They don't give justice. They do the opposite. There should be keepers of the peace not cops. I only respect what the police force does in communist countries like china.

[Augustus Caesar]

According to Frédéric Bastiat in his book The Law: "The law is justice".
He also says that justice in its prime and purest form (what it should be in a libertarian society) holds a negative value, and everybody who says it should have a positive value is wrong. For example, justice for the workers, women, minorities are all positive values, since they're about providing additional justice to certain groups in society. A negative justice would be one that exists only to repress injustice. In other words, the collective enforcement of justice is only pure when it's repressing injustice. And he defines injustice as any sort of aggression on the only rights individuals have: life, liberty and property. So injustice is whenever an agent is assaulting someone's property, whether it be by force, fraud or threat, and the law can only be true justice when these individuals are punishing those who have committed injustice.