justice, social
justice, socialArguments about justice feature not only in sociology, but also in philosophy, political science, social policy, psychology, and of course law itself. Justice is a central moral standard in social life, is generally held to have a prominent role in social theory and social action, and so it is perhaps not surprising that all the social sciences have examined the concept at some length. (The best multi-disciplinary overview is R. L. Cohen's edited collection entitled Justice: Views from the Social Sciences, 1986.)
It is conventional to distinguish ‘formal justice’ (the law) and material justice (morality and politics), although some theorists of justice treat the two concepts as parallel or overlapping, and argue that since legal or criminal justice concerns the distribution of penalties to...
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