Justice in general We need to distinguish between the following: Formal principle of justice Substantive principles of justice Procedural principles of justice
Procedural justice Procedural principles of justice give us a procedure -- like flipping a coin -- which produce just solutions. They are of three sorts: Perfect Imperfect Pure
Procedural justice There are two variables of importance for these procedural principles: Do we know what we would be just? Can we design a procedure to achieve the just result?
Perfect procedural justice We can answer both questions: We know what would be just, and We can design a procedure to get it.
Perfect procedural justice Think here of flipping a coin for an object where there are two claimants, neither of whom has a right to the object -- I ll flip you for it! in tied Nevada elections. We know what is just: that one of the two win the election. We know how to achieve that end: we flip a coin.
Perfect procedural justice Or think of having two children clamoring for the last piece of cake, each saying they deserve the largest piece. A parent would say, You cut and you get first pick. Again, we know what we would be just -- each getting a fair share -- and we have figured out how to achieve that end.
Problems But things can go wrong. Someone may be able to flip a coin so as to ensure a certain outcome. Or a roulette wheel operator may control the wheel to pick winners and losers. In short, the procedure may be faulty.
Problematic procedure Even having one child cut a cake and the other have first choice can be problematic. Consider this story of Nick and Katie. They both wanted the last piece of cake from the party the day before, and their mother said, Katie, you cut, and Nick, you get first choice.
Problematic procedure Katie, at 5, was tall enough to stand up to the kitchen counter and cut, and Nick, at 3, was so short he couldn t see the counter top. So Katie cut the cake, turned and let Nick have first choice.
Here s what the piece looked like to Nick.
Problematic procedure Nick was astonished to see such a large piece of cake his sister had cut for him, and he grabbed it without waiting even for a plate. Nick was impulsive, and Katie knew he would grab it without further thought.
Here s what the end of the piece of cake looked like.
Problematic procedure When Nick realized he had only gotten a thin top layer, he started jumping up and down screaming. Katie calmly turned back to the counter and started to eat her very large piece of cake.
Problematic procedure Their parent had tried to achieve two ends: that the division be fair. that neither Katie nor Nick could complain about what they got. If Katie were careless, she would have only herself to blame; if Nick picked the smallest piece, it was his fault.
Problematic procedure She certainly failed to get a fair division. It is arguable that Nick had no right to complain, having had the chance to get a very large piece, but blowing it through his impulsiveness.
Problematic procedure The procedure encouraged Katie to take advantage of her brother s impulsiveness, bringing out the worst in Katie. It was not such a perfect procedure after all: we know what would have been fair, and the parent failed to achieve it.
Imperfect procedural justice As we said, there are two variables of importance for these procedural principles: Do we know what we would be just? Can we design a procedure to achieve the just result? In imperfect procedural justice, we know what would be just, but cannot design a procedure to achieve a just result.
Imperfect procedural justice The criminal justice system is an example. We know what is just: finding guilty all those who have committed a crime and only those who have committed a crime. We cannot devise a system which does just that. We convict those who are innocent and find innocent whose who committed a crime.
Imperfect procedural justice So we weigh the procedure: To ensure that all who committed a crime are found guilty -- at the expense of convicting some who are innocent. E.g. blessing the water and throwing in a suspected witch Or to ensure that all who are innocent go free -- at the expense of letting free some who committed crimes.
Imperfect procedural justice In either case, we will end up with a procedure that fails to sort out those who committed a crime from those who did not. The same is true for the welfare system, for driver license tests, for gun tests (e.g. the Michigan 10-question T/F exam), for police enforcement of driving laws, and on and on.
Imperfect procedural justice It is perennially claimed that some people are getting what they do not deserve (welfare queens, for instance) while some are not. The procedure we use guarantees that result. The best we can do is to fine tune the procedure, tightening up here, loosening up there. But we will never get it just right.
Imperfect procedural justice That is not to say that imperfect procedures cannot be improved. Hamburger can harbor E. coli, including the virulent strain 0157:H7 that killed four children after the Jack-in-the-box outbreak in 1994. It is illegal to sell hamburger with that E. coli. But the procedures to ensure the beef is good are insufficient.
Improving imperfect procedures There are six players in the chain: Suppliers Slaughterhouses Grinders Meat packers Stores Customers
Improving imperfect procedures Those bringing cattle, pigs, poultry and other livestock to a slaughterhouse are supposed to ensure that only healthy animals are included. But they sometimes don t: e.g. Michigan s PBB crisis, mad cow disease.
Improving imperfect procedures The slaughterhouses are required to check for pathogens, but there is almost no check on whether they check. That is why we get the recalls -- e.g. peanut butter with salmonella killed six last year, sickened several thousand. And slaughterhouses often refuse to sell to grinders who test for pathogens. If they find any, that is trouble for the slaughterhouses.
Improving imperfect procedures And some grinders refuse to sell to meat packers who check for pathogens: if they find any, that is trouble for the grinders. And some meat packers refuse to sell to stores that check for pathogens -- e.g. Cargill will not sell to Costco.
Improving imperfect procedures So...we know what we want: hamburger that is safe to eat. What we have got is a procedure for producing hamburger that fails to sort out and discard infected meat: it is just a matter of chance whether you get it or not. There is clearly room for improvement in the procedure.
Pure procedural justice As we said, there are two variables of importance for these procedural principles: Do we know what we would be just? Can we design a procedure to achieve the just result? In pure procedural justice, we can design a procedure that is just, but have no idea what would be just.
Knowing what would be just? What does it mean to say we have no idea what would be just? In both perfect and imperfect procedural justice, we know ahead-of-time what result would be just -- what each individual deserves. Someone who has committed a crime deserves to be found guilty; someone who is innocent deserves to be found innocent.
Pure procedural justice In pure procedural justice, we design a procedure that is pure: There is no cheating, and no coercion, and nothing about the procedure itself that skews the result in any way.
Pure procedural justice The lottery, voting, Monopoly are examples -- as long as the selection process is free of any bias -- e.g. loaded dice, election software, no one cheats -- the kid next door we could not trust in Monopoly, no one coerces anyone to achieve a particular end -- my brother regarding the railroads in Monopoly.
Pure procedural justice If the procedure is pure, then whoever wins wins, and everyone else loses. The winner does not deserve to win, and the losers do not deserve to lose: what anyone deserves is completely irrelevant.
Pure procedural justice The power of pure procedural justice is that everyone has an equal chance at winning. E.g. the black man in the ghetto who was asked why he played the lottery: It s the only thing in my life where I have as good a chance as anyone else of winning.
Summary of procedural justice So we have three procedures for getting a just result: Perfect -- know what is just and how to get it Imperfect -- know what is just, but don t know how to get it Pure -- don t know what is just, but can devise a system that will guarantee a just result