Corrective Justice Issues - Essay Example

With procedural justice, the focus is on how the gathering of information is done and how decisions are made and not on what information was collected or what decisions were made (Maiese, 2004). For instance, information from an individual could be given voluntarily or out of torture. On the other hand, corrective justice is concerned with the fair response to an evil deed by a person or a group of people. In corrective justice, the wrongdoer is expected to compensate for his/her actions either by returning the stolen goods or paying for the damages caused (Weinrib, 2002). Of the three types of justice, corrective justice is the best since it focuses on gain and loss, equality, and the correlativity of the parties.

One of the reasons for choosing correlative justice is the fact that it acknowledges gain and loss. Gain and loss, in this case, refer to the effects on the amount or state of an individual’s resource that result from interactions between two or more parties (Modak-Truran, 2013). A gain is an increase in the resource whereas a loss is a decrease in the same. While procedural justice is focused on how information is gathered, corrective justice focuses on the actual resources that are affected. Corrective justice is, therefore, the best since it advocates for the restoration of the victim's possessions before the interaction. The offender should compensate the victim either to restore their initial positions or to raise their status to a set standard.

Equality is another reason for qualifying corrective justice as the best. Corrective justice has equality as the point of reference in determining a just action and just treatment. Equality is the status quo of the parties involved that existed before their interaction (Modak-Truran, 2013).To determine the position of equality, before the interaction, gain and loss can be used. For instance, when Party A hits Party B, the situation can be analyzed to determine whether Party A had interfered with Party B’s right of freedom from body invasion or if it was an act of self-defense.

The correlative nature of corrective justice is another reason that makes it the best. Correlation shows the mutual relationship between the doer and the offended from the wrong (Weinrib, 2001). Corrective justice proposes that equality exists between the two parties and, therefore, the truth comes in to ensure that this norm is maintained or reestablished once the wrongdoer causes suffrage to another person. Unlike distributive justice, corrective justice links the two parties directly as the offender and the offended. The direct link ensures that both parties do not share the benefit or burden that may arise from their interaction.