Jurisprudence and corporate Social Responsibility - Essay Example

the “first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” Therefore, justice can be distinguished from compassion, mercy, generosity, benevolence and charity. The understanding of the concept of justice varies between societies depending on their mythology, religion and shared history. However, the common feature about the notion of justice in every society is that it is influenced by values created by the society’s ethics. Generally, justice has been viewed by societies as either harmony, natural law, divine command, a human creation, a mutual agreement, a subordinate attribute and even as a trickery.

The duty of the ensuring that justice is accorded to every member of the society is a corporate social responsibility. There are different approaches or theories that can be applied in defining what constitutes justice in a country. The three theories of justice that will be discussed in this paper are Justice as Fairness, Utilitarianism and Libertarianism. According to utilitarianism, a society can be said to be just if its institutions and laws promote the greatest total or average happiness of every of its member (Hare 1982).

The question in this theory is “how we determine the overall happiness and/or satisfaction of each member of the society?” Therefore, this theory can be said to provide an indirect approach to the issue of justice because justice is not like weight or temperature that can directly measured. Traditionally, utilitarianism relied upon the account of forms of organization and social conditions necessary for the realisation of this good. It also relied on the theory of human good, that is, that which was though to be good for human beings or that which they needed for them to flourish (Mary 1973).

The problem here is that it is not possible for all people to agree on what type of things or life is desirable. For example, financiers, ministers, intellectuals, artists, soldiers, salespersons or athletes have