Out of their league

“With liberty and justice for all," concludes the Pledge of Allegiance.

Liberty isn't a wholly self-evident concept, notwithstanding Thomas Jefferson’s claim in the Declaration of Independence. Liberty from . . . ? Liberty to . . . ?

But justice is the really slippery one. It's the quality of being just, which generally means right or fitting. But these are very subjective terms. What seems right or fitting to you might not seem that way at all to me. 

Nowadays justice often connotes equality. "Social justice” movements attack inequality of various kinds. But in earlier eras the connection between justice and equality was tenuous or nonexistent. Plato’s justice to a free Athenian was different from justice to a slave. What was right or fitting for a free man was different from what was right or fitting for a slave.

Aquinas's justice to a Christian was different from justice to an infidel. Montesquieu’s justice to men was different from justice to women.

Connecting justice and equality required reducing the number of different categories into which people were divided. Ending legal slavery erased one obvious distinction. It was no accident that the American constitutional amendment immediately after the emancipation amendment was the first to require equal protection of the laws—that is, equal justice—for all Americans.

Though contemporary notions of justice contain a large dose of equality, the concepts aren't the same. Indeed they sometimes conflict. Is a tax code with rates that increase with rising income just? It promotes economic equality, but it treats rich people differently than poor people. Is affirmative action just? It promotes equality between the different groups covered, but it does so by setting higher standards for some groups than for others. Are rent control ordinances just? They protect existing tenants, but they raise rents for others by reducing the incentive to build new housing.

Liberty is a near-synonym to freedom, which was tunefully defined by Kris Kristofferson as nothing left to lose. Liberty is comparatively unproblematic because it reduces dependence of one on another.

Justice is harder because it is inescapably interdependent. A policy or an action is just in the sense of fitting because it fits one with others in a way that seems right or appropriate. 

Standards of rightness, which is to say standards of justice, change. Fifty years ago almost no one in America thought justice required allowing gay people the same right to marry as straight people. Now most people do, and marriage equality is part of our legal code. 

Fifty years ago few people connected lifestyles in the rich world to environmental conditions in the poor world. But today environmental justice is considered humanity's most pressing problem by millions  around the world.

Many people today think humans owe consideration to animals they live with and depend on. But only a few think humans owe justice to dogs and cats and chickens and cows. Yet animal rights are making headway in legal systems in various countries. It's not a stretch to imagine a case of Trigger v. Roy Rogers or its equivalent reaching the Supreme Court one day.

So is there any actual substance to the concept of justice? Not much that can be abstracted from a given time and place. Consider the Eighth Amendment and its ban on cruel and unusual punishment. Nothing is more bound to time and place than the idea of usual/unusual. English criminals used to be branded. Not any more. Thieves in Saudi Arabia can have their hands cut off. Not in America. The state of Texas executes some murderers, while the state of Alaska never has.

Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart said he knew pornography when he saw it. Justice as a concept is like that. It's hard to define. It varies from person to person, place to place and era to era. We aim for it but never know if we'll hit it.

It's better than nothing, though. And even if we don't hit it we're better for trying.