Justice, Freedom, and Social Justice: A Political Science Essay

This essay delves into the intricate relationship between justice, freedom, and social justice, arguing that societal well-being hinges on their interplay. It examines various theoretical perspectives, including the capability approach and distributive justice, highlighting the importance of individual opportunities and the impact of social status on freedom. The essay critiques utilitarianism and resource-based approaches, emphasizing the significance of human liberty and differences. It further explores the views of Hayek and Kant on social justice, considering the role of the state, individual rights, and the concept of redistribution. The analysis includes examples from the UK legal framework, demonstrating how these principles are applied in practice, and concludes by emphasizing the necessity of social policies that uphold freedom and dignity.

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Justice which is the excellence of behaving ethically correct and reasonable is viewed
as the most important quality in human beings. It is only see-through the understanding and
use of justice that freedom has the ability to exist. The idea of justice takes into account the
notions of independence, objectivity and equal treatment for all individuals (Gale and Molla
2015). This type of an existence endorses the fact that institutional judgements are chiefly
based on ethics and legal rules. Justice further authorises that freedom is not limited without
any due reasons and further promotes physical freedom to individuals. However, issues on
individual liberty, freedom and social justice should be questioned in order to determine that
freedom has no existence without justice (McArthur 2016). However, while categorising the
question whether a society should administer policies and principles of social justice must be
understood by the theory of justice. The thesis statement of the essay is "society can be
safeguarded through justice and reasonable acts and the principle of human dignity cannot
exist without freedom."
The capability approach in majority of the instantiations is not regarded as a theory of
justice emerging out of an ideal society sharing of welfares and pressures towards which
individuals must strive (McArthur 2016). Moreover the capability approach can be
understood as a broad normative space for the assessment of the well-being of individuals
and freedom with many prospective applications. The advocates of theory of distributive
justice explain the onset of sufficiency level in regards to the justifiable contentment for the
proposing comparatively high and subjective threshold. However even though contentment
offers unlikely justification to the reasons to which individuals must accept to be contended.
Furthermore, the advocates of theory of distributive justice have suggested a comparatively
low onset related to the basic needs for basic human rights. On the other hand the distributive
theory of justice has been explained through the concept of freedom from significant coercion
against the successive in fundamental areas of life (Gale and Molla 2015). However at the

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core of this explanation three vital arguments have instigated which relates to the claims that
justice is specifically concerned for individual opportunities in Central on the opposition to
the insignificant areas of life. The other two arguments have highlighted that a crucial
threshold of sufficiency tends to have its existence in each specific significant area of life.
And the third effectively determined sufficiency in a particular area which depends on the
distributional explanation of the competencies within that area (Hayton and McEnhill 2015).
However by drawing relevance to these arguments it has been noted that sufficiency in the
form of freedom from the significant pressures for succeeding in central areas of life implies
to the fact that justice is restricted in dimension, pluralist in its characteristics and variable in
pattern.
As per capability approach, theoretical understandings of justice show a tendency to
disregard the vital aspects of human liberty, existence and differences between human lives.
For instance, the focus of utilitarianism on augmenting the utility has been considered to be
inadequately rational to the social distribution as well as the distinction of disparities between
the individuals who lives are at risk (Gale and Molla 2015). However, the above-mentioned
point, although is not particular to the capability approach, it is supported by several liberals.
Simultaneously, theoretical understandings which focus particularly on the amount of
resources available to individuals are considered to neglect the social differences in the
abilities of individuals in order to convert resources into functions. On the other hand,
capabilities associated with fundamental welfare of a social being have robust positional
aspects. These aspects imply to the fact that an individuals' relative position in the society as
well as in the society distribution has a significant impact on his or her ability to succeed in
the society (Tyler et al., 2019). This type of ability can be related to the capability of casting
vote and also can be considered for the cases of gaining other freedoms in which value tends
to be indirectly determined by others. To a certain extent this is because of the reduced

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capability in absolute terms of actually experiencing as well as enjoying the liberty, but also
due to the embedded symbol value in the society. As a result for instance, offering improved
opportunities and capabilities to one group for performing their religious practices with
utmost freedom certainly conveys a message of injustice and disrespect as well as increasing
the inferiority of the status towards the individuals who have been left behind (Meador and
Skerratt 2017).
Thus, it leaves them with inadequate abilities of a comparative kind. However through
these cases it can be noted that social status in itself can be explained as a form of capability
related to robust positional aspects of the society (Bailliard 2016). The opportunity given to
one group to experience an augmented level of capabilities for societal position than others
undoubtedly leaves the inferior to experience a reduced or restricted level of feeder and
represent them as the inferior section whose voices and opinions will rarely be heard. Social
justice is not an ocean which is typically related to conservatism. By drawing relevance on
Hayek's theory of social justice, the New Right argue that social justice and freedom have
been incompatible. This argument has been grounded on the claim that the idea of freedom is
extensively understood as the nonexistence of coercion.
However taking into consideration the policies and regulations required for endorsing
the philosophy of social justice would institute an unethical intrusion on individual liberty
(Creutzfeldt and Bradford 2016). This understanding of the highly destructive outcomes of
social justice precluded its approval by the New Right Conservatives. On the other hand, this
understanding has been rejected by social liberals. These social liberals are of the opinion that
freedom cannot be accomplished devoid of any reference to inequalities and the process in
which these are managed or removed to provide the conditions in which equality of
opportunity can successfully thrive.

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The understanding of Hayek’s critique has reflected the social ideal of individual
independence and freedom. Such a notion compliments the form of fundamental moral
realism that every individual has their individual life and thus should have freedom of
determining aspects which would make life significant (Donnelly 2017). For instance,
judgements given by the UK courts related to Convention rights according to the HRA
framework have transformed defamation law by covering protection for freedom of speech
(Goold and Lazarus 2019). In addition, chief statutory reforms regarding the Mental Health
Act 2007, the Coroners in addition to Justice Act 2009 as well as the Protection of Freedoms
Act 2012 have been passed partly as per the HRA judgments that have identified issues with
the justice as well as equality of present laws.
Conversely, in several aspects, the understanding of Hayek in relation to the formal
principle of freedom has drawn similarity to the Kantian view of formal justice. According to
Varden (2015), Hayeck’s theory has further made relevance to assertions made by Kant
regarding claiming others as ends in them to explain his claim that society must provide the
range of formal conditions for the free competition to offer utmost justice (Reimann and
Zimmermann 2019). The United Kingdom has acknowledged associating international
obligations as per legal aspects in order to promote as well as safeguard social rights.
Moreover, as per studies, the British government has been efficiently supporting these human
rights in the United Nations (Meador and Skerratt 2017). The effective positioning of the
Labour party has been appreciated which seeks to improve the recurrent falseness and
injustice of the assembled system of the UK.
To conclude, the principle of respect for freedom and dignity that shed light on the
problem of factual freedom has offered robust reasoning to defend social policies. The
principle of freedom grounded on Hayek theoretical consideration simplifies freedom to be
more strewn only if individuals align towards to the recognized principle of freedom.

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Conversely, the criticism has demanded that state must deal with a structure for free-thinking
market. Such market reflects a society where it should provide the range of formal conditions
for the liberated competition in the market to occur. In addition, social justice recounts ideas
of redistribution. Such actions relate to the withdrawal of resources from the more affluent
class and offering to the detrimental sections of the society. It has been noted that Kantian
understanding has also outlawed the concept that justice might need the reorganization of
resources for the requirements of the society and discards the juridical prominence of
material inequality. In addition, Kantian understanding of social justice has clearly overruled
that state could be determined by voluntary contributions and has claimed that
implementation of current contributions would be a lawful way to gratify the desires of the
disadvantaged. As a result, justice certainly does not exist without freedom as in a legally,
dogmatically and ethically justifiable context can any individual or collective freedoms tend
to exist.

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References
Bailliard, A., 2016. Justice, difference, and the capability to function. Journal of
Occupational Science, 23(1), pp.3-16.
Creutzfeldt, N. and Bradford, B., 2016. Dispute resolution outside of courts: procedural
justice and decision acceptance among users of ombuds services in the UK. Law & Society
Review, 50(4), pp.985-1016.
Donnelly, C., 2017. Participation and expertise: judicial attitudes in comparative perspective.
In Comparative Administrative Law. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Gale, T. and Molla, T., 2015. Social justice intents in policy: An analysis of capability for and
through education. Journal of Education Policy, 30(6), pp.810-830.
Goold, B.J. and Lazarus, L. eds., 2019. Security and human rights. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Hayton, R. and McEnhill, L., 2015. Cameron’s Conservative Party, social liberalism and
social justice. British Politics, 10(2), pp.131-147.
Lamont, J. ed., 2017. Distributive justice. Routledge.
McArthur, J., 2016. Assessment for social justice: the role of assessment in achieving social
justice. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 41(7), pp.967-981.
Meador, J.E. and Skerratt, S., 2017. On a unified theory of development: New institutional
economics & the charismatic leader. Journal of Rural Studies, 53, pp.144-155.
Reimann, M. and Zimmermann, R. eds., 2019. The Oxford handbook of comparative law.
Oxford University Press.
Tyler, T., Boeckmann, R.J., Smith, H.J. and Huo, Y.J., 2019. Social justice in a diverse
society. Routledge.
Varden, H., 2016. Rawls Vs. Nozick Vs. Kant on Domestic Economic Justice. In Kant and
Social Policies (pp. 93-123). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

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