This post examines the virtue of justice. I wrote this not as an expert, but as someone who wants to learn. I hope it will help people who want to know more about this virtue and how to nurture it.

Defining what justice is is a major topic of ethical and political philosophy. There is no way I can do it justice (see what I did there?) in a brief post like this one. Instead I will concentrate on justice as a virtue. Bracketing what justice is or what it consists of, what does it mean to be characteristically, habitually just: to exhibit the virtue of justice?

Justice as a virtue

Justice is usually thought of as existing between people: as a balance, with opposing claims of different people weighed against each other.

Justice as a virtue is different.^[1] It is something within a person (though it often exhibits itself through how that person behaves towards others).

It is not contractarian in the social-contract sense of being willing to submit to the restraint of justice in exchange for the security of knowing that your neighbors are similarly restrained. It is also not merely personal obedience or acquiescence in the face of a particular standard of justice.

To a person without the virtue of justice, justice is a double-edged sword: If that person is cheated unjustly, they may hope to appeal to justice to right the wrong. But if that person is on the favorable side of a shady deal, they may hope justice remains thwarted so they can get away with it.

A person with the virtue of justice evaluates such situations differently. To such a person, justice itself is something they value: the life they consider to be most worth living is a just life. The possession of a just character is worth more to them than the possession of things successfully swindled away from someone else unjustly. Because of this desire to be just, the person with the virtue of justice has developed the habit of characteristically seeking out just outcomes.

How justice flavors other valued things

An example of someone exhibiting the virtue of justice might be someone who notices that they were inadvertently handed a $20 instead of a $10 in change at the cafe that morning, so they return at lunchtime to give back the extra money. Even though they did nothing wrong, even though nobody but them knows of the unjust state of affairs, even though that injustice worked to their material advantage, they feel...