Core Elements of Justice and the More or Less Important Core Element

Core Elements of Justice
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Core Elements of Justice
According to Schmidtz (2005, p. 13), there are three-four core elements of justice: desert, reciprocity, equality, and need. These elements are essential in determining what people are due in different circumstances because what people are due to varies. Under equality, justice is when people are treated equally in society and before the law. For instance, justice prevails when all people in a society have equal access to education, employment, equal pay in this employment, and equal protection under the law. The element of desert focuses on giving people what they deserve. For instance, when looking at the issue of equal pay, the element of desert assumes that a person may be paid a different salary from another based on their contribution to the employer. In essence, between two people, the one who does the most work or essential work deserves more pay than the other. Thus, where equality focuses on what people have in common, the element of desert focuses on what differentiates one person from another (Schmidtz, 2005). Under reciprocity, the focus is on the nature of the relationship. For instance, when person A favors person B, person B is the dept of person A. Thus, where the element of desert focuses on the traits of a person, reciprocity focuses on relationships between people. Lastly, needs focus on a class of needs whose provision determines whether a society is. Such needs, like social welfare, should be met y any just society as long as meeting them is humanly possible.
Some elements can become less or more important in different circumstances than others. For instance, when an issue presented involves equal pay in the workplace among two different individuals with the same input, then the element of equality reigns. However, where one of the employees has contributed more to the organization than the other, given that they had an equal opportunity to do so, then the issue of equality becomes less critical because the f...