Relationship between law and justice

Law and justice are often misconstrued as being one and the same thing. This however, is a fallacy and even though the two have symbiotic relationship, they cannot be considered as the same thing. A relationship does exist between law and justice and as they are not mutually exclusive and I will try and highlight this relationship in the following paragraphs. In order to understand the nature of the relationship between law and justice, we first need to understand what both these terms mean in isolation. First, lets consider justice. Justice is often used interchangeably with “fairness”. While this relationship is true to an extent, justice is more of a social term, geared towards achieving fairness for the entire society. Fairness is a subjective term, where every individual’s concept of what is fair is different from one another. What one person may consider fair for them, may not be viewed by another as fair at all. Justice is a concept that looks to incorporate all these individual’s personal concepts of fairness and come to a solution that is suitable for all parties. A just society, according to Plato, is a society in which all its constituents are happy.(Kelson, 3) However, the subjective nature of justice makes the term very hard to adequately define. While what mentioned above may serve to illustrate the broader meaning of justice, in practice, what is considered justice for one party does not necessarily mean the same for another. For example, a starving person steals bread from a bakery to quench his hunger. The baker catches him and turns him over to the authorities. The authorities in turn punish the starving man for stealing. In this case, justice is served from the perspective of the baker. Justice is also served from the perspective of society, as a just man would not steal. However, for the starving man, taking one loaf of bread, which, had the baker