When you try to identify your rights you are trying to build up a tool for justice, when you try to get your right implemented then you are calling for justice; those are few words that I wanted to highlight before going in any details in this article!! What I mainly wanted to express here, that justice is not far away idea from our daily life; it is not an idea to be studied in Law schools, or to be taught as a kind of a philosophy. Justice is much more than an individual think, many people just use the word justice and words from its kinds without thinking about why and how they use it!!
Any way, since talking about justice is as if you were sailing the sea; you have to have some directions and some tools not to be lost or overlapped; that is why I want to outline my article first on:
1. What is Justice? What are its kinds?
2. The interchangeable relation between Justice and Fairness
3. The embedded relation between Justice and Equality before the Law principles
4. The Principle of Justice as a main element of Egyptian Legal System, Principle of Justice and Natural Law
What is Justice? What are its Kinds?
Justice in its very simple definition is the concept of moral rightness based on ethics, rationality, law, natural law, fairness and equity. Plato discussed justice as when everyone is doing something and no one is getting hurt. Aristotle describes his concepts of natural justice as general justice, legislative justice, particular justice, political justice, and economical justice. He provides these concepts as the laws for slavery. Thomas Hobbes thrives on Aristotle’s concept of natural justice. Hobbes believes in the survival of the fittest, that the strongest will survive.
For me, I define justice as: a good feeling toward an act made up on the person when (s)he and the community feel this act is fair and right. However, I feel it is essential for an article about Justice in the Egyptian Legal System to get in some details to the kinds of justice, as this will be used later on as an introduction to a comparison between the general principle of justice and the Egyptian legal system.
Kinds of Justice:
Identifying kinds of justice is really a huge task for a researcher to do, it goes beyond counting and no one can ever dare to count them or think that he/she will be able one day to gather them all. This is simply because every time you think about anything you think about justice with it so it is like an ever-growing term. So, I will mention in the following few paragraphs some of the most important kinds of justice in my point of view and I will leave the space open for the reader to go beyond what I found out.
Environmental Justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income within the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws.
Social Justice is the belief that every individual and group is entitled to fair and equal rights and participation in social, educational, and economic opportunities. Moreover , it is the fair distribution of advantages, assets, and benefits among all members of a society.
Natural justice is a legal philosophy used in some jurisdictions in the determination of just, or fair, processes in legal proceedings. In addition, natural justice is thought to be basic rules and procedures to be followed by any person or body charged with the responsibility of determining disputes.
Restorative Justice is a cost-effective criminal justice approach that is based on reconciliation, restoration, healing and rehabilitation.
Distributive Justice is justice dispensed in the community to confer maximum value to those in need through the notions of fairness and consistency.
Legislative Justice can be maintained through two main perspectives; first, it is the pure application of equality before the law principle. In addition to, the right of people to have an updated legislative system that suits their needs and changes every time their needs are changed.
Political Justice is the rights of the person require that individuals have an effective role in shaping their own destinies. They have a right to participate in the political process freely and responsibly. They have a right to free access to information, freedom of speech and press, as well as freedom of dissent. They have a right to be educated and to determine the education of their children. Individuals and groups must be secure from arrest, torture and imprisonment for political or ideological reasons, and all in society, including migrant workers, must be guaranteed juridical protection of their personal, social, cultural and political rights.
Economical Justice is a conviction that economic policies must result in benefits that are distributed equally across income and racial lines; that jobs created by state and local tax incentives must go to local people and taxpayers; and that the health, natural resources, and the culture of the community must be protected.
Reciprocal Justice is the final stage of justice in the market of exchange that holds the city together and that is based mainly on proportion not on numeric exchange.
Retributive Justice is a matter of giving people their just deserts, people deserve to be treated in the same way that they voluntarily choose to treat others.
Interchangeable use of terms: Justice & Fair
Before closing the door of the discussion about the definition of Justice and its kinds, I would rather prefer to draw the readers’ attention to a very important philosophical comparison between “justice & fairness” and how people nowadays use both terms in an interchangeable way. However, you can find in the reference a part of an article wrote by Manuel Velasquez, Claire Andre, Thomas Shanks, S.J., and Michael J. Meyer through Saint Clara University that I find it very important to read14.
Justice and Equality before the law
One of the widely accepted definitions to justice is what Aristotle said two thousand years ago: “equals should be treated equally and unequals unequally” and in its contemporary form, this principle is sometimes expressed as follows: "Individuals should be treated the same, unless they differ in ways that are relevant to the situation in which they are involved"
While defining Equality before the law will simply lead us to: “The law is to be applied to everyone equally in the sense that all members of society, private persons and government officials alike, must be equally responsible before the law”
A very simple comparison for the two definitions will lead us nearly to nothing but Equality before the law is the legal terminology of justice and justice is the wider range where equality before the law principle should take place in its application and where it takes its legality. On the same hand, other legal principles and terminologies can find their way out to life through the underneath of this principle.
Through this relation, we can easily conclude the direct embedment of the term justice in the Egyptian legal system and the Egyptian constitution. For example, the Egyptian mentions the following articles:
Article 8
The State shall guarantee equality of opportunity to all citizens.
Article 11
The State shall … ensuring her (the woman’s) equality status with man in fields of political, social, cultural and economic life without violation of the rules of Islamic jurisprudence
Article 25
Every citizen shall have a share in national revenue to be defined by the law in consideration for his work or his unexploitative ownership.
Article 26
Workers shall have a share of management and profits of enterprises.
Article 40
All citizens are equal before the law.
They have equal public rights and duties without discrimination on grounds of race, ethnic origin, language, religion or creed.
Article 41
Individual freedom is a natural right …
Article 45
The law shall protect the inviolability of the private life of citizens
Article 59
Environmental protection is a national duty and the law shall regulate measures necessary to maintain good environment.
Article 65
The State shall be subject to law.
The independence and immunity of the judiciary are two basic guarantees to safeguard rights and freedoms.
This means that the Egyptian legal system has embedded justice in its articles and laws to be considered a part of the society’s behavior that can never be ignored.
Principle of Justice and Natural Law
The Judicial Authority commands a significant position in all modern political systems, along with both legislative and executive authorities.
Egypt was among the first countries next to France to establish a judicial institution. Since then the Egyptian Judicial System has undergone continuous developments until it was completed in the Constitution stipulating the independency of the Judicial Authority as stated in Article (165) "The Judicial Authority shall be independent. It shall be exercised by courts of justice of different kinds and classes, which shall issue their judgments in accordance with the law". Simultaneously law has drew the way for judges to do their judgments in the First article of the Egyptian Civil Code saying: “In the absence of a provision of a law that is applicable, the Judge will decide according to custom and in the absence of custom in accordance with the principles of Moslem Law. In the absence of such principles, the Judge will apply the principles of natural justice and the rules of equity” ensuring that justice and natural law are part of the legislative system in Egypt and that a judge can not deny justice by any mean or in any situation.
Conclusion
Herby, we conclude that justice as an idea, principle, way of life and term was embedded directly and indirectly in the Egyptian legal system in a way that no one can ever deny its importance to the society and its necessity for us.
We, youth of this generation, know very well the importance of justice and confess that without its principles life will be much worse than a hell. We call for justice and we work for it.
Hands on hands toward justice!!
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