magazine issue 2 2013 / Issue 17

Justice seems not to be for all: Exploring the scope of justice

• written by Aline Lima-Nunes, Cicero Roberto Pereira & Isabel Correia
• edited by Clare Jonas

General Conclusion

Having analyzed the concept and the related research, we can summarize the above by saying that the scope of justice acts as a psychological parameter to help us answer the question “who”: Who does not count? Who is deserving? Who is irrelevant? Who is important? However, the decision to include or exclude has consequences: as noted above, the scope of justice can be beyond the “moral”, with good and bad consequences for those outside its boundaries. As a justifying argument, this justice concern unfortunately has the potential to legitimize the derogation of outsiders and to promote exclusion (e.g. prejudice and discrimination).

Finally, the scope of justice is currently recognized as an important tool in uncovering the justice processes that lie behind important real-world issues. Ultimately, empirical studies have shown that the saying “justice is for everyone” is no longer an appropriate phrase to describe people's behavior. It seems that people act much more in accordance with the idea that “justice is for those who are not excluded from our boundaries of fairness”.

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