From Distributive to Procedural Justice. Justice as a Constitutive Value of Public Administration

Abstract

The justice as an ethical value can be considered constitutive for contemporary administrative systems. These ones are asked to transpose into practice the ideal of justice in the community. The functioning of a modern state cannot be conceived without a series of institutions that would guarantee the achievement of justice. The legal system was established specifically to administer justice. Modern democratic systems felt the need for certain courts and extrajudicial procedures to create justice. The institutions required to implement the extrajudicial distribution of justice are part of the public administration, representing a central element of it. The model of a political system based on justice is a minimalist one; the role of the state is limited to making it possible for individuals to follow their own ideal of welfare. Opposed to justice, the ideal of welfare requests the state, and implicitly the administration, to ensure the individual the minimum conditions to live in that community. The minimal state centered on justice is the result of a modern paradigm with post-Kantian reverberations, which emphasize the rationality of human action. If the individual is rational, he only needs fair conditions in order to pursue his own welfare. The role of the administration is to ensure those conditions and to oversee the distribution of goods and services, as well as the distribution and redistribution of added value.

Keywords: Justice; Fairness; Constitutive Value; Equality