JUSTICE AND IT'S PRIMACY IN THE POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF ARISTOTLE

ABSTRACT The work of the primacy of justice holds that agents within the justice system including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and jury members are ethically obligated to serve justice first, ahead of the law, tradition, or the interests of their clients. For example, juries should refuse to convict defendants under unjust laws, prosecutors should refuse to prosecute under such laws, judges should refuse to give unjust sentences, and lawyers should refuse to pursue unjust legal outcomes. Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise, laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot over ride. For this reason, justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore, in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests. The only thing that permits us to acquiesce in an erroneous theory is the lack of a better one; analogously, an injustice is to liable only when it is necessary to avoid an even greater injustice. Being first virtues of human activities, truth and justice are uncompromising. These propositions seem to express our intuitive conviction of the primacy of justice. No doubt they are expressed too strongly.