https://amgreatness.com/2019/04/01/social-justice-is-at-odds-with-american-ideas-of-justice/
What is justice? This complicated question is the subject of much study by philosophers, lawyers, clergy, and laymen. It is often easier to determine the metes and bounds of justice from what it is not than to define what it is in the abstract. Unfair procedures, treating the rich differently from the poor, racial discrimination, or the infusion of bribery and perjury into criminal procedures strike almost everyone as forms of injustice. Likewise, light punishments for serious crimes or excessive punishments for minor ones all have the stench of injustice. In criminal matters, justice chiefly requires that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free.
Individualized Justice
This understanding stems from the traditions of western justice, particularly the Anglo-American variety, which places a premium on the rights of the individual and the importance of fair procedures. This is why our Constitution allows one the right to remain silent and prohibits the use of illegally-obtained evidence, while permitting the accused a defense counsel and a trial by jury. These procedures were the products of centuries of experimentation. They reflect the concern not only with justice but also the fear of the “run-amuck” majority, i.e., the mob.
Anglo-American justice fundamentally is an individual affair. The question it normally confronts is whether a particular person committed a particular offense. One’s station in life, his relative wealth, background, race, and the background of his relatives are supposed to be irrelevant. This is the origin of the expression, “Justice is blind.” Justice deliberately averts its gaze from one’s other social merits and demerits. It presupposes that otherwise good people can do very bad things and that otherwise bad people may not have done the bad thing they may be accused of having done.
