Justice concerns the proper ordering of things and persons within a society. As a concept it has been subject to philosophical, legal, and theological reflection and debate throughout history.
"Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought." Few theorists, however, believe that the current world comprises a fully just system: "We do not live in a just world."
Justice can be divided into two broad types. Distributive justice is concerned with the proper distribution of good things - wealth, power, reward, respect - between different people. So, for instance, egalitarianism is a theory of distributive justice which says that the proper distribution of wealth (and perhaps other goods) is an equal distribution: no-one in the relevant group should have more or less than anyone else in that group. Retributive justice is concerned with the proper response to wrongdoing. So, for instance, the lex talionis (law of retaliation) is a theory of retributive justice which says that the proper punishment is equal to the wrong suffered: "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, wound for wound, stripe for stripe."
A number of important questions surrounding justice have been fiercely debated over the course of western history: What is justice? What does it demand of individuals and societies? What is the proper distribution of wealth and resources in society: equal, meritocratic, according to status, or some other arrangement? There is a myriad of possible answers to these questions from divergent perspectives on the political and philosophical spectrum.
Some theorists, such as the classical Greeks, conceive of justice as a virtue—a property of people, and only derivatively of their actions and the institutions they create. Others emphasize actions or institutions, and only derivatively of the people who bring them about. The source of justice has variously been attributed to harmony, divine command, natural law, or human creation. It may be considered subordinate to a different ethical value.