Criminal Justice Vs Social Justice

1 Introduction

Criminal justice is the basic justice, while social justice is a justice with the higher standard. Both are inexplicably linked in the conflict, it has produced huge impacts on criminal judicial activities. The emergence of this phenomenon primarily results from the limitation of criminal justice itself. In addition, ordinary citizens are lack of the fundamental sense of law and objective attitude of legal issues, thus their so-called social justice are often biased so as to cause the conflict with criminal justice. Meanwhile, public opinions have the unstable characteristic, these non-rational and subjective opinions are easy to generate the negative effect on criminal justice. This essay will analyze the specific situations

Just as Kennedy (2005) argues that the justice is the same as a changing face, it can have different shapes and features at any moment. Thus, the justice has different meanings in different contexts. Criminal justice activities as a measure of entrusting popular will, it carries the public expectation towards the fair trial. This desire can boil down to the untiring pursuit of common value ideal and belief, which is social justice.

Although criminal justice is a kind of justice, criminal justice belongs to the category of law. To be more exact, criminal justice is a type of legal norm, the legislation defines its meaning. Criminal justice presents itself with the pattern of institutionalization, this kind of justice contains not only the rational coercive power but also the state coercive power (Blake, 2001). Social justice refers to a justice that the public can accept it in general. Ackerman (1980) suggests that the basis of social justice is the human ethic and morality, the value of this type of ethical norm is higher than the value of criminal justice. Thus, criminal justice is a basic justice, social justice is a higher standard. From the viewpoint of law, criminal justice neither requires a person to requite the kindness of others nor request people to do the charity work for others. The law just requires citizens to obey legal regulations, it does not have the definite requirements to regular the daily behavior of