Criminal Justice Vs Social Justice

3 Reasons of Dislocation between Criminal Justice and Social Justice

The significant dislocation between criminal justice and social justice exists in the practice of criminal justice, public opinions should be objective, rational and appropriate. Therefore, it is necessary to analyze reasons of this special phenomenon in order to avoid following blindly.

3.1 The Limitation of Criminal Justice in Practice

Criminal justice has the limitation in practice, which is a significant reason of generating the dislocation between criminal justice and social justice in a specific case. Bernard and Engel (2001) argues that criminal justice is not a one-sided justice of those people in power, it is a variable influenced by two sides of criminal justice

However, it does not mean that criminal justice cannot optionally be ignored. Social justice and public opinions cannot entirely replace national legislations, it should not waive rules of law in order to achieve the so-called social justice. The legislation is a norm that carries public opinions, the process of passing laws is the same as the process of absorbing public opinions. Rihua (2010) suggests that judicature is a process of judgement according to public opinions. In other words, the legislation embodies public opinions, citizens are not only lawmakers but also the final judge of law. Therefore, rules of the law embody public interests and values, criminal justice and social justice do not have the clash in nature. Although the injustice of some individual cases is existent because of the limitation of law, it is essential to guarantee the holiness and authority of law. Otherwise, the improper and irrational acts of public opinions would intervene the judicial process, which may lead to the ‘tyranny of the majority’ (Fleck and Hanssen, 2012). It finally may give rise to that the achievement of justice is just words on a page. Besides, Hayek (2012) argues that the main content of justice is to avoid arbitrariness in the process of exercising power. Consequently, the development of legitimacy is so important, because human behaviors are ruled by reasonable

In recent years, with the development of news medias, especially for the convenience of network communication, people can freely express their own views and ideas. At the same time, public opinions can play an important role in supervising the process of legislation (Donghua and Jun, 2002). However, this kind of public supervision cannot function at will, it should not undermine judicial independence. Because public opinions are not always rational and objective, it has some characteristics, such as instability, subjectivity and conformity. There are several reasons of producing these