Justice Vs. Mercy

Justice and mercy can fall on a spectrum when considering ethical systems.

Justice is a key principle of ethics and is present in the  principlism  that I mentioned in a previous post. But, as is recognized in principlism, justice comes in many forms.

Distributive justice is about people receiving a fair amount of something, whether it be resources, the opportunity for resources, attention, etc.

Procedural justice is about a fair process being used for determining outcomes. Also known as fair play.

Restorative justice is about restoring things to a fair state, putting things back as they were.

Retributive justice is about punishment, administering fair repercussions for someone who acts unfairly.

And even amongst any of these, "fair" also has to be defined in order to have any practical definition of justice.

Even though justice is a key aspect of ethical systems, there are some models, like Kidder's model for ethical decision-making, that pit justice against mercy. In that model, the choice of either mercy or justice is meant to resolve a right vs. right dilemma. As Dr. Helen Hodges summarizes in her ethical decision-making class:

Justice urges us to stick by our principles, hold to the rules despite the pressures of the moment, and pursue fairness without attention to personalities or situations. Mercy urges us to care for the [particular] needs [of] individuals case by case and to seek benevolence in every way possible. It is right to be merciful. It is right to enforce justice.

My interpretation of this is that justice and mercy do not fall on a spectrum as described. That mercy is not mutually exclusive from justice in general, but actually, that mercy is a prioritization of other principles in a moral system. By this definition, mercy does not seem to be distinct from the multiple kinds of justice described earlier in this post. Mercy by this definition is the positioning of justice in such a way that it is secured by non-maleficence and beneficence - as can happen within reflexive principlism.

But ignoring the principlism interpretation of the relationship between justice and mercy, we can maintain the spectrum idea by considering the colloquial definitions of justice and mercy. 

Justice is delivering repercussions for bad things. Mercy is forgiveness for bad things.

With those definitions, I think one important principle draws a distinction between justice and mercy. Mercy recognizes that a civil society can exist even if some people do bad things sometimes. One interpretation of mercy might claim that a civil society can exist even if some people do bad things all the time, but I think most mercy systems acknowledge that even if someone did something bad, that doesn't mean that people will continue to do bad. I think goal of a good mercy system is to provide ethics education, to change unethical behavior in a formative way. To me, thinking colloquially, mercy is to justice as formative assessment is to summative assessment. Mercy is about correcting course, and justice is about delivering a final judgment.

With the assessment metaphor, I also imply that justice and mercy should work together. I think there are examples of bad systems that fall on either extreme of pure mercy and pure justice.

This comes up in the Death Note anime (which I've just finished). Light/Kira directs all of his power towards "becoming justice", and he eventually does become a justice system. His interpretation of ethics is pretty much perfectly just, by the colloquial definition. If you defy Kira, or break the law, you die. Not much negotiation, correcting course, or forgiveness involved. There is no acknowledgment that a criminal can change their ways, or even that people can be complex enough that they can still be a good person even if they have committed a crime.

On the other side, as an extreme of mercy, is what's called "idiot compassion". For instance, this can take the form of enabling. Yes, you did something that threatens beneficence of either others or yourself, say, by taking advantage of me, but I forgive you endlessly. This forgiveness may recognize that people can change, and correct course, but it does not actually do the work to help a person change. It may sustain a situation, allowing it to persist by not issuing a final judgment.

In any case, I don't think mercy and justice are distinct from a principlism standpoint, and from a colloquial standpoint I think a balance of justice and mercy is needed for an ethical system that I would consider effective at establishing beneficence/non-maleficence/autonomy, and accurate with regards to its modeling of human nature.