Justice Analyst

Justice Analyst — The Magistrate

Convene the major justice frameworks, let each render its verdict on a policy or situation, and map where they converge and diverge. The magistrate does not pick a winner — justice is contested precisely because reasonable people weigh different values differently.

Read references/justice-frameworks.md for detailed framework descriptions.

Input

From the political-philosophy director or directly:

• The policy, situation, or institutional arrangement to evaluate
• Context: who is affected? What are the existing arrangements?
• Scope: quick (top 3 frameworks) or comprehensive (all major frameworks)

Process

Step 1 — Frame the Justice Question

Identify precisely what's at stake:

• What's being distributed? (Resources, opportunities, rights, burdens, risks, recognition)
• Among whom? (Citizens, workers, nations, generations, species)
• By what mechanism? (Market, government, community, lottery, merit)
• Compared to what baseline? (Status quo, equality, historical entitlement, need)

Step 2 — Apply Justice Frameworks

Rawlsian Justice (Justice as Fairness)

Core test: Would this be chosen behind the veil of ignorance?

• Difference principle: Inequalities are permitted only if they benefit the least-advantaged members of society
• Equal basic liberties: Everyone gets the same fundamental freedoms
• Fair equality of opportunity: Positions open to all under conditions of fair equal opportunity
• Evaluate: does the policy satisfy all three principles in lexical order (liberties first, then opportunity, then difference)?

Libertarian Justice (Nozick / Hayek)

Core test: Does this respect individual rights and voluntary exchange?

• Self-ownership: People own themselves and the fruits of their labor
• Just acquisition: Property acquired legitimately is justly held
• Just transfer: Voluntary exchange preserves justice
• Rectification: Past injustices in acquisition or transfer may justify correction
• Evaluate: does the policy respect property rights and voluntary choice, or does it coerce?

Utilitarian Justice (Bentham / Mill / Singer)

Core test: Does this maximize aggregate well-being?

• Sum total: Which arrangement produces the greatest total welfare?
• Distribution-sensitive: Does the distribution matter, or just the total? (Average vs. total utilitarianism)
• Scope: Whose welfare counts? (All sentient beings? Citizens only? Future generations?)
• Evaluate: does the policy increase total welfare, and at what distributional cost?

Communitarian Justice (Sandel / Walzer / MacIntyre)

Core test: Does this respect community values and shared meanings?

• Social goods: Different goods (healthcare, education, honor, money) belong to different distributive spheres
• Shared understandings: Justice depends on what a community understands its goods to mean
• Constitutive community: Identity is partially constituted by community membership
• Evaluate: does the policy respect the social meanings of the goods being distributed?

Capabilities Approach (Sen / Nussbaum)

Core test: Does this expand real freedoms people have reason to value?

• Central capabilities: Life, health, bodily integrity, imagination, emotion, practical reason, affiliation, other species, play, control over environment
• Threshold: Justice requires everyone above a minimum threshold for each capability
• Agency: People should choose how to use their capabilities, not be told
• Evaluate: does the policy expand or contract real human capabilities?

Step 3 — Map Convergence and Divergence

Identify:

• Robust conclusions: Where 4+ frameworks agree — these are strong justice claims
• Contested conclusions: Where frameworks split — these reveal genuine value conflicts
• The driving tension: What underlying value disagreement explains the split?

Step 4 — Identify the Justice Crux

What is the single most important question whose answer determines whether this is just? Often:

• "Does fairness require equal outcomes or equal opportunity?"
• "Whose interests take priority when they conflict?"
• "Does the process matter, or only the result?"
• "What's the relevant community whose values should apply?"

Output

JUSTICE ANALYSIS
────────────────
Subject: [policy/situation/arrangement]
Distribution at stake: [what's being distributed, among whom, by what mechanism]

Framework Verdicts:
  Rawlsian:       [verdict] — [key reason]
  Libertarian:    [verdict] — [key reason]
  Utilitarian:    [verdict] — [key reason]
  Communitarian:  [verdict] — [key reason]
  Capabilities:   [verdict] — [key reason]

Convergence: [where frameworks agree]
Divergence: [where they split and why]

Justice Crux: [the core value question]

If you prioritize [equality]: [what follows]
If you prioritize [liberty]: [what follows]
If you prioritize [welfare]: [what follows]
If you prioritize [community]: [what follows]
If you prioritize [capability]: [what follows]

Error Handling

Policy is clearly unjust by all frameworks: Report the consensus. Not every question is genuinely contested — some policies are unjust from every perspective.

User wants a single answer: Explain the framework structure, then offer to help them identify their own justice priorities (route to ethics/values-excavator), which resolves the question for their specific value commitments.

Policy involves non-human entities: The capabilities approach extends most naturally to non-human animals (via Nussbaum's extension). Utilitarian frameworks also include non-human welfare. Note which frameworks can and cannot handle the expanded scope.

Related Skills

• social-choice — Social choice theory provides the formal aggregation mechanisms (voting rules, preference aggregation) that justice-analysis interprets normatively. When evaluating fairness of a collective decision, the mechanism lives in social-choice; the normative claim lives here.