Domain framework
The Justice Framework
A practical guide to rights, law, authority, wrongdoing, accountability, restitution, mercy, and due process.
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Chapters
- 00
Introduction
The Justice Framework examines harm, rights, evidence, due process, proportionate accountability, repair, mercy, and the limits of public power.
- 01
01. Justice and Moral Order
Justice begins with the claim that reality contains moral order. Some actions are not merely disliked; they are wrong because they violate persons, promises, property, trust, truth, safety, or the conditions of...
- 02
02. Rights and Reciprocal Claims
Rights are moral claims that protect persons from certain forms of violation, domination, or neglect. They name what is due to a person because the person is real, vulnerable, capable of agency, and affected by power.
- 03
03. Authority and Legitimacy
Authority is the recognized power to decide, command, judge, enforce, or act on behalf of others. Legitimacy is the moral rightfulness of that authority. A person may have power without legitimacy.
- 04
04. Law, Rule, and Judgment
Law is public rule backed by authority. Rules are standards that guide conduct and judgment. Judgment is the disciplined application of standards to real cases. Justice needs all three.
- 05
05. Evidence and Due Process
Evidence is the material of truthful judgment. Due process is the set of procedures that constrain power while evidence is gathered, tested, and weighed.
- 06
06. Harm, Wrongdoing, and Culpability
Harm is damage to a person, property, trust, order, right, or shared good. Wrongdoing is conduct that violates a moral duty. Culpability is the degree to which a person is responsible for the wrongdoing.
- 07
07. Victims and the Duty to Hear
Victims are persons who have suffered harm through wrongdoing, negligence, abuse of power, or preventable failure. A just response begins by refusing to make victims invisible.
- 08
08. Accusation and the Presumption Against Mob Judgment
Accusation is a claim that someone has done wrong. It may be necessary, courageous, and true. It may also be mistaken, exaggerated, malicious, incomplete, or premature.
- 09
09. Accountability and Consequence
Accountability is the requirement that a person or institution answer for conduct. Consequence is the real response attached to wrongdoing, negligence, or failure of duty.
- 10
10. Restitution and Repair
Restitution is the effort to restore what was wrongly taken, damaged, withheld, or imposed where restoration is possible.
- 11
11. Punishment and Its Limits
Punishment is the deliberate imposition of a burden because wrongdoing has occurred. It may include loss of liberty, money, privilege, role, access, status, or freedom of action.
- 12
12. Mercy Without Denial
Mercy is the choice to respond to wrongdoing with less severity than strict consequence might allow, or with a path toward restoration where restoration can be truthful.
- 13
13. Public Safety and Protection
Public safety is the condition under which people can live ordinary life without reasonable fear of violence, theft, coercion, disorder, or abandonment in emergencies.
- 14
14. Force, Restraint, and Last Resort
Force is physical or coercive power used to stop, compel, restrain, defend, or punish. It may be used by individuals in self-defense, by parents in limited protective ways, by officers under law, by states in war, or...
- 15
15. Courts, Institutions, and Procedure
Courts and justice institutions exist to move disputes and accusations from private conflict into public, bounded judgment. They are not perfect instruments. They are human institutions under law.
- 16
16. Policing, Enforcement, and Trust
Policing and enforcement exist because law without enforcement becomes advice and public safety can collapse when danger is not restrained.
- 17
17. Prisons, Rehabilitation, and Incapacitation
Prisons and detention systems are among the most severe instruments of public justice because they take liberty. They may be necessary to incapacitate dangerous people, impose serious consequence, protect the public,...
- 18
18. Civil Justice and Material Remedy
Civil justice concerns wrongs, disputes, obligations, and injuries that often require material remedy rather than criminal punishment.
- 19
19. Historical Injustice and Present Responsibility
Historical injustice is wrongdoing whose consequences continue beyond the original actors. Slavery, conquest, segregation, dispossession, state abuse, corruption, institutional exclusion, family violence, coerced...
- 20
20. Equality, Partiality, and Corruption
Justice requires equality before just standards. It does not require pretending that every situation is identical. A child, an adult, a victim, an accused person, a judge, an officer, a citizen, a visitor, an...
- 21
21. Forgiveness, Reconciliation, and Public Order
Forgiveness, reconciliation, and public order are often confused because all three can reduce conflict. But they are not the same act. Forgiveness concerns a person's refusal to be ruled by resentment.
- 22
22. Justice in Families, Schools, and Workplaces
Most people encounter justice first in local authority. Families correct children. Schools discipline students. Workplaces investigate misconduct, resolve disputes, assign responsibility, and enforce standards.
- 23
23. International Justice, War, and Peace
Justice does not stop at borders. Nations can protect, exploit, invade, abandon, rescue, trade, sanction, occupy, negotiate, deter, rebuild, and betray.
- 24
24. The Just Life
The just life is not lived only in courts, elections, offices, police stations, prisons, or public controversies. It is lived in the ordinary pattern by which a person responds to wrong.
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