What is justice?

KEY QUESTIONS
What is just and fair? Is justice the only thing worth focusing on, after a crime has been committed?

This lesson introduces students to the challenges of at least trying to bring justice to a post-conflict situation. Justice can be difficult to define. The Big Ideas activity is designed to explore the dilemmas and to distinguish between justice, the law and a sense of ‘what is fair’.
Fairness, where people are treated as equals, is a useful concept. But definitions of justice only stay pure when they are kept theoretical. As soon as they are applied to real human beings, other considerations become powerful: compensation, remorse, mitigating circumstances, forgiveness, cost, practicality and logistics, to name just a few…

AIMS AND PURPOSE
To increase students’ understanding of the complexities of applying justice
To synthesise students’ knowledge of fairness and unfairness with concepts of reconciliation, compensation, remorse and forgiveness.

WHAT DO I GET?
There are three PDFs included with this lesson:-
A two-page lesson plan covering the key questions, aims, resources needed and a detailed outline of the suggested method and activities.
A set of handouts for printing.
A set of presentation slides for class discussion.