Justice involves giving each person his/her due. Most of the conflicts, turmoil, and destructive acts in the world can be traced to grievances that result from injustice. Justice can reduce most turmoil to the minimum. It is important to cite a couple of instances wherein gross injustice spawning ongoing violence and sorrow. While I was visiting places sacred to Christians in the Middle East in 1981 I could not but notice the pathetic Palestinian refugee camps started during the so-called civil war of 1947-1948 in Palestine between the immigrant Jews and the native Palestinian Arabs. My heart was in anguish seeing Palestinians - our fellow human beings - in such a terrible plight. How can humanity tolerate that? Interestingly the UN 1947 partition plan for Palestine was recommended a month after the Indian partition and ratified a month later in November 1947. It is also noteworthy that both India and Palestine were British colonies at the time. Problems between India and Pakistan related to occupation/partition of Kashmir and those between Israelis and Palestinians related to partition of Palestine have caused several wars and untold suffering and have not yet found a humane solution. I may mention that a UN resolution setting up two nations – Israel and Palestine - passed in the UN Security Council in 1947. Israel came into being in 1948; Palestine has still not birthed. Yet here again what is unfortunately proved is that opportunism and might are right. Not fairness, not justice, not principles, and not human considerations. How can might that is sheer brute force be redeemed by justice?! It must also be said that the hard stance taken by the Arab league during the initial Palestine partition plan was replaced later by the stance taken by the hard-line Jewish leaders as they were tasting more and more victories gained through might and super-power protection. This unwillingness to make reasonable compromises for the advancement of humanity spells, in the final analysis, disaster for all. Prolonged humiliation, utterly unnecessary pain, and hopelessness suffered especially by the innocent overwhelming majority can be too easily as well as too wrongly channeled into terrorism and anti-human acts by leaders who exploit human weaknesses for revenge and retaliation. We need to create a win-win situation, because any win-lose situation finally turns into a lose-lose situation for all. As weapons of destruction massively produced are shaped into tools for construction and agriculture, might/force will have to yield to justice for the new creation of God's people. Humanity, more specifically nations, has not learned yet from the repetitive discredited policies of opportunistic power alliances that mortgage principles, human and spiritual values for immediate material gains and dominance.

             Every law and order is or should be based on justice. There were laws in the past that were clearly unethical and immoral but were "legal" in that an entity approved by the people formulated them. An institution approved by the people need not have a moral and ethical base as the people approving them may be misguided themselves. In other words, some laws may be legal but immoral. Some examples are slavery and injustices and discriminations based on caste, gender, and occupation. In these instances civil and human rights are violated. Extensive civil rights legislations banning discriminations on the basis of race came in the United States only in the 1960s. Enforcement of human rights banning caste and gender discriminations in India is making painfully slow progress. I am examining human rights violations cursorily in the oldest (USA) and the biggest (India) democracies. It is not rare that clan representatives or elders defending "honor killings" openly challenge human rights guaranteed by the constitution of India. It is not unusual for police in India to look the other way ignoring gross violations of human rights. An Amnesty International study in 2005 dealt with India's unfinished agenda related to equality and justice for 200 million victims of the caste system. A UN report in 2007 mentioned India as a leading destination for human trafficking in South Asia, with over 35,000 young girls and women from Bangladesh and Nepal brought into the country every year. In the USA, the most prosperous and litigious country in the world, innocent persons were found to be languishing in prisons while rich criminals went scot-free. It is also interesting to note that the government itself shamelessly devised instruments of torture to extract confessions from prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib disregarding human rights and all cannons of human decency.

             The majority of African Americans and Native Americans are far away from joining the main stream of prosperity and justice while precious wealth is squandered in a war in Iraq entered upon with faulty intelligence and without wide consultation and enough consensus from the international community. Recently I came upon a news item about couples not being able to get married without a test for the knowledge of the English language that is aimed at immigrants in UK and that has serious implications for human rights.

             I am going to look at some important aspects of justice such as retributive justice, distributive justice, restorative justice, and social justice. The sad reality is that justice in the legal system has not kept up with the progress in human consciousness, science, and technology. The legal system meting out justice all over the world needs radical over-hauling. The current adversarial legal system pretty much focuses on retributive justice based on punishment fitting the crime coming out of the biblical precept of "life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot" Deuteronomy 19: 21). In retributive justice punishment is supposed to be proportionate to the crime committed. In this system the crime is considered to be committed against the state rather than against an individual or community. Distributive justice considers needs of individuals in a society. All individuals in a society are interdependent and have an obligation to contribute to others in need. And that is where distributive justice to create an equitable society as well as the best possible distribution of wealth comes. Social justice focuses on creating a society based on human rights, solidarity, dignity, and equality. Economically a living wage is envisaged. Restorative or reparative justice focuses on the needs of victims as well as the offenders as both are members of the same society. It works for repairing the damage done by making the perpetrator accountable for the crime in order to provide adequate satisfaction to the victim. This involves peaceful and non-violent approaches to solving conflicts and dealing with violations of legal and human rights. This promotes healing, forgiveness, and reconciliation by mending broken relationships and restoring trust.

             The current legal system heavily emphasizing punitive justice with endless time consuming procedures and appeals is woefully inadequate to dispense justice. The main beneficiaries perhaps are lawyers and judges with their medieval or colonial attire, mannerisms, power display, pomp, and pelf. They are more concerned about technicalities and loopholes than about truth and justice. Their training needs to be radically revised so that they can become experts in human relations, mediation skills, and creative problem-solving, morality, and ethics as well as in the knowledge of laws. The inhuman games of intimidation, brow-beating, and one-upmanship have no place in the legal system. While due process is important a broad training in arriving at life-giving truth, justice, and fairness is essential. About three years ago when I was making India the main sphere of my activity I was appalled to see that the criminal legal system was using narco-analysis, polygraph, and the so-called brain-mapping as lie-detector tests in the well-known Sr. Abhaya's murder case to establish guilt or innocence. Persons were subjected, it was reported, to these tests against their own will. According to the current status of knowledge these tests do not conclusively prove guilt or innocence. Besides no coercive method to extract certain knowledge can be employed. This violates one's legitimate human rights. One cannot use a bad means for a good end. I was happily relieved later on when the supreme court of India disallowed such practices. Trying to establish a woman's virginity by checking the intactness of her hymen is not only a gross and humiliating violation of her privacy and human rights but also is unscientific. Use of such primitive methods especially in a legal system is highly objectionable and regrettable.

             Even though all are created equal and all are equal as human beings, all are not equal with regard to attributes like gender, color, intelligence, height, build, strength, voice, looks, abilities, and skills. That is where diversity reigns. We need a comprehensive, multi-faceted justice system that responds to the needs of the modern world that is a global family of nations. The adversarial, litigious, never-ending, and exasperating legal system needs to give way to a cooperative, compassionate, swift, and effective legal system that advances equality and human rights. We need to take the best aspects of justice. We need to move from vindictive and punitive justice to transformational justice where the needs of the victims and offenders are evaluated and related to. We need to move from if you do your crime you need to serve your time to you need to make your life worthwhile and achieve your goal. Transformational justice is nothing but enlightened learning. Criminals are the products of societal systems that contain faulty learning elements that need to be corrected. They need to be rehabilitated so that society is safe and recidivism rate for them is considerably reduced. They do not need to become the new class of untouchables who need to be shunned, and who are constantly reminded of their crimes. Instead of hardening their hearts we in our compassion need to be ingenious in devising ways to soften and open their hearts so that redeeming values can enter in. All in various measures need redemption. The primary function of religions is to teach salvation and redemption so that we can move from an imperfect state to a more perfect state. While deterrence is important a forward-looking vision of society where a criminal comes to terms with the victim through interactional justice and sound human relations needs to come into focus.

             Our world needs to take care of the most vulnerable in society. The legal system in many ways needs to become a voice of the voiceless rather than a strong arm of the rich and the powerful protecting their interests. In most democracies in the world the legislators are the rich and the powerful influenced by powerful lobbies representing national and multi-national corporations that provide them with expensive financial incentives, gifts, and perks. If they were not rich when they were elected they soon become rich. Often the small criminals who engage in petty crimes are caught while the big criminals who suck the blood of hard working laborers and stash their ill- begotten wealth and black money in secretive, unreachable vaults in banks abroad walk in our midst smelling like roses. Often legal loopholes protect them. There is widespread corruption in India often involving small sums. Corruption in the USA involves large sums. The global melt down and the economic slowdown in the world about two years ago started in the USA with irresponsible and corrupt financial practices with greedy and get-rich- soon financial sharks with unethical conduct and unscrupulous ways. Most people who were affected in the financial melt-down were the hard-working people like me who saved some money for their old age. The two rich husband and wife doctors from India sentenced recently to be put behind bars for their fraudulent billing practices to defraud the US government of huge sums of money are not any different from the other criminals. Their greed blinded them.

             According to a Reuters report of March 11, 2011 a certain disgraced Kumar from India told jurors in a New York court about leaking for insider training vital secrets from his company to a certain Rajaratnam originally from Sri Lanka for 1.75 million dollars (about Rs. 8 crores at the exchange rate of Rs. 45.75 for $1). As the world is shrinking the nature of big crimes is also changing. Fifty Indian billionaires (one US billion is one thousand million, that is, 100 crores) led by Mittal, Ambani, and Premji made to the Forbes list of World Billionaires 2011 - the global richest club – as reported by IANS (Indo-Asian News Service) of March 10, 2011. Mittal's wealth is $ 31.1 billion = 31.1 x 45.75 = Rs. 142,282.5 crores). I do not want by any means to imply that he got this wealth illegally. But I cannot and will not accept a world order where such accumulation of wealth by one individual can happen. The classical communist experiment that failed in the Soviet Union after about 70 years cannot be allowed to be replaced by unbridled capitalism. We need to devise a social justice system conceived in genuine freedom between authoritarian communism and uncontrolled capitalism with effective checks and balances. A reformed, just, and fair UN constituted by proportionate representation according to the census of each member nation can monitor the world's wealth and its distribution. There certainly needs to be a minimum wage for living in human dignity as well as a maximum limit for accumulation of wealth. I would like the 500 richest in the world reported in the Forbes list of billionaires to be recognized by the wealth they distribute rather than by their ability to accumulate and hoard. Interestingly Gates who could have been the number one richest person in the world decided to forego this status by giving away money through his philanthropic foundation. The rich persons need to be aware that they could not have accumulated their enormous wealth without the help of societies they live and move in, and the inequitable laws or structures that protect their wealth. I would like to propose a justice system backed up by an effective legal system where individual differences, and needs, and efforts are taken into account, where distributive, restorative, and social justice guided by perennial human values and rights is given more importance, where retributive justice is played down, and where a comprehensive system of justice has a unique role to play. The present legal system will have to be replaced by benign systems such as arbitration tribunals, truth and reconciliation committees, mediation panels, and enlightened citizens' council representative of the people, and drawn from various disciplines and interests. I also very strongly advocate reasonable and public financing of publicity and exposure of candidates for elections. That way the role of money in elections can be minimized; noise pollution and election time mudslinging aimed at opponents can be avoided, and decent ethical norms of conduct can be maintained. Elections need to be issue-oriented and not person-oriented. In the context of repeated uncivilized and highly objectionable unethical behavior in state assemblies and national parliament, I would also strongly recommend a screening of candidates proposed for elections to obtain what may be called a social justice-fairness- ethical behavior index or quotient. This would heighten their awareness and capacity to fulfill their duties, and work with people with differing, strong, and passionate views. In this screening factors such as impulse control, non-violent conflict or disagreement resolution, and respect for others, and ethical behavior under all circumstances should be given paramount importance. In a mature democracy legislators need to be modeling behavior for the people of the state or country, and need to learn to agree to disagree in an agreeable way. If they cannot do that they do not need to be elected to such lofty positions to make laws for others. They should not make laws that they themselves are not able to abide by. Without justice and just laws a nation cannot survive.