For my ethics class here, I had to write a paper about the relationship between morality and justice.  The only guidelines were that it had to be 2-3 pages so it was a really easy paper to write.  If you're interested, here it is:

            Everybody has a slightly different idea of how morality relates to justice.  Each community defines what they consider to be moral, but the concept of justice seems less flexible.  Both justice and morality can be ways to define right and wrong, but why is justice more consistent while morality sometimes seems culture-based?  The concepts of justice and morality overlap quite a bit.  In fact, moral codes tend to include the concepts of justice, but justice does not always include morality.  The apparent solution is that morality is based on some ideology which includes the basis for justice.

            First, it seems prudent to define the concept of ethics.  For the sake of specificity, ethics will be used to address universal ideas of right and wrong.  These ideas rise from the standard human belief that it is wrong to harm other people.  A person loses their protection under this code if they break it.  Ethics does not take into account personal ideas of good and bad, only the universal goal to not harm other people.  The idea of justice is a way of enforcing ethical standards on a community as evidenced by the consistency of laws against theft and murder.  Morality then is a system of personal values addressing issues of good and bad. 

For example, murder is wrong, which makes it both unjust and unethical.  Since “wrong” is included within the concept of “bad” murder is also immoral.  On the other hand, premarital sex between consenting adults does not harm either one of them and cannot be said to be “wrong”.  Since it is not wrong, it is neither unethical nor unjust.  In terms of morality, whether premarital sex is good or bad is subjective and varies for each person.  Similarly, donating money to charity is an issue of morality only.  Whether or not one donates, they are not doing harm, so the donation is not a consideration of justice or ethics.  However, since the donation would be a “good” thing to do, it is the morally proper action.

            Now the source of overlap between morality and justice is evident: both include the concept of ethics.  Clearly if everyone lived an ethical life, societies would have no need for a justice system to enforce ethical standards.  There is however a problem with ethics, because it is too narrow.  Ethics only concerns itself with not doing harm, but is not at all concerned with doing good.  If a person was only concerned with being ethical, they would never give to charity and they would never concern themselves with the actions of others.  So if there was a society of many ethical people and one unethical person, the unethical person would go unchecked.  This is when morality becomes necessary.

            While a life may be ethical just by refusing to do harm, morality provides the motivation to prevent others from doing harm.  It is generally considered good to stop bad people from doing bad things, so morality is a necessary trait in anyone designated to enforce justice.  By taking a moral position, one realizes a responsibility to do good by preventing wrong.  Morality can only come after a solid foundation of ethics, and is incredibly necessary in an imperfect world.

            The potential pitfall of justice comes when morality and ethics are confused.  An example of this would be Nazi Germany.  Germans generally believed that it would be good for their nation to regain its economic stability.  Adolf Hitler believed a good way to accomplish this would be through the development of a genetically superior nation.  He also believed and persuaded others that a good way to accomplish this was through genocide.  Entire armies were caught up in the “good” idea of a genetically superior and financially stable nation.  They got so caught up that ethics were completely forgotten.  The Holocaust was completely unjust and unethical because it caused so much unnecessary harm, but in the minds of the Nazis it was the moral thing to do. 

Injustice occurs when people mistake morality for ethics.  They are not the same thing even though they often overlap.  Usually, a person’s concept of morality includes the universal standard for ethics.  Most people extend their concepts of morality beyond ethics to concern themselves with the ideas of helping people or following specific religious practices.  However it is necessary to remember that morality is a personal issue, ill-suited for application to a community.  If morality is broadly applied, ethics loses its influence and the society suffers injustice.  While both morality and ethics are important in a society, injustice can only be prevented when the society concerns itself more with ethics than with morality.