Other forms: justices
Justice is fair treatment — everyone getting what they are owed, and wrongs being put right. It covers the idea and the machinery: a sense of justice is a feeling about fairness, while the criminal justice system is courts, police and prisons.
The word points two ways and it is worth keeping them apart. Justice for someone usually means a wrong being answered; justice as a principle is about how things should be arranged for everyone. A Justice with a capital J is also a judge — Mr Justice Hale, the Justices of the Supreme Court — which is why the same word appears on a courtroom door and in a protest chant. Note the phrase do justice to, which has drifted away from law altogether and just means show something at its best.
1nounjusticeFair treatment, especially under the law.
“The families are still waiting for justice.”
2nounsystemThe system of courts, police and law by which a country deals with crime.
“She works in the criminal justice system.”
3nounjudgeA judge, especially a senior one.
“The ruling was written by Justice Okoro.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
justice is a principle of fairness.
Latin iustitia is built on ius, meaning right or law, which also gives English just, judge, jury and injury — literally a not-right. The Latin word covered both what is lawful and what is fair, and English inherited the ambiguity rather than solving it.
Proto-Indo-European
*h₂yew-
Proto-Italic
*jowos
Latin
iūstitia — righteousness, equity
Old French
justise
Middle English
justice
English, today
justice
Built from
From Middle English justice, from Old French justise, justice (Modern French justice), from Latin iūstitia (“righteousness, equity”), from iūstus (“just”), from iūs (“right”), from Proto-Italic jowos, perhaps literally "sacred formula", a word peculiar to Latin (not general Italic) that originated in the religious cults, from Proto-Indo-European h₂yew-. a doublet of Justitia. Partly displaced native rihtwīsnes (Modern English righteousness < rightwiseness).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA