Evaluating the Quality of Justice

Source: (1995) Justice as Healing (Spring)

Barsh, a professor at a Canadian university, notes different meanings for the concept “justice,” depending on one’s cultural context. For example, non-Aboriginal students tended to define justice as equality before the law. Aboriginal students tended to speak of harmony or related ideas.
Barsh observes that there have been few empirical studies hazarding a measurement of the extent to which modern Western legal systems apply rules equally. There are even greater challenges to meet before attempting to measure “justice” in the Aboriginal sense. He then discusses possible indicators or measures for evaluating justice in the Aboriginal sense.