This is an essay on “Political Justice” for CSS, PMS, and Judiciary examination. Strong Politics and political culture are the backbones of every state in the world. So, there must be political justice in the government too. Political Justice is the prime focus of the government of the State to provide for its citizens. Equal representation in the parliament is still lacking behind for many years. Therefore when there is no political justice then there will be no stable government. So, to understand Political Justice in Islam here is an essay on the topic of “Political Justice”.
Essay on “Political Justice”
The rights of the person require that individuals have an effective role in shaping their own destinies. They have a right to participate in the political process freely and responsibly. They have a right to free access to information, freedom of speech and press, as well as freedom of dissent. They have a right to be educated and to determine the education of their children. Individuals and groups must be secure from arrest, torture, and imprisonment for political or ideological reasons, and all in society, including migrant workers, must be guaranteed juridical protection of their personal, social, cultural, and political rights.
Political communities have the right to existence, to self-development, and to the means necessary for this. They have the right to play the leading part in the process of their own development and the right to their good name and due honors. From which it follows at one and the same time that they have also the corresponding duty of respecting these rights in others and of avoiding acts that violate them. In recent years there has been a growing realization throughout the world that protecting and promoting the inviolable rights of persons are essential duties of civil authority, and that the maintenance and protection of human rights are primary purposes of the law.
The teachings of the religion insist that government has a moral function: protecting human rights and securing basic justice for all members of the commonwealth. Society as a whole and in all its diversity is responsible for building up the common good. But it is the government’s role to guarantee the minimum conditions that make this rich social activity possible, namely, human rights and justice.
Government should not replace or destroy smaller communities and individual initiatives. Rather it should help them to contribute more effectively to social well-being and supplement their activity when the demands of justice exceed their capacities. This does not mean, however, that the government that governs least governs best. Rather it defines good government intervention as that which truly helps other social groups contribute to the common good by directing, urging, restraining, and regulating economic activity.
The essential sense of the State, as a political community, consists in that the society and people composing it are master and sovereign of their own destiny. This sense remains unrealized if, instead of the exercise of power with the moral participation of the society or people, what we see is the imposition of power by a certain group upon all the other members of the society.
The usages of society are to be the usages of freedom in their full range. These require that the freedom of man be respected as far as possible, and curtailed only when and in so far as necessary.
As relationships multiply between men, binding them more closely together, states will more readily and appropriately order their affairs to the extent these two factors are kept in balance:
- The freedom of individual citizens and groups of citizens to act autonomously, while cooperating one with the other;
- The activity individuals of the State groups whereby the undertakings of private individuals and groups are suitably regulated and fostered.
All Citizens are Equal
The members of mankind share the same basic rights and duties, as well as the same supernatural destiny. Within a country that belongs to each one, all should be equal before the law, find equal admittance to economic, cultural, civic, and social life, and benefit from a fair sharing of the nation’s riches.
If beyond legal rules, there is really no deeper feeling of respect for and service to others, then even equality before the law can serve as an alibi for flagrant discrimination, continued exploitation, and actual contempt. Without a renewed education in solidarity, an overemphasis on equality can give rise to an individualism in which each one claims his own rights without wishing to be answerable for the common good.
Since the right to command is required by the moral order and has its source in God, it follows that, if civil authorities legislate for or allow anything that is contrary to that order and therefore contrary to the will of God, neither the laws made nor the authorizations granted can be binding on the consciences of the citizens, since we must obey God rather than men.
Power may never be used to attack the dignity of persons, to subjugate them, to prevent them from seeking and realizing the goods to which their humanity gives them a claim.
The powerful have a duty to work positively for the empowerment of the weak and powerless: to help others gain control over their own lives so that as free and responsible persons they can participate in a self-determining manner in the goods proper to human beings. The powerful must therefore work for the liberation of the oppressed and powerless.
The fundamental duty of power is solicitude for the common good of society; this is what gives power its fundamental rights. Precisely in the name of these premises of the objective ethical order, the rights of power can only be understood on the basis of respect for the objective and inviolable rights of man.”
There are no political communities that are superior by nature, and none which are inferior by nature. All political communities are of equal natural dignity since they are bodies whose membership is made up of these same human beings. The most important duty in the realm of justice is to allow each country to promote its own development, within the framework of a cooperation free from any spirit of domination, whether economic or political.
You may also like these:
