Sae Park

04/15/15
UWRT 1103
Thesis Draft

References
1) "Text of Bush's Address." CNN. Cable News Network, 11 Sept. 2001. Web. 12 Mar. 2015.

2) Bhatt, Gaurang. "The Origins Of Justice by Gaurang Bhatt, MD." Boloji. Boloji, 7 Nov.
2010.
Web. 24 Mar. 2015.

3) Scott, Edurne. "The Origin of the Word Justice." Suite. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.

4) "Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 01 "THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER""
YouTube. Harvard University, 4 Sept. 2009. Web. 24 Mar. 2015.

Justice: custom-fit

In the modern world, saying that there is an infinite number of combinations and
permutations of words might not be so farfetched. A word is generally a component of writing
used to express a meaning, and when a word is created it comes with an associated definition. A
word can have multiple definitions. At the same time, there is a vast number of languages spoken
and unspoken that has their own set of vocabulary and may have minute or significant
differences in the meaning of shared words. When taking all those factors into consideration, it is
not difficult to believe that there could be a word for everything that one wants to express,
although they might not all be in the same language. However, can a word that has no consistent
definition or set of definitions and can be customized to mean whatever the user wants it to mean

still be considered a word? For me, the answer is no, and to justify my answer I am going to
directly expose that misusage of a commonly heard term called justice.
Before going into the use of justice in practice, it is important to point out the history of
justice. Edurne Scott is a freelance writer who writes about a variety of subjects ranging from
religion, the origin of words, to education. He wrote a piece regarding the origin of the word
justice and how the interpretation of its definition changed throughout the course of history.
Justice derives from the Latin word Justitia symbolizing righteousness or equity. In addition,
he provided a standard definition, the exercise of authority in vindication of right by assigning
reward or punishment. The term is over 860 years old and has been changing from the era of
Old English to the late 16th century to now. In Old English times, it was used to describe the
execution of law or to describe the people working in the judicial assembly. Progressing into
Middle English, the word broadened and was used to mean receiving a deserved reward or
punishment. And now in modern times, the term justice is directly associated with integrity,
impartiality, and fairness.
The reason why it is important to know where the word came from is to understand the
gravity of the term. Throughout American history, people have fought on numerous occasions for
rights to impartiality and fairness, or to be more specific, equality. For a noble cause, brings
weight and meaning to the word justice. However that is not all that it has been used for.
On the night of September 11, 2001, George Bush, the president in office at the time,
gave a speech regarding the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. His speech was made
in order to calm the citizens of America and to relieve them of their stress, sadness, and anger. It
was an impactful presentation because his speech utilized pathos, arguably the most convincing

argument in regards to speaking about deaths due to an unforeseen event. The aura of patriotism
given off gave America a sense of unity and togetherness.
Despite the seemingly good-will intentions. The purpose of his speech was not only to
alleviate the pain that America was feeling at the time; it was also to declare who the enemy was
and how he was going to retaliate. In order for there to be justice, there must be an evil opposing
it. Without directly stating in his speech, he intended for the American citizens to point their
fingers at not only the terrorists, but also the entire Middle East and the Muslim religion by
defining America as justice and the Middle East as evil. I believe that the decision was only
supported only out of the rage and fear that everyone was feeling at that time, but it gave Bush
enough time to justify his means of sending troops to the Middle East to search for weapons of
mass destruction. As it turns out, there were no weapons of mass destruction, not that anyone
was expecting to them find any, but coincidently, the military did bring home a lot of oil.
How does this all relate back to the word justice? First, an interpretation is needed for the
usage of justice in this context. Bush implied justice as being good, righteous, and hope, but did
the results exemplify his words? Most people could make the connection that Bush had ulterior
motives when sending troops to Iraq, but the actual intentions were not discovered until the
results were shown. The majority of people did not have a problem prior to the mission because
they were thoroughly convinced that the reason was for justice, but it did not take long for people
to start speculating that the justice that they wanted to believe in was nothing but a farce. The
main idea to take out of it was that a persons sense of justice or defined justice can change more
easily than one would think; hence, is it still acceptable to use the word despite the inconsistency
in its definition.

Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard University who teaches philosophy, gave a lecture
on what is the right thing to do. This lecture is the source that enforced my decision on selecting
this inquiry topic. There are a lot of profound examples that he provides that explains how the
right thing to do in one scenario is not necessarily the right thing to do in every scenario. After
presenting a hypothetical situation, he amazes the audience by how much decisions falter when
their ideas on justice contradicts themselves. An excerpt from his lecture and an example of a
hypothetical experiment was you are a doctor in an emergency room and 6 patients come to
you. Theyve been in a terrible trolley car wreck. Five of them sustained moderate injuries, one is
severely injured, and you could spend all day caring for the one severely victim, but in that time
the five will die, or you could look after the five, restore them to health, but during that time the
one severely injured will die. Would you save the one severely injured, or the five with sustained
injuries? After a few moments of thought, the majority of the university students, I as well, chose
to save the five based on the premise that the right thing to do is to save five lives versus a single
life. Right after confirming ones decision, he moves onto a second scenario.
This time you are a transplant surgeon and you have five patients each in desperate need
of an organ transplant in order to survive. One needs a heart, one a lung, one a kidney, one a
liver, and the fifth a pancreas. And you have no organ donors, You are about to see them die and
then it occurs to you that in the next room theres a healthy guy that came in for a check-up, and
hes taking a nap, you could go in very quietly, yank out the five organs, that person would die,
but you can save the five. This time around the majority of the class voted that killing the one
person to save the five was not the right thing to do. So then that leaves the questions, what
happened to the justice of saving more lives when possible? The difference was in the reasoning.