ABSTRACT
Like the rights and duties approach, fairness and justice is an approach to ethical reasoning that includes several somewhat different concepts under one umbrella. This approach defines the moral act as the act that treats similarly situated people in similar ways with regard to both process and outcome, and with a sense of proportionality. Richard DeGeorge, in a widely used textbook on Business Ethics, lists four kinds of justice. He says that:
Compensatory justice consists in compensating someone for a past injustice or making good some harm he or she has suffered in the past. Retributive justice concerns punishment due a law-breaker or evil-doer. Procedural justice is a term used to designate fair decision procedures, practices or agreements. Distributive justice involves the distribution of benefits and burdens, usually by the state.1
