ABSTRACT
The former understand justice as the conformity of our acts, laws, political regimes to substantive values such as equality in one of its several meanings or to those enshrined in a cosmic order or belonging to what we regard as natural order – as is the case with natural law theories. Distributive justice regards the rules of how to organise the distribution of material and immaterial goods to actors seen as members of a group of a given dimension. Solidarity may stand up as a critic, if not an opponent, of justice: the 'and' between the two terms is sometimes replaced with 'vs.' In traditional societies, mechanical solidarity prevails, often enforced by punitive law and violence, among individuals that are very similar to each other and live in communities with a low degree of integration, but strong common values.
