Procedural Justice - Perfect, Imperfect, and Pure Procedural Justice

Perfect, Imperfect, and Pure Procedural Justice

In A Theory of Justice, the philosopher John Rawls distinguished three ideas of procedural justice:

1. Perfect procedural justice has two characteristics: (1) an independent criterion for what constitutes a fair or just outcome of the procedure, and (2) a procedure that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
2. Imperfect procedural justice shares the first characteristic of perfect procedural justice--there is an independent criterion for a fair outcome--but no method that guarantees that the fair outcome will be achieved.
3. Pure procedural justice describes situations in which there is no criterion for what constitutes a just outcome other than the procedure itself.