Utilitarianism is one of the most significant moral theories that aim to assess actions based on their morality. As a form of consequentialism, the utilitarian approach promotes the necessity to evaluate the effects and results of decisions that can be either morally right or wrong (Duignan & West, 2020). Utilitarianism is opposed to deontological ethics and egoism that promote self-interest, sometimes at the expense of others. Utilitarian theory utilizes the core concepts of intrinsic value and disvalue that should balance happiness over pain (Duignan & West, 2020). Thus, according to utilitarianism, a person must act in a way to create the best possible consequences of actions for all people. Procedural and distributive justice can be assessed using the concepts of utilitarian theory that will be discussed further.
Procedural Justice
When a person leaves a place of his friend’s murder, he should go through an investigation and trial procedure that should be fair. In a trial, the judge, jury, and prosecutors should prove that a person is guilty. If that is true, a punishment should have a balance between the crime proved, the pain made to others, and the future effect on life on a person that utilitarian concept of happiness addresses. Procedural justice has an objective to make decisions based on their fairness and establish the actions that would ensure the fair treatment of a person in the place of the murder and left it (Kotecha, 2020).
Going through accusation and custody, a defendant would, in the end, get a decision on the sentence and fine or its overruling. In the procedural perspective, regulations must be applied impartially and consistently to produce unbiased solutions on the sentence duration and penalty that a criminal can receive (Criminal Justice and Procedure, 2020). Procedural justice implies that all actions are made according to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and U.S. legal codes that include utilitarian concepts of probation and parole (“Punishment,” n.d.). Because crime and punishment are not relevant to happiness, they should be decreased to a minimum. Thus, the court should assess the crime and investigate the defendant’s actions according to the fairness and the intrinsic value of a possible crime (“Punishment,” n.d.).
Distributive Justice
If a defendant leaves a place where a murder was committed, several essential considerations should apply. The court that investigates the fact of guilty of Charncey L. Daniels must examine whether his actions were morally right or wrong and, according to distributive justice, resolute the punishment that would fit the crime. In this sense, distributive justice implies the necessity to provide the solution proportional to the wrongdoing because the action has an intrinsic value that deteriorated the welfare of others (Fremantle, 2016).
The court is ought to rule the decision and make it fair not because Daniels’ punishment would ensure the security of others and act as an example for people; instead, it should distribute the happiness and pain between the victim and a determined murderer. The utilitarian approach helps decision-makers create a fair balance for stakeholders, distributing strict liability to ensure that their pleasure and pain are equalized (Bagaric, 2020). If it is proved that Daniels, who left the place, is a murderer, then the punishment would create happiness from the decision to the victim’s relatives. Otherwise, the police have to find the real murderer accused of a crime. The new trial’s solution would reallocate the satisfaction and pain level between the offender and the victim’s relatives and society.
References
Bagaric, M. (2020). The contours of a utilitarian theory of punishment in light of contemporary empirical knowledge about the attainment of traditional sentencing objectives. The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy and Science of Punishment, 62-74.
Duignan, B. & West, H. (2020). Utilitarianism. Encyclopedia Britannica. Web.
Fremantle, S. P. (2016). Reconstructing Rawls: a utilitarian critique of Rawls’s theory of justice (Doctoral dissertation, UCL (University College London)).
Kotecha, B. (2020). The international criminal court’s selectivity and procedural justice. Journal of International Criminal Justice, 18(1), 107–139. Web.
Punishment. (n.d.). Law Library – American Law and Legal Information. Web.
Criminal Justice and Procedure. (2020). In K. Ambos, A. Duff, J. Roberts, T. Weigend, & A. Heinze (Eds.). Core concepts in criminal law and criminal justice (pp. 211-462). Cambridge University Press.