justice

justice, equity are comparable primarily in their legal uses and when they denote the act, practice, or obligation of giving or rendering to a person or thing what is his or its due (as in conformity with right, truth, or the dictates of reason). Justice is by far the wider-ranging term, for it may apply to an abstraction which represents an ideal

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he flamed out against injustice because he was a lover of justice— Perry

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or to a quality of mind which exhibits adherence to this ideal

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nothing escaped the kind eyes, the far-seeing love, that punished and praised with that calm justice which children so keenly appreciate— Deland

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or to a quality in a thing which never departs from the truth in the slightest degree

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he painted a psychological portrait of himself which for its serenely impartial justice, its subtle gradations . . . has all the qualities of the finest Velasquez— Ellis

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or to the treatment accorded one who has transgressed a law, whether a divine law, a natural law, or the law of a state, or who seeks relief when wronged or protection when his rights are threatened

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at the present time . . . there is more danger that criminals will escape justice than that they will be subjected to tyranny— Justice Holmes

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or to the system of courts of law whereby the rights of an individual or his innocence or guilt are determined in accordance with the laws of the state

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in the modern state .... Justice and administration are directly connected with whatever governs— Belloc

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Equity differs from justice chiefly in being more restricted in its denotation, for it usually implies a justice that transcends the strict letter of the law and is in keeping with what is reasonable rather than with what is merely legal. It is in this sense that a court of equity is, theoretically at least, distinguished from a court of law. To the former go for adjudication and settlement the unusual cases where abstract justice might not be dealt out according to the limitations of the written law while to the latter go the vast majority of cases where the determination of facts is of first importance and where the law, once the facts are established, provides the treatment to be accorded the person or parties involved

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in informal terms, a law case is one where the courts have only to decide who is right; an equity case is one where the courts have to decide not only who is right, but go on to say what must be done— Science

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But equity in nonlegal use implies a justice based upon a strictly impartial meting out of what is due (as rewards and punishments or praise and blame)

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that noble word liberal, which in America has become dissociated from its essential humanism and sense of equity— Ustinov

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the union claimed that the lower wages paid to aliens were not in keeping with any principle of equity

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