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GAMSAT Section 2 quote prompts: Justice

2 GAMSAT-style prompts on justice. Each gives you five comments that disagree, so your job is to find the tension and argue a clear position. Give yourself about 30 minutes per essay.

Task A · ArgumentPrompt 1 of 2

Consider the following comments on justice.

  • Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

    Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Justice is the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due.

    Justinian

  • The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.

    Theodore Parker

  • Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.

    Adam Smith

Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.

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Task A · ArgumentPrompt 2 of 2

Consider the following comments on justice.

  • Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

    Martin Luther King Jr.

  • Justice is the constant and perpetual wish to render every one his due.

    Justinian I

  • The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.

    Theodore Parker

  • A law that punishes the hungry for stealing bread is not justice, it is order wearing the mask of justice.

  • What we call justice is too often the revenge of the powerful, dressed in the robes of the impartial.

Write a piece in response to one or more of these comments. Your essay will be assessed on the quality of your argument and the way you express it.

A way into this prompt

A defensible thesis is that justice is less a fixed standard than a contest between the rules a society writes down and the fairness those rules are meant to serve. Open by granting the dignity of the classical view, that justice means giving each person their due under impartial law. Then complicate it: laws can be impartially applied and still entrench the advantage of those who wrote them, so legality and justice can drift apart. A useful third move distinguishes procedural fairness (was the process correct) from substantive fairness (was the outcome deserved). Caution: resist the cynical shortcut that justice is merely power in disguise, since that conclusion quietly excuses anyone from ever trying to do better.

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More themes to practise

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