In John Stuart Mill’s digestion of the relationship between justice and utility, it is evident that the main point he is trying to make is that the notion of justice is not something that is not and never will be universalized. Mill states that the reason for this impossibility is that justice varies in different persons because we all have different notions of utility (Utilitarianism, 46). In other words, what we think is wrong or right, depends on what we each find to be pleasurable to us. Mill uses a very good example to illustrate this idea. His example of how the payment of taxes should be distributed amongst society members is actually an issue that is present even in today’s society. While some people think that it is unjust to tax the poor as much as the rich, others believe that it is only just to equally tax everybody. Which one, therefore, is really just? Mill purposely leaves this question unanswered because the answer purely depends on that person’s utility.
While Mill ultimately believes that social utility is the deciding factor of what is just, he highlights a few common grounds that must hold for everyone’s notion of justice at the beginning of the chapter. He names 5 “general rules” that universally hold when analyzing what is just/unjust: (1) “It is unjust to deprive anyone of his personal liberty, his property, or any other thing which belongs to him by law” (44), (2) Law is not the deciding factor for what justice is because there may exist “bad laws” (44), (3) “Each person should obtain that which he deserves” (45), (4) “It is unjust to break faith with anyone” (45), (5) “It is unjust to show favor or preference to one person over another in matters to which favor and preference do not properly apply” (45).
I found that the point Mill is trying to make is that we can determine if people are wrong or right depending on what we think they ought to be doing (49). However, it seems to me that Mill is contradicting himself when he says this because he previously outlines 5 universal guidelines that hold for justice. If we call people wrong based on what we think they ought to be doing, there is a possibility that others will not think the same way. It seems as though Mill transitions from talking about justice in a universal light to ending the chapter clearly denoting that justice is incapable of being universal because “justice bends to every person’s ideas of social expediency” (63).
