Who is the guilty party when an injustice is done, the person who receives an unfair proportion of what is distributed or the person who acts as distributor? The answer to this is complicated by several factors. Certainly, whether distributor or recipient, it is possible for a man to participate in an unjust act by accident and without the intention of being unjust, and it must be remembered in this connection that doing an unjust act is not the same thing as being unjust. By the same token, suffering something unjust is not the same as receiving unjust treatment, for it is impossible to receive unjust treatment unless someone has acted unjustly.
Here are a few examples of particular cases: When a judge makes a decision in ignorance of some detail about which he has been misinformed, but his decision is in accordance with the evidence available and in terms that the law defines as legal, we say that the decision is just in the sense that it accords with the law, but unjust in the real sense because it violates a principle of universal justice which supersedes the conventional justice the judge has adhered to. The judge is not guilty of injustice though he has distributed unjustly, and the recipient who got an unfair share has not really been treated unjustly.
When a judge knows all the facts in a case and makes his decision for personal reasons — favoritism or revenge, for example — he is acting unjustly in terms of the law and in terms of universal justice. The recipient in this case may receive an unfair share, but cannot be held responsible for this.
