Blog A1-Justice

     One of the most controversial word a person can use is justice.  At the heart of the United States court system, the word justice is still on its path to reflect its definition.  According to online oxford dictionary, justice is “the quality of being fair and reasonable.”  The key word in the definition is “quality.”  Courts should be the fairest and most reasonable they can be.  However due to descrimation of minorities, its far from the case.
       According to the online oxford dictionary, the word justice was derived by the French from the Latin word justitia.  Which was later adopted by the old English and called iustise (1).  The word is over eight hundred years old (2).  When the English adopted it, they simplified the word and it was just a title given to people like judges (2).  By the sixteen hundreds, justice became a blind lady holding a sword in one hand and a scale in the other hand (2).  Around the nineteenth century, they started using the word for what it is used for today.  Moving away form the court system, the word is also loosely used to describe what is right and wrong.
     The words definition has not truly changed from its birth to now, nor is how people use it.
  The word may have started out as a title,  but still was linked to the French word.  What has changed however, is the role of who decides what the word means.  Back then the person defining “justice” was the king.  The “quality,” of fairness, as you can imagine, was probably low.  Now, the power to decide justice is split between the citizen and the government.  This makes the quality of the fairness a lot higher.
     The word is important when you are reading something because it can help with character analysis.  By knowing what a person defines as “justice,” you can draw many helpful conclusions that aid in understanding where in the world the person grew up, what political party he/she supports, etc.  In some cases, you can also make predictions from knowing what the individual considers fair ands reasonable.  Since the course will focus on family, the word is key when comparing the families in terms of court.  As I mentioned above, minorities are groups that are not treated fairly and reasonably.  Gay families in the United States are not treated equally as straight families.  Lady justice peeks and favors the majority.

(1) "justice". Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press. 03 February 2012 http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/justice. 

(2) “justice”. Language Studies. December 2008.  Language Studies.  December 2008. Suiet101. 03 Febuary 2012. http://edurne-scott.suite101.com/the-origin-of-the-word-justice-a85518.