Problem:
Formal And Material Justice. The fair and equitable division of scarce goods and services is usually considered an issue of distributive justice. The requirements of formal justice, as attributed to Aristotle, are that in distribution, equals must be treated equally, and unequals must be treated unequally. Formal justice does not attempt to provide any criteria for the determination of equality and does not state in what respect equals are to be treated, except that they must be treated equally. Under formal justice, any criteria could be used-age, sex, marital status, land ownership-provided the criteria were applied equally in all similar cases. Principles that specify relevant characteristics or morally relevant criteria in regard to treatment are said to be material principles and form the basis of material justice. The least ethically acceptable rationing criteria would be those that placed individuals or groups disadvantaged by poverty or incapacitated by illness in the lowest priority. Discrimination between classes of people is morally justified only if properties of the groups are the moral responsibility of the group members or if they are the sort of properties that can be overcome.[1] The attempt to treat all equally is formulated in the fair opportunity rule, which holds that no persons should be granted social benefits on the basis of undeserved advantage and no persons should be denied social benefits on the basis of undeserved disadvantages. Need Assignment Help?