Essay --

The idea of justice although obvious for philosophers like Locke, Rousseau, and John Rawls, proves itself to be a labyrinthine issue for Americans; nevertheless, ones thing is clear: the people are guaranteed the ability to pursue happiness. Sometimes searching for American equity juxtaposes the American Dream to the pursuit of happiness with a paralytic justice. However, justice in all forms plays a part through the governments duty; who does the government serve and protect? Despite this, opportunity continues to play a major role in correlation to the hopes and aspirations of many Americans; what freedoms to pursue happiness would Americans receive if they were striped of their rights? Justice is a means to an end-it's something done to achieve something else. It's the search for equal opportunity and protection of one's rights under the law. So then what's the destination of justice? For most people there is no destination but merely a trail or pursuit if you will. A pursuit of happiness. Happiness is a state of well being and contentment that is received alongside the individual, the community, and society. Individual justice can be seen in protecting one's rights from being infringed upon. In the case of Brown vs. EMA (2010), several parents pushed for the banning of selling violent video games to their minors. Playing violent video games is not illegal nor unconstitutional so then why should there be a fine for the sellers in correlation with every infraction? Why should the decision of one parent's lack to monitor and parent their child affect every single parent in the nation? In this case, most Americans saw their rights being infringed upon with a crippled form of justice. Individual justice is seen... ...ciety's duty to aid it's individuals and communities, who follow the law, in their quest for merriment. When man disavows opportunity cost and its intergenerational implications, they constrict the range of options available to current and future generations. In fact, the rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness now become infringed. This becomes the duty of the sovereign: to promote equal terms to each individual within a community or more generally speaking, society. Without the balance of power offered between the government and the people, there would be no state of well being and contentment. Individual justice would be infringed through the neglect of one's rights, communal justice would't exist because there wouldn't be equal opportunity for man to thrive, and societal equality wouldn't be permitted because no one would be equal under the law.