Meaning & use
corrective justice
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Meanings
noununcountableformallegal
The idea in law and ethics that a wrongdoer must make good the harm they caused to the person they harmed.
Grammar: Uncountable: talk about 'corrective justice' in general, not 'a corrective justice'.
Patterns
- corrective justice for something
- a matter of corrective justice
- the principle of corrective justice
The judge described the compensation payment as an act of corrective justice.
Corrective justice focuses on repairing the specific harm done to the victim.
In their theory, corrective justice requires the person at fault to restore what was lost.
noununcountableformallegal
A legal or political approach that aims to put right past unfair treatment by giving remedies to the people affected.
Grammar: Also uncountable; often used with words like 'seek', 'demand', or 'achieve'.
Patterns
- seek corrective justice
- demand corrective justice
- achieve corrective justice
The families went to court seeking corrective justice for decades of discrimination.
Her campaign called for corrective justice rather than punishment alone.
The report argued that corrective justice was needed to repair the damage done to the community.
Common combinations
- a matter of corrective justice
- For the victims, compensation was a matter of corrective justice.
- seek corrective justice
- The workers sought corrective justice through the courts.
- the principle of corrective justice
- The principle of corrective justice underlies much of tort law.
- corrective justice for victims
- The new law promised corrective justice for victims of fraud.
Synonyms and how they differ
- restorative justice
- Restorative justice focuses on repairing relationships through meetings between offender and victim, while corrective justice focuses on making good the specific harm.
- compensatory justice
- Compensatory justice is very close in meaning, but it emphasizes payment or compensation rather than the broader idea of putting things right.
Opposites
Word family
- corrective adjective
- Intended to correct or put right something that is wrong.
- justice noun
- Fair treatment or the quality of being fair.
Commonly confused: corrective justice or distributive justice?
corrective justice vs distributive justice
Distributive justice concerns how benefits and burdens are shared fairly in a society; corrective justice concerns repairing harm between specific parties.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'corrective justice' correctly?
Choose one answer.
Corrective justice is about making good a harm caused to someone, often through compensation. Option 1 fits that legal sense. Option 2 describes generosity, not legal repair. Option 3 is nonsense. Option 4 treats it as a physical object, which it is not.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “corrective justice”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.