In countries of democracy and equality, the principles in The Declaration of Rights are accepted generally to be the criterion of justice. The first article of it is fundamental, “That there are certain natural rights, of which men, when they form a social compact, cannot deprive or divest their posterity, among which are the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.” Bentham criticized, “every order, for example, to pay money on the score of taxation, or of debt from individual to individual, or otherwise, is void; for the effect of it, complied with, is ‘to deprive and divest him', of the enjoyment of liberty.”²¹

Bentham's words are profound, the criterion of justice is not so simple. Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which was signed in 2007, solves this problem by saying “No one may be deprived of his or her possessions, except in the public interest and in the cases and under the conditions provided for by law.”²² In this way, not only the problem is not solved, but also the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union loses the basic standing to provide foundation for other laws, and every law is able to deprive people of their rights in the public interest. There should be a definite unified criterion of justice in the Chapter instead of giving the right to other laws.

The action is just to erect an institution to benefit people, while evil to erect an institution to harm people. Most social institutions, however, benefit some people when they harm the others. Which actions are just when erecting these institutions? Or which institutions are just?

The core of ethics is justice, while the core of morality is good and evil. The criterion of justice is the code of conduct, including law and moral. The main content of institutions is responsibilities, rights and interests people should have. Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that the justice is founded on the contract.²³ This was criticized by Jeremy S. Mill, who proved that no kind of criterion of justice has natural foundation.²⁴ The only natural foundation is the benefit of the subject.

Definition: Justice is the characteristics of other people's actions and social relations which is acceptable for the subject.

It is clear that the definition of justice accords with the egoism, as well as the subjective definition of good and evil. This is the natural criterion of justice, but a subjective one. Different subject has different criterion, and therefore support his justice. There are, in fact, many criterions of justice in the world, most of which are contradictory. A certain institution is supported by some people and resisted by others. In the history, however, all the justice criterions which were ever practised for long time had a generality: they regarded actions as justice when they were resisted the least and supported the most. Therefore, this is the objective criterion of justice we have been searching.

Theorem: