A number of legal and political theorists have suggested that public officials who fail to act within the law that they administer act unjustly. This does not mean that injustice is always likely to be done merely because it often happens to be done when officials depart from the law. Some writers have held that injustice is done whenever an official fails to act within the law, regardless of the circumstances. I shall call this type of view “formal justice.”

Such a view may be considered “formalistic” because it places value, in the name of justice, on adherence to existing legal rules without regard to “substantive” factors such as their contents, the consequences of obeying them, their defects or virtues, or any other circumstances of their application. The only condition imposed is that an official must by law follow the rule in his official capacity. Furthermore, those who attempt to account for this view believe that the requirements of formal justice rest directly on such notions as “proceeding by rule” or “treating like cases alike,” which are thought to be at the heart of our shared concept of justice. The basic requirements of formal justice are thus supposed to be exempt from the controversy over substantive principles of justice and their possible justification. It is believed that one can embrace formal justice without committing oneself to “ideological” positions. The arguments seeking to ground formal justice on such notions also make circumstances irrelevant to its requirements, which accounts for their formalistic character.