Whereas treating people as less (or more) than they are simpliciter is non-comparatively unjust, treating people as less (or more) than they are, relative to another or others, is comparatively unjust. If Adam and Barry are both trustworthy, then to praise the trustworthiness of Adam but to refuse similarly to praise Barry is to treat Barry unjustly, not only non-comparatively, but also comparatively, if it is to treat him as comparatively lower when he is not. Similarly, if Adam and Barry are equally untrustworthy, then (undeservedly) to praise Adam as trustworthy but refuse similar praise to Barry would be to treat Barry as comparatively lower when he is not. For that reason it may be described as unjust to Barry, even though non-comparatively he is treated as he deserves. And if Adam is trustworthy and Barry is not, then to praise both for their trustworthiness is to treat Adam as no more worthy of praise than Barry, when in fact he is. Again this may be described as treating Adam unjustly even though he is treated as he is from a non-comparative perspective: he is treated as if he were not comparatively higher, when in fact he is. The basic principle of comparative justice, then, is that comparative treatment should reflect comparative status: people are done a comparative injustice if they are treated as if their status, relative to others, is lower than in fact it is.
A consequence of this basic principle is that, as the familiar dictum says, equals should be treated as equals, and unequals as unequals.
(Geoffrey Cupit, Justice as Fittingness [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996], 28-9)
