Justice is concerned with the individual, but only under certain sorts of description. A just man gives each individual his due and decides each case on its merits: but what is due to a man depends on only certain sorts of factors, and a just man must take care to treat like cases alike. It is not an exercise of justice to give a man something merely because he wants it or needs it, although it may be an exercise of generosity or of liberty or of humanity so to do. Nor is it an exercise of justice to treat a man the same as everybody else, although it may be an exercise of equality, or of legality or of uniformity so to do. Justice looks towards the individual, but with a dispassionate gaze. It sees him not in himself, with his own aspirations, idiosyncrasies and foibles, but in relation to other men, with whom he must be compared, assessed and weighed. It is a cold virtue. It cannot love you for yourself alone, but only for your yellow hair, or some other attributes of yours that are universalisable and the grounds of a rational judgment.
(J. R. Lucas, "Justice," Philosophy 47 [July 1972]: 229-48, at 229)
