Abstract
It is not easy for us to tell what fairness is with clear words. In this article, history of researches on social psychology of fairness, especially distributive fairness and procedural fairness, are reviewed to find clear notion of fairness and its functions. As a result, a clear answer is not found to tell what fairness is. However, several useful effects of perceived fairness are found to discuss policy of civil dispute resolution system. In this article, though it was demonstrated that perceived fairness has clear effect on human attitudes and actions and they are useful tool to design civil litigation system, still we are in a situation that we can feel fairness but cannot tell what it is. In the end of this article, the necessity of continuous research on this topic is emphasized.
