Justice in drama is generally divided into two sorts--human justice and the justice of the gods--and often the two are presented as being in conflict. This can be seen in different ways in the works of Sophocles, Euripides, and William Shakespeare.
Oedipus in Oedipus Rex is the ruler of the city of Thebes at the beginning of the play and so is the human being charged with assuring that justice is done in human terms, yet he will himself transgress the laws of the gods without intending to do so. Oedipus' fate is indeed determined before the action of the play. His parents are told by the oracle at Delphi that their son would one day kill his father and marry his mother. They abandon the child, assuming that he has died, but he has not and many years later does kill his father and marry his mother, all without knowing who they are. Changes take place in the environment, with storms and the like, and are caused by the crime committed by Oedipus when he fulfilled the prophecy about killing his father and marrying his mother. The people have learned from the oracle that someone is a criminal in the kingdom, and Oedipus vows to ferret out the culprit, not knowing that he is looking for himself. The fact that the environment changes because a king has committed a crime is itself a manifestation of the supernatural and a recognition of the fact that a king has special responsibilities as the leader of his people--he in effect represents the masses and further has a special relationship with the gods in that capacity, serving as a conduit for supernatural energies on earth. The oracle is a supernatural device by which the gods communicate with human beings.
Of course, Oedipus is not a criminal by choice, because the gods determine the fate of the king long before he encounters that fate himself. The fatal flaw in Oedipus is that he did not heed the gods when they spoke through the Oracle at Delphi, telling his parents (and i...