Roosevelt Review (Archives, 2014-2018)

Archives of roosevelt review: the roosevelt university alumni magazine, faculty essay: what is social justice.

May 14, 2015 by Susan Torres-Harding, associate professor of psychology 2 Comments

Susan Torres-Harding is an associate professor in the Department of Psychology. Her research interests include understanding the impact of sociocultural factors on physical and psychological health and assessing the development of social justice attitudes and social activism. She earned her PhD in Clinical Child Psychology from DePaul University in 2001.

Social justice has always been an important value to me and a foundation for my career aspirations. Therefore, in 2006, I was pleased to join the faculty at Roosevelt University, a university founded on inclusivity and one with a strong focus on social justice and social action. I quickly realized that this was a friendly “home” where I could continue to discuss the impact of societal inequalities and discrimination in health care, my own area of research.

At the same time, I was intrigued by the reactions of friends and colleagues when I told them that I was now at Roosevelt. Invariably, I would meet people who had been at Roosevelt in those early years, and they would tell me stories about what a special place Roosevelt is. They described Roosevelt as a school where people of all races came together—a college unlike others. The pictures hanging on the walls of the Auditorium Building from those early years are visual reminders of this truly unique integration of people from diverse racial groups at a time when racial segregation was the norm. Today Roosevelt continues to be ethnically and racially diverse, but the world has changed since Roosevelt came into being in 1945. In addition to racial injustice, which regrettably remains prevalent in our society, we now truly confront other forms of discrimination based on gender, sexual orientation, social class and disability status.

As a Roosevelt psychology professor, I often talked in my classes about social justice as a key value for the Roosevelt community, but I found students grappled with the meaning of social justice. What is social justice? Whom is it for? Many students talked about social justice as if it were a high-minded ideal, unrealistic or impractical to do in real life. While we often discussed the need to use our knowledge and skills to work for a more fair and just society, I wondered if students had become overwhelmed with the amount of injustice in society and whether they believed they could actually make a difference in the world.

This led me to ask myself, what do students think social justice is all about? More importantly, I wanted to know what I could do to empower them to take action and strive to make a difference while at Roosevelt and after.

In response to these questions, I started a series of studies to investigate how students understood social justice and how, if at all, they were learning about our social justice message and integrating it into their own lives. What did all of this talk of social justice mean to the students? And, how could we, as educators, facilitate the goals of students who had the sincere desire to promote social justice, but who also had the notion that it was too hard, impractical, unrealistic or idealistic? As an educator, I had a personal stake in these questions. I wanted to know if integrating social justice concerns into my classes was actually making a difference in how students viewed themselves, their communities, and their own personal and professional actions. In other words, were we living up to the Roosevelt University mission of educating “socially conscious citizens”? Does talking about social justice make a difference, or is it all a lot of feel-good talk that is disconnected from reality?

Students Define Social Justice

To begin answering some of these questions, my research team and I embarked on a study to first understand how students defined social justice. In textbooks, researchers and educators define social justice as “involving the recognition of the existence of social injustices based upon being a member of a non-dominant or marginalized social group.” These marginalized social groups can include people who live in poverty, women, people who are LGBTQ, people who are disabled, people from racial and cultural minority groups, and people who have severe mental illness or have a substance abuse disorder. Researchers also defined social justice as “a value or desire to increase access of power, privileges and socioeconomic resources to people from socially marginalized groups.”

But is this how students thought about social justice? I believed it unlikely that most students would think about social justice in such abstract terms. So we conducted a study with Roosevelt students simply asking how they defined social justice. We found that students were relatively consistent in their definitions. They tended to describe social justice as addressing injustices in equality and promoting opportunity, rights, fairness and acceptance of everyone, including people from diverse backgrounds. Interestingly, a significant proportion (44 percent) of the students said they engaged in some activity that promoted social justice.

Additionally, we asked students to describe what they were actually doing to promote social justice. In most academic papers, social activism is defined as political activism: marching in protests, attending rallies, writing legislators or voting in order to promote policy or legal changes.

They tended to describe social justice as addressing injustices in equality and promoting opportunity, rights, fairness and acceptance of everyone, including people from diverse backgrounds.

Interestingly, there was a tremendous range of responses to our question. In addition to political activism, we identified many different categories of social justice activities, including conducting social-justice-related research, being a member of or volunteering for an organization that focused on social activism, seeking out educational opportunities to learn more about social justice, engaging in advocacy on behalf of people from disadvantaged or marginalized groups, and talking to family and friends about social justice.

What was most impressive to me was the creativity displayed by students as they sought to promote social justice, as well as the diversity of issues addressed by their actions. Many students reported participating in marches, protests and other direct social actions for economic or racial change. One participant was working to promote social justice by acting in a short film that aimed to foster acceptance of LGBTQ youth during the coming out process. Some students were using a social justice approach when providing clinical services to children with developmental disabilities. A few reported that they were engaged in youth mentoring or were working on behalf of youth within the juvenile justice system. Others were working to promote racial justice, women’s empowerment and awareness around diversity-related justice. Still others described being LGBTQ allies or serving as advocates for women who have endured domestic and sexual violence. We also had students who volunteered at community or religious organizations to help individuals around issues of poverty and food security.

A significant number of students indicated that they spoke with family or friends about these issues. I think that these kinds of actions are more quiet forms of activism. Discussing issues of social justice with significant others might have the impact of changing attitudes or gaining support from them. In turn, this might ultimately increase awareness of social issues and might influence others to take action in some way in their own lives.

Many of the students’ efforts involved using resources available at Roosevelt University. These included engaging in social-justice related research, attending lectures, being part of student groups and organizations that promoted social justice such as RU PROUD (a lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning and ally organization) and Students for a Sensible Drug Policy , engaging in social justice as part of their professional clinical training and volunteering as part of service learning. Although less than half of the students we surveyed reported engaging in activism, those who were active appeared to take advantage of the resources and opportunities available at Roosevelt, and many sought to integrate these experiences with their academic studies.

Connecting With The Mission

The second study that my research team and I conducted focused on the role of the University mission in promoting positive attitudes toward social justice. I wanted to understand whether students who felt more involved at the University and agreed with its mission were in fact more likely to engage in social activism. Interestingly, I found that students who reported having a high sense of community—that is, feeling as if they belonged to the “Roosevelt family”—said they valued the social justice mission more.

Students who respected the social justice mission were much more likely to state that they intended to work for social justice in the future and felt that they possessed the skills to effect positive change. These students were also more likely to report having engaged in social activism, talk about social justice issues with family and friends and personally identify as social activists. It seems that Roosevelt’s social justice mission influenced students by impacting both positive attitudes toward social justice and facilitating the integration of social justice concerns into their personal and professional lives. Feeling a part of the Roosevelt community mattered because it allowed them to share in this core community value.

Thus, the mission and values of Roosevelt University are having an impact on our students’ actions. We are currently conducting additional studies where we hope to follow undergraduate students over time to see how their ideas and views of social justice might change as they move from freshman to senior year. We are also interviewing student activists to learn from their unique experiences, motivations and perceptions of their own work.

Indeed, it has been a pleasure to be able to assess and document the amazingly diverse and creative activism that is going on at Roosevelt. In addition to the examples listed above, Roosevelt students have participated in walk-outs and rallies in Grant Park, lobbied at the state capital, made videos to help educate others about traditionally marginalized groups, conducted interventions to promote health and wellness in our communities, and organized programs that give our students and people in the community a voice. We have so much to learn from our students!

An important part of social justice education is to trust that students are able to evaluate the information we provide and use it in a way that is valid, realistic and relevant to their own lives. Because students are able to come up with so many unique and creative ways to address injustices in their interpersonal and professional lives, professors should not provide answers, but rather should pose questions to help students recognize the real challenges in our society. We can encourage them to critically evaluate their own views and the views of others and provide them with a range of interventions and interpersonal skills that they can then use to confront a range of social problems and issues in their own ways. We also need to recognize that this is hard, risky work.

An important part of social justice education is to trust that students are able to evaluate the information we provide and use it in a way that is valid, realistic and relevant to their own lives.

Working for social justice is, by its nature, “radical” because it focuses on changing the status quo, challenging existing policies and can involve breaking rules. As educators, it is important that we not only talk about social justice but provide students with the skills they need to take action and be effective. Promoting favorable attitudes and teaching interpersonal intervention and activism skills will have a positive impact on students and help them fulfill the Roosevelt mission of creating “socially conscious citizens” who change the world.

Contact Susan Torres-Harding at [email protected]

' src=

November 23, 2018 at 10:53 am

extremely nice one……..

[…] Faculty Essay: What is social justice? – Roosevelt Review – Faculty Essay; Scholarship Spotlight; Issue. Fall 2015; Spring 2015; Fall 2014; Faculty Essay: What is social justice … assessing the development of social justice … […]

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Human Rights Careers

8 Tips For Writing A Social Justice Essay

Social justice covers a variety of issues involving race, gender, age, sexual orientation, income equality and much more. How do you write an essay on a social justice issue that’s engaging, informative and memorable? Here are eight tips you should take to heart when writing:

When writing a social justice essay, you should brainstorm for ideas, sharpen your focus, identify your purpose, find a story, use a variety of sources, define your terms, provide specific evidence and acknowledge opposing views.

#1. Brainstorm creatively

Before you start writing your social justice essay, you need a topic. Don’t hesitate to look far and wide for inspiration. Read other social justice essays, look at recent news stories, watch movies and talk to people who are also interested in social justice. At this stage, don’t worry about the “trendiness” of your idea or whether a lot of people are already writing about it. Your topic will evolve in response to your research and the arguments you develop. At the brainstorming stage, you’re focused on generating as many ideas as possible, thinking outside the box and identifying what interests you the most. Take a free online course to get a better understanding of social justice.

You can take a creative brainstorming approach! A blog on Hubspot offers 15 creative ideas such as storyboarding, which involves laying out ideas in a narrative form with terms, images and other elements. You can also try freewriting, which is when you choose something you’re interested in. Next, write down everything you already know, what you need to know but don’t already, why the topic matters and anything else that comes to mind. Freewriting is a good exercise because it helps you decide if there’s any substance to a topic or if it’s clear there’s not enough material for a full essay.

#2. Sharpen your topic’s focus

The best essays narrow on a specific social justice topic and sharpen its focus, so it says something meaningful and interesting. This is often challenging, but wrestling with what exactly you want your essay to say is worth the effort. Why? An essay with a narrow, sharp focus has a clearer message. You’re also able to dig deeper into your topic and provide better analysis. If your topic is too broad, you’re forced to skim the surface, which produces a less interesting essay.

How do you sharpen your essay’s focus? Grace Fleming provides several tips on ThoughtCatalog . First, you can tell your topic is too broad if it can be summarized in just 1-2 words. As an example, “health inequity” is way too broad. Fleming suggests applying the questions, “Who, what, where, when, why and how,” to your topic to narrow it down. So, instead of just “health inequity,” you might end up with something like “The impact of health inequity in maternal healthcare systems on Indigenous women.” Your topic’s focus may shift or narrow even further depending on the research you find.

Writing a human rights topic research paper? Here are five of the most useful tips .

#3. Identify your purpose

As you unearth your topic and narrow its focus, it’s important to think about what you want your essay to accomplish. If you’re only thinking about your essay as an assignment, you’ll most likely end up with a product that’s unfocused or unclear. Vague sentiments like “Everyone is writing about social justice” and “Social justice is important” are also not going to produce an essay with a clear purpose. Why are you writing this essay? Are you wanting to raise awareness of a topic that’s been historically ignored? Or do you want to inspire people to take action and change something by giving them concrete how-to strategies? Identifying your purpose as soon as possible directs your research, your essay structure and how you style your writing.

If you’re not sure how to find your purpose, think about who you’re writing for. An essay written for a university class has a different audience than an essay written for a social justice organization’s social media page. If there are specific instructions for your essay (professors often have requirements they’re looking for), always follow them closely. Once you’ve identified your purpose, keep it at the front of your mind. You’ll produce an essay that’s clear, focused and effective.

#4. Find a human story

The best social justice essays don’t only provide compelling arguments and accurate statistics; they show your topic’s real-world impact. Harvard’s Kennedy School’s communications program describes this process as “finding a character.” It’s especially useful when you’re writing something persuasive. Whatever your topic, try to find the human stories behind the ideas and the data. How you do that depends on the nature of your essay. As an example, if you’re writing something more academic, focusing too much on the emotional side of a story may not be appropriate. However, if you’re writing an essay for an NGO’s fundraising campaign, focusing on a few people’s stories helps your reader connect to the topic more deeply.

How do you choose what stories to feature? Harvard suggests choosing someone you have access to either through your research or as an interview subject. If you get the opportunity to interview people, make sure you ask interesting questions that dig beneath the surface. Your subject has a unique perspective; you want to find the information and stories only they can provide.

#5. Rely on a variety of sources

Depending on your essay’s purpose and audience, there might be certain sources you’re required to use. In a piece for Inside Higher Ed, Stephanie Y. Evans describes how her students must use at least 10 source types in their final paper assignment. Most of the time, you’ll have a lot of freedom when it comes to research and choosing your sources. For best results, you want to use a wide variety. There are a few reasons why. The first is that a variety of sources gives you more material for your essay. You’ll access different perspectives you wouldn’t have found if you stuck to just a few books or papers. Reading more sources also helps you ensure your information is accurate; you’re fact-checking sources against one another. Expanding your research helps you address bias, as well. If you rely only on sources that reflect your existing views, your essay will be much less interesting.

While we’re talking about sources, let’s touch on citations. If you’re writing an essay for school, your teacher will most likely tell you what citation method they want you to use. There are several depending on the discipline. As an example, in the United States, social science disciplines like sociology and education tend to use the American Psychological Association (APA) style. Some places are very rigid about citation styles, while others are more relaxed. If you’re writing an essay where your citation won’t be checked, you still need to give credit to any ideas, thoughts, or research that’s not yours. Proper citation builds trust with your reader and boosts your credibility.

Here are more tips on writing a human rights essay!

#6. Define your key terms

To make your essay as clear and effective as possible, you want every reader on the same page right at the beginning. Defining your key terms is an important step. As Ian Johnston writes, creating an effective argument requires “the establishment of clear, precise, and effective definitions for key terms in the arguments.” You may have to adapt an existing definition or write your own. Johnston offers principles such as adjusting a definition based on the knowledge of who you’re writing for, focusing on what a term is and not just on its effects, and expanding a definition so it covers everything a reader needs to know.

How do you decide which terms are important in your essay? First, never assume a reader understands a term because it’s “obvious.” The most obvious terms are often the ones that need the clearest definitions. If your reader doesn’t know exactly what you’re talking about when you use a term like “health equity,” your essay won’t be as effective. In general, you want to define any terms relevant to your topic, terms that are used frequently and terms with distinct meanings in the context of your essay.

#7. Provide specific evidence and examples

Social justice issues are grounded in reality, so an essay should reflect that. Don’t spend your whole paper being philosophical or hypothetical. As an example, let’s say you’re writing an essay about desertification in Mali. Don’t discuss desertification as an abstract concept. Include real statistics and case studies on desertification in Mali, who it’s affecting the most and what is being done about it. For every argument you make, present supporting evidence and examples.

The strength of your evidence determines the strength of your arguments. How do you find strong evidence? Cite This For Me lists a handful of examples , such as studies, statistics, quotes from subject matter experts and/or reports, and case studies. Good evidence also needs to be accurate and in support of your argument. Depending on your essay topic, how current a piece of evidence is also matters. If you’re not relying on the most current evidence available, it can weaken your overall argument. Evidence should also be as specific as possible to your topic. Referring back to our desertification in Mali essay, that means locating examples of how desertification affects people in Mali , not in Chad or Russia.

Academic essay writing requires specific skills. Here’s an online introductory course on academic writing .

#8. Acknowledge your critics

Not every social justice essay requires an acknowledgment of opposing viewpoints, but addressing critics can strengthen your essay. How? It lets you confront your critics head-on and refute their arguments. It also shows you’ve researched your topic from every angle and you’re willing to be open-minded. Some people worry that introducing counterarguments will weaken the essay, but when you do the work to truly dissect your critic’s views and reaffirm your own, it makes your essay stronger.

The University of Pittsburgh offers a four-step strategy for refuting an argument. First, you need to identify the claim you’re responding to. This is often the trickiest part. Some writers misrepresent the claims of their critics to make them easier to refute, but that’s an intellectually dishonest method. Do your best to understand what exactly the opposing argument is claiming. Next, make your claim. You might need to provide specific evidence, which you may or may not have already included in your essay. Depending on the claim, your own thoughts may be a strong enough argument. Lastly, summarize what your claim implies about your critics, so your reader is left with a clear understanding of why your argument is the stronger one.

You may also like

17 international organizations offering early-career opportunities, gender rights jobs: our short guide, free mooc on children’s right to education in armed conflict, 9 online courses on leading diverse teams, 40 top-rated social issues courses to study in 2024, 10 courses to prepare for your human rights job, register now: global institute of human rights certificate program, the un immersion programme is open for applications, the un young leaders online training programme is open for applications, ngo jobs: our short guide, apply now: un post graduate diploma in global health procurement and supply chain management, civil rights jobs: our short guide, about the author, emmaline soken-huberty.

Emmaline Soken-Huberty is a freelance writer based in Portland, Oregon. She started to become interested in human rights while attending college, eventually getting a concentration in human rights and humanitarianism. LGBTQ+ rights, women’s rights, and climate change are of special concern to her. In her spare time, she can be found reading or enjoying Oregon’s natural beauty with her husband and dog.

  • Community Impact , Racial & Social Justice

What is Social Justice?

What is racial and social justice

While definitions vary in wording, they have commonalities: Equal rights, equal opportunity and equal treatment.

In the world of philanthropy, we often hear the phrase social justice . But what exactly does it mean? While you probably have a general idea, would you be able to define it in a short soundbite if you were put on the spot?

Several organizations and institutions provide their own definitions. Here are a few:

  • “Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth.” United Nations
  • “Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need.” National Association of Social Workers
  • “Social justice encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions, when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions as tools for personal and social development.” Center for Economic and Social Justice

Defining Social Justice

Social justice means equal rights and equitable opportunities for all

While formal definitions vary in wording, they have commonalities.

  • Equal rights
  • Equal opportunity
  • Equal treatment

With these core values in mind, we can define the phrase: Social justice means equal rights and equitable opportunities for all.

Social Justice Issues

Social justice encompasses a wide range of issues and advocates for the fair treatment of all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, disability or socioeconomic status.

Some of the most pressing social justice issues include:

  • Economic inequality: The gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider in many countries. This is a major social justice issue, leading to a lack of opportunity for the poor and marginalized.
  • Racial injustice: People of color are disproportionately affected by poverty, crime and violence and face discrimination in employment, housing and education.
  • Gender injustice: Women and girls have historically been denied the same rights and opportunities as men and face discrimination in the workplace, in education and in politics.
  • Disability injustice: People with disabilities are often denied the same rights and opportunities as people without disabilities and face discrimination at work and in their communities.
  • Environmental injustice: People of color and low-income communities are often disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and the impacts of climate change.

Social Justice Examples in the U.S.

Healthy Children & Families Fund

There are many examples of social justice in action. Some of the most notable examples include:

  • The Civil Rights Movement: This movement fought for the rights of Black Americans, including the right to vote, the right to equal education and the right to equal employment opportunities.
  • The Women’s Suffrage Movement: This movement fought for the right of women to vote.
  • The Disability Rights Movement: This movement fought for the rights of people with disabilities, including the right to education, the right to employment and the right to live independently.
  • The Environmental Justice Movement: This movement fights for the fair treatment of all people concerning environmental hazards and the protection of the environment.

Social Justice Activism in San Diego

San Diego has a rich history of social justice activism. As San Diego’s largest regional community foundation, we focus our efforts on identifying and addressing our county’s greatest needs, many of which overlap with racial and social justice issues.

According to the San Diego Economic Equity Report, an alarming number of San Diegans are struggling to pay for their housing and other basic needs and substantial inequalities impact our neighbors, especially those who are Black or Latino/a.

In recent years, there have been many efforts to promote social justice in San Diego, including:

  • The fight for affordable housing: San Diego has a severe housing affordability crisis , and many people are struggling to afford a place to live. There have been many efforts to build more affordable housing in San Diego, and to make it easier for people to afford housing. A visionary initiative of San Diego Foundation (SDF), the San Diego Housing Fund partners with investors, developers and property owners to create housing for all San Diegans. The goal is to support the creation of 1,000 units of new housing in each of the next 10 years to support a mix of incomes, with the majority of homes being affordable and middle-income units.

  • The fight against racial injustice: There have been many efforts to address racial injustice in San Diego, including efforts to improve education, employment, and housing opportunities for Black San Diegans. Co-founded with the Central San Diego Black Chamber of Commerce, the Black Community Investment Fund , prioritizes and invests in community-led, innovative efforts that increase racial equity and generational wealth for Black San Diegans. We focus grantmaking on four key pillars, including Education, Employment, Entrepreneurship and Housing .

  • The fight for environmental justice: People of color and low-income communities in San Diego are disproportionately affected by environmental pollution and climate change. There have been many efforts to promote environmental justice in San Diego, including efforts to clean up polluted neighborhoods and to make it easier for people to access clean air and water. Through SDF’s Environment and Outdoor Access initiatives , we work with nonprofit partners to preserve our outdoor spaces, increase equitable access to San Diego’s beautiful oceans, mountains and parks, and support the next generation of environmental stewards in our region.
  • The fight for gender justice: Women and girls in San Diego face discrimination in many areas, including the workplace, education and healthcare. There have been many efforts to promote gender justice in San Diego over the years. Through SDF’s Children and Families initiatives and Workforce Development programs , we work to close gender inequality gaps and address challenges working parents face.

These are just a few social justice issues being addressed in San Diego.

Together, we’re working to accelerate access to economic opportunity and remove barriers that have historically stood in the path of inclusion, making San Diego County a better, stronger and more equitable region.

Learn more about our programs and initiatives , and consider donating to support our efforts .

Explore our Work

Related Content

Cal-SOAP workshop

Helping Students Realize Their Academic Dreams

San Diego Young Artists Music Academy

Finding Harmony: The Impact of San Diego Young Artists Music Academy

Volunteer at Jackie Robinson YMCA

Community Impact

Flood Crisis to Community: How San Diego Nonprofits Immediately Came to the Rescue

Press Release

San Diego Flood Response Fund Raises & Grants More Than $1 Million to Assist Flood Survivors

Grant Announcement

$838K in Grants to Local Nonprofits to Create More Inclusive, Equitable and Accessible Outdoor Experiences

On August 9, 2022, we awarded $838,704 in Opening the Outdoors grants to 24 nonprofit organizations that offer equitable access to outdoor spaces in San Diego County.

“San Diego Foundation is proud to once again support its partners committed to increasing community-driven efforts to enhance accessible outdoor space, encourage youth to learn more through hands-on education and create the next generation of environmental stewards in the San Diego region,” said Christiana DeBenedict, SDF Director of Environment Initiatives.

This year’s grantees will help address these inequities and enhance access to the outdoors throughout San Diego County.

See Grantees

About Harvey McKinnon

Harvey McKinnon has been a fundraiser for over 40 years and is recognized as one of North America’s leading fundraising experts. His consultancy raises money for hundreds of nonprofits in Canada and the USA. He is a seasoned trainer who has delivered fundraising keynotes at conferences around the world.

A frequent master-class trainer, he has authored five books – most recently a third book on monthly giving: How to Create Lifelong Donors (2020). His best-selling book, The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks , is a major gift training manual for fundraising departments throughout the US and Canada. He also co-authored the #1 bestseller The Power of Giving , which has been translated into nine languages.

Harvey calculates he’s spent 100+ years on a variety of nonprofit boards. His company Harvey McKinnon Associates has offices in Toronto and Vancouver and works with dozens of nonprofits in Canada and the USA.

About Gail Perry, MBA, CFRE

Gail Perry is an internationally recognized fundraising consultant and is considered one of the foremost experts in the field of philanthropy and nonprofits. Her company, Gail Perry Group, leads nonprofits to extraordinary fundraising and capital campaign results.  As a philanthropy leader, keynote speaker, and author with more than 30 years’ experience, Gail is renowned for her positivity, expertise and insight.

Her bestselling book, Fired-Up Fundraising: Turn Board Passion into Action , is recognized as the gold standard guide to building successful fundraising boards. Gail has worked with organizations all over the country and Canada, leading them to multimillion dollar fundraising results. Gail Perry got her start in fundraising at Duke University and then went on to lead University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

About Mark A. Stuart, CFRE

A fundraising and community-building professional for nearly 30 years, Mark Stuart has devoted his career to helping donors realize their hopes, dreams and aspirations.

Since joining San Diego Foundation as President and CEO in May 2019, SDF has grown its assets to $1.4 billion. Under Mark’s leadership, SDF raised and deployed $67 million for COVID-19 relief efforts and in its most recent fiscal year granted a record $150 million.

During Mark’s tenure, SDF has launched a new strategic plan and vision for just, equitable and resilient communities, and has been named a Top Work Place by The San Diego Union-Tribune three years running.

Before joining SDF, Mark managed a staff of 64 and a budget of $14 million at San Diego Zoo Global (SDZG). He led SDZG’s first-ever comprehensive fundraising campaign, raising $530 million.

Mark serves on the Board of Directors for Certified Fundraising Executives International, the League of California Community Foundations, San Diego Regional Policy and Innovation Center and San Diego Symphony Foundation.

Opening Session

Speaker: Mark A. Stuart, CFRE, President & CEO, San Diego Foundation

San Diego Foundation President & CEO Mark A. Stuart will welcome attendees to the first-ever San Diego Fundraising Conference and share what’s in store for the day ahead.

Moving Your Fundraising Forward in 2023 and ’24

Speaker: Gail Perry, Founder & President, Gail Perry Group

Let’s look at trends and predictions for fundraising in 2023 and ’24. The giving environment continues to change – and donors are changing as well.

We’ll review the strategies you need to focus on this year, what’s working – and what’s not working in fundraising today. Where are the opportunities? How do we appeal to today’s donors? What are they looking for, and what will make them respond?

Join us to take a ride through the events and issues on the philanthropic landscape both now and in the near future.

The Conversational Ask: An Easier Way to Raise Money from Happy Donors

You have major gift prospects, but do you know how to bring up the idea of a potential gift? Don’t get stuck in endless cultivation – here’s how to move right into a Gift Conversation.

Gail will show you the path that will lead a donor from Discovery directly to an Ask Conversation. You’ll learn how to read your donor’s signals, and how to politely put an Ask on the table.

We’ll have some fun learning Power Discovery Questions that can light up your donor’s heart. You’ll have a chance to actually practice them, and you’ll see for yourself how they can unlock a donor’s enthusiasm and generosity.

Even more, You’ll discover how asking permission keeps your donor engaged and comfortable. These conversation-based asking and closing techniques will help you close more mega gifts!

Fundraising Wisdom Project

Speaker Panel

Wisdom is more than the accumulation of wins and losses. It is found at the intersection of knowledge, good judgment, and experience.

The goal of the Fundraising Wisdom Project is simple: we asked talented fundraising leaders to consider what wisdom they might share with their much younger selves. What guidance would they want to provide to those who might be newer to our profession to put those careers on a brighter and better trajectory?

Come to the conference’s closing session to hear five-minute (or less) stories from our presenters and other wise leaders, who have more than 200 years of collected wisdom, to inspire and enhance your impact on the San Diego region.

About Valerie Attisha

Valerie Attisha serves as Vice President of Client and Community Relations at PNC Bank, one of the country’s largest banks and most charitable companies. In her role, Valerie oversees the bank’s charitable and corporate sponsorships, directs employee volunteerism and community engagement activities as well as leads its philanthropic investments in San Diego County. She is also responsible for building the bank’s visibility and brand in the region and fostering relationships with leaders from business, government, and the nonprofit sectors.

Valerie began her career at The San Diego Foundation where she established and led the Community Scholarship Program, which has become the largest provider of non-university scholarships in the region. Prior to joining PNC Bank in 2021, Valerie was a seasoned and respected fundraising professional and nonprofit executive – raising and facilitating gifts totaling $100M.

Valerie received her B.A. from the University of San Diego and her M.A. from California State University, Sacramento. Throughout her career, Valerie has been deeply committed to making meaningful and impactful change in the community through her involvement with organizations such as the San Diego Rotary (Club 33), the Junior League of San Diego, and the University of San Diego where she serves on both the National Alumni Board of Directors and the College of Arts and Sciences Advisory Board. Valerie also serves on the Boards of Directors of the San Diego Children’s Discovery Museum, San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce and The Old Globe.

Valerie is a graduate of LEAD San Diego and has been selected a ’40 Under 40’ by San Diego Metropolitan Magazine and ‘Altruist of the Year’ by Modern Luxury Magazine. Recently, she was named a PNC Bank Market All Star.

About Ingrid de Llamas, CFRE, IAP

Ingrid de Llamas is the Director of Philanthropy & External Relations for the Epilepsy Foundation of San Diego County where she works to provide funding for the fight against epilepsy. She has spent her career building fundraising and advancement programs for independent schools and other non-profit organizations. Ingrid is recognized and certified as a CFRE by the Association of Fundraising Professionals and as an IAP, International Advancement Professional – two of the highest certifications available to professionals in her field.

Ingrid serves the community as a Trustee for the Barrio Logan College Institute, a board member for the Association of Fundraising Professionals San Diego and is the administrator of a private foundation.

Former Board service includes the San Diego Public Library Foundation, Board Member for the Epilepsy Foundation of San Diego County, Living Rooms at the Border, a Casa Familiar project, Pasadena Symphony & Pops, Leadership Pasadena, Junior League of Monterey County and the Collective Voices Foundation.

She is a member of San Diego’s Rotary 33 and provides pro-bono fundraising counsel to EJE Academies. Among her service awards, Ingrid was named the Asian Business Association’s Member of the Year in 2018, the San Diego Public Library Foundation’s Volunteer of the Year for 2019 and was selected as a Hometown Hero by Giving Back Magazine. She was nominated as Outstanding Fundraising Professional for National Philanthropy Day in 2019 and 2022.

Ingrid is an eighth-generation Californian who loves bringing together different people and organizations for the betterment of the community.

About Muhi Khwaja, MPA, CFRE, CFRM

Earning a Bachelor’s in History and Psychology from the University of Michigan in 2009, Muhi Khwaja didn’t know what to do until the summer before graduating. The Development Summer Internship Program at the University of Michigan sparked an interest in fundraising (development) as a career. After working with several nonprofit organizations, he earned his Master’s in Public Administration in 2013, from U-M, specializing in nonprofit management. Muhi has over 14 years of nonprofit work and fundraising experience as a one-person development team to a Chief Development Officer.

In 2016 he became a Certified Fund Raising Executive from the Association of Fundraising Professionals and in 2017 earned a Certificate of Fund Raising Management from Indiana University’s Lilly School of Philanthropy where he is also Adjunct Faculty.

Muhi serves as the Co-Founder of the American Muslim Community Foundation helping families distribute more than $10 million since 2017. AMCF serves as a the only national nonprofit organization focused on creating Donor Advised Funds, Giving Circles, distributing grants, & building endowments for the American Muslim community.

Muhi enjoys traveling, photography, riding his motorcycle, and hiking.

About Ann Spira

As Vice Chancellor for Advancement and the Executive Vice President of the UC San Diego Foundation, Ann holds the overall managerial responsibility for all university fundraising campaigns and transformational initiatives. In addition, Ann provides the strategy and facilitation the top-tier volunteer leadership for the Campaign for UC San Diego, which successfully concluded at $3 billion in 2022.

Ann joined UC San Diego after a 30-year career in the performing arts, most recently as Deputy General Director of San Diego Opera. A natural innovator of marketing and development programs, Ann helped propel San Diego Opera into an internationally recognized company, hailed for both artistic and fiscal excellence. Responsible for leading the revenue team and board development units, she created a long-range strategic plan and led the ongoing recruitment and leadership of the 60-member Board of Directors, one of the most highly contributing and respected Boards in the region.

About Bill Stanczykiewicz, Ed.D.

Dr. Bill Stanczykiewicz serves as senior assistant dean for external relations at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. Bill directs The Fund Raising School while also serving on the academic faculty, teaching in the bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs. Bill has been associated with raising more than $120 million over the last 25 years as a nonprofit executive director and board member. His hobbies include dating his wife, Carmen, who is a major gift fundraiser, and they enjoy talking fundraising while strolling along San Diego Harbor or watching the sunset from Point Loma.

About Adrienne D. Vargas

Adrienne Vargas has more than 30 years of development experience. She started her career as a student at Fordham University where she called alumni asking for donations. She then worked in annual giving for Harvard University before becoming a development officer for Grossmont Hospital Foundation. After six years at Grossmont Hospital Foundation, Adrienne was recruited to join The San Diego Foundation, where she worked for 20 years in a variety of roles, including overseeing human resources, the volunteer program, the San Diego Women’s Foundation, and donor relations.

In 2017 Adrienne joined San Diego State University as the Associate Vice President of Development before taking on the roles Vice President for University Relations and Development and President and CEO of The Campanile Foundation in 2018. Since joining SDSU, philanthropic support for the university has increased from over $83 million in 2018 to $136 million in fiscal year 2022.

How to Build a Highly Successful Monthly Giving Program

Speaker: Harvey McKinnon, President, Harvey McKinnon Associates

Fact: The average monthly donor will give 5 – 20 times more money than a single gift donor. Your organization needs more of them.

In this seminar, Harvey McKinnon will teach you how to start and grow a lucrative monthly giving program, or improve your existing one. You’ll learn how to avoid common mistakes and maximize your income. You’ll come away with techniques to promote donor loyalty, raise more money, and increase your organization’s financial stability. Harvey will illustrate these lessons with real-life examples and case studies that you can apply to your own organization.

Harvey has been called the “Master of Monthly Giving”. He has helped thousands of organizations raise billions of dollars in monthly gifts. He is the author of three of the only four books ever written on monthly giving. The first one, Hidden Gold, launched monthly giving programs globally. And his latest is: How to Create Lifelong Donors through Monthly Giving (2022).

Securing Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) Gifts and Donors

Speaker: Bill Stanczykiewicz, Ed.D., Senior Assistant Dean for External Relations, Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy

Donor advised funds (DAFs) are one of the fastest growing vehicles for charitable giving.

Why are donors using DAFs instead of giving directly to other nonprofit organizations, and how are DAFs helping donors maximize their philanthropy? Learn from the latest data on how you can incorporate DAF donors into your fundraising strategies.

The 11 Questions Every Donor Asks

Your prospects and donors have needs. When you satisfy these desires, they will give you money, much more money.

For over four decades Harvey McKinnon has been looking at fundraising from a donor’s perspective. In this session he looks at the 11 questions every donor asks, and he shows you how to answer them effectively. His strategy is being used by universities, international development agencies, hospitals and other nonprofits, all over the world

In this session you’ll learn:

  • The 11 questions every donor asks – and the answers all donors crave
  • 7 secrets to turn annual donors into major gift donors
  • How to maximize a donor’s lifetime value

Creating Events with Impact

Speaker: Ingrid de Llamas, CFRE, IAP, Director of Philanthropy & External Relations, Epilepsy Foundation of San Diego County

We’ve all been part of the “rubber chicken event circuit” – those sometimes dreaded, often dull events that run together in our minds. Do you even remember why the last rubber chicken dinner you attended was held? How did it benefit the cause?

Donors today want to make an impact and they expect to see how their investments are being used to make a difference. Many nonprofits fall into the trap of holding the same event over and over each year. They spend countless dollars at hotels, have the same speakers, same video program and often forget WHY people are there.

Ingrid de Llamas will share ideas, lessons learned and the importance of re-evaluating your event program to include goals, consistent messaging and an understanding of the purpose and true cost of holding events. In this session you will learn how to create events with impact to further the mission of your organization.

Engaging Your Board in Fund Development

Fewer than half of nonprofits have boards of directors fully engaged with fundraising. Using data from BoardSource and interviews with successful nonprofits, this session reveals six research-based findings pointing toward practical steps you can take toward 100 percent board giving and fundraising.

How to Maximize Donor Potential

Speakers: Krista Lamp, Sr. Director of Brand, Events, Communication, Classy & Elizabeth Ruikka, Sr. Director of Demand Generation, Classy

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain strategic insights and tools to increase the lifetime impact of your supporters.

Discover how to maximize the lifetime value of your supporters through various campaign types. Learn about the essential elements of an effective stewardship strategy and how an all-in-one fundraising solution can unlock valuable donor insights. Gain practical knowledge on engagement strategies such as nurturing first-time supporters into repeat donors and engaging your recurring supporters at your next fundraising event. The Classy expert team will also discuss how to identify and cultivate your next generation of peer-to-peer fundraising leaders.

About Krista Lamp

Krista Lamp is the Senior Director of Brand, Events, Communication for Classy, a GoFundMe affiliate and Public Benefit Corporation that enables nonprofits to connect supporters with the causes they care about. Classy’s giving platform provides powerful fundraising tools so nonprofits can convert and retain donors. Since 2011, Classy has helped nonprofits raise over $5 billion. Previously, Krista spent 10+ years at some of the nation’s top public relations agencies.

About Elizabeth Ruikka

Elizabeth Ruikka is the Sr. Director of Demand Generation and at Classy. She is a strategic marketing leader with a decade of expertise across digital and owned marketing channels. Passionate about staying up to date with the ever-changing digital landscape, Elizabeth enjoys advising nonprofits on how to maximize the impact of their online fundraising strategy. During her tenure at Classy, she has developed a strong understanding of the unique challenges nonprofits face and is invested in their success.

About Alyssa Celones Senturk

Alyssa Celones Senturk (or Ally) is a Filipino-American creative storyteller with a multimedia marketing and science communication background. She specializes in building communities around causes for the common good – like clean water, science, and climate resilience. She is the Communications and Outreach Director for San Diego Coastkeeper, an environmental nonprofit working to protect and restore fishable, swimmable, and drinkable waters in San Diego County.

Stewardship & Engagement: Increasing Donor Loyalty

Speaker: muhi khwaja, mpa, cfre, cfrm, trainer, fundraising academy and co-founder, american muslim community foundation.

Fostering donor loyalty is an ongoing activity. The way you engage with donors after they make a gift is as important, or perhaps even more important, than the gift itself. Keeping all levels of donors involved and inspired can be the difference between a good fundraising practice and a great one. During this session, you will learn how to make your supporters feel every bit as important as they are, as you learn effective communication strategies to showcase impact and inspire major donors to continue to provide financial support. Join our presenter, Muhi Khwaja, MPA, CFRM, to learn how you can increase donor loyalty through creative stewardship and meaningful engagement strategies.

  • Understand the value of donor loyalty and what it means to your organization.
  • Learn the keys for retaining a higher number of donors.
  • Build systems to showcase donor impact to foster their continued commitment to your cause.
  • Develop a stewardship plan with meaningful follow-up activities that will inspire your donors and keep them involved in an ongoing way.

Download the Essential Guide to Donor-Advised Funds

This helpful resource provides you the information you need to better understand the impact and benefits of donor-advised funds.

Download the Nonprofit Giving Guide

Download the charitable legacy guide, subscribe to our newsletter, download the private foundation brochure, download the open a charitable fund brochure, download the custom corporate giving guide.

" * " indicates required fields

Subscribe to The Advisor Newsletter

The Advisor monthly e-newsletter provides philanthropy news and trends and financial planning strategies for advisors and their clients.

Contact our Scholarships Team

Subscribe to the give for good: children and families newsletter.

Receive quarterly email updates about our Children and Families programs and initiatives and opportunities for you to support stronger families in our region.

Subscribe to the Give for Good: Education Newsletter

Receive quarterly email updates about our Education programs and initiatives and opportunities for you to support enhanced learning experiences and increased access to college for San Diego students.

Subscribe to the Give for Good: Environment Newsletter

Receive quarterly email updates about our Environment and Climate programs and initiatives and opportunities for you to support equitable outdoor access and climate change resiliency.

Subscribe to the Give for Good: Racial and Social Justice Newsletter

Receive quarterly email updates about our Racial and Social Justice programs and initiatives and opportunities for you to learn about creating equitable opportunities for all and how to support our multicultural region and its diverse population.

This helpful resource provides you with information about corporate philanthropy and custom corporate giving solutions for your business.

Download the Private Foundation Solution Brochure

This helpful resource provides you the information about how donor-advised funds provide the benefits of a private foundation without the complexity, administrative burden or added expenses.

Download the Planned Giving Guide

This helpful resource will show you how you can leave a legacy to your family, your charity or your community that complements your will and trust(s).

In Memory of Simon Silva

San diego fundraising conference.

Are you interested in staying up to date on the San Diego Fundraising Conference? Subscribe today and receive email updates for current and future conferences.

This valuable resource will help you understand how to set up a legacy fund and the lasting impact planned gifts can have for you, your family and your community.

Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning

  • Social Science and Public Policy
  • Published: 27 October 2017
  • Volume 54 , pages 541–548, ( 2017 )

Cite this article

  • Allan C. Ornstein 1  

51k Accesses

11 Citations

4 Altmetric

Explore all metrics

Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.

Social scientists study social mobility in order to ascertain the relative openness or fluidity of a social structure. They are interested in the difficulties different persons or groups experience in acquiring the goods and services that are valued in the culture and may be acquired through unequal contributions.

In ascription societies, the stratification system is closed to individual mobility because prestige (or status) is determined at birth. The amount of education one will receive, the occupational status one will enter, one’s income and one’s whole lifestyle cannot be changed. In an open-class society, although people start with different advantages, opportunities are available for them to change their initial positions. The life chances of a welfare recipient’s son born in the slums differ considerably from those of a banker’s son born in the suburbs. Although the playing field is tilted and stacked against the slum child, in an achievement-oriented society, the former can achieve as much or more than the latter.

The emphasis on vertical social mobility in the American social structure is one of the most striking features of our class system—and the basis for what we often call the “American dream.” Kurt Mayer, in Class and Society , puts it this way: “The United States has placed greater emphasis on social mobility than any other large nation in modern times. Americans have firmly proclaimed the idea of equality and freedom of achievement and have acclaimed the large numbers of individuals who have risen from humble origins to positions of prominence and affluence.” The believe in opportunity is strongly embedded in the American culture, a view promulgated in the stories of Horatio Alger and songs like “Rags to Riches.”

Most Americans would accept the above analysis of mobility and opportunity. But that’s not how the world works: For some 5000 years of recorded history, until the late eighteenth century, the ordinary person (nearly 99% of the populace) has lived on the edge of starvation, slightly above subsistence level, with no rights and no justice.

The Ancient World

From the beginning of civilization to the American Revolution, the monarchs, priests, and warlords (later the nobility class) ruled the world. Economic growth would enhance the wealth of those who were already rich or powerful; the masses were little more than slaves, serfs, peasants, or chattel—who worked until death or disablement and whose life expectancy was 30 to 35 years—depending on the century and society. Behavior was grounded in appetite, or desire and self-interest. Those with power and wealth sought to retain their position, and there was minimal or no opposition by working and subordinate people who lacked the ability to oppose what was perceived as the natural order. Nothing could be done to change it, and that is how the world existed for centuries. The idea that humans have rights is a relatively new concept—not more than 350 years old.

Heredity privilege governed society and those fortune by birth were expected to benefit at the expense of the working masses who were limited by their unprivileged birth. Intelligence or any other human strength had to be extraordinary before it could count for much in comparison to heredity privilege. Each person, relying on traditions of birthright and background and his own resources, labored within a fixed, stratified society. The rewards went to the rich and powerful, while the ordinary person worked from dawn to dusk and lived in poverty and squalor. The superiority of civilization over barbarianism did very little to change the miserable conditions of working people. In short, life for the common person was brutal and short. The masses were controlled by those who ruled. Might made right; there was no rule of law. Human rights or social justice were nonexistent. Plunder and rape, starvation and war, characterized the flow of events.

With the exception of the Greeks and Romans, all the great civilizations of the ancient world would fall under the aristocratic rule of monarchs and emperors, supported with an entrenched and corrupt nobility or property class, where the mass were either slaves, manual laborers or peasant farmers who toiled until their death. The vast majority of people were nothing more than disposable units of production kept alive at the subsistence level. Their function was to keep the system running. Their wages or economic rewards would mainly cover the cost of their daily existence so they could produce the next generation of children who would be laborers or till the land. People lived by war and conquest and developed first from warlike families which grew into clans and tribes, cemented by blood, which then grew into small villages and settlements and then city-states and monarchies and kingdoms.

The warlords who commanded armies were paid by monarchs in gold, property and for titles in exchange for their loyalty. These warring leaders obtained heredity titles and land, and thus transformed into the “gentry” or nobility class. They gained recognition for possession of goods and people, as well as military valor. The masses—whether they were slaves or serfs, peasant farmers or laborers—surrendered their rights and freedom to those who could provide security and protect them from plunder and facilitate their survival needs. People were willing to live in a society where government had a heavy hand, even in an authoritarian order, so long as they knew they could live in relative safety; their goal was not to be raped or brutalized by stronger people and roaming armies—and to have food on the table.

What we are describing here is a gloomy and brutal world—and why people are often willing to give up their freedom, including their rights and opportunities. Civilization brought a degree of peace and security for the masses, compared to the age of barbarianism. In a nut shell, a social order accompanied by a freedom of fear, plunder and rape takes precedence over economic possessions and prizes and even human rights. In a Hobbesian world, there is no moral high ground. People of power and property seek their own self-preservation and combine by marriage and alliance to obtain more power and property. They act as a force for change at the expense of less powerful people who are just trying to live day-to-day and feed themselves.

Our Western Heritage: The Greeks and Romans

Now ancient Greece and Rome were a slightly different story. Their development was a variation of this theme, from barbarianism to civilization. But their political system was cemented by human agreement. Citizens had a political voice among ruling elites, rather than the simple bloodline and hereditary succession and the complete domination of the masses in the ancient civilizations that preceded them.

In the Greek era, a distant mirror of the politics of our own age, it was believed that the citizens had certain rights and civic duties—and could argue for or against any proposition in the marketplace of ideas—the courts, the public arena, etc.

Plato’s Republic fashioned a plan for a perfect state ruled by an intellectual elite of philosopher-kings—not a money elite or hereditary aristocracy. Society existed to cultivate truth and virtue in its inhabitants, based on assumptions that only knowledgeable men should rule and that all inhabitants who had basic rights should contribute to the general welfare according to their intellectual capacity and particular aptitude. Education, not privileged birth, was the major vehicle for defining the social and economic relations of the residents in Plato’s Republic . The educational system played a selective role as it rated intellectual aptitude and sorted children into future categories: philosopher-kings, auxiliaries and soldiers, and workers. Once assigned to a class, individuals received the appropriate education assigned to their social-economic position—and mobility was frozen. Plato believed that each class would fulfill a necessary function and contribute to the common good. Such a society, he believed, would be harmonious.

Even now, both liberal and conservative thinkers, love to make comparisons between the ancient Greeks and our Western heritage. To some extent, we are all Greeks—at least in terms of our culture and political beliefs. Americans, I believe, are more likely to agree with a dead Greek poet or philosopher than the best known lawyers or social scientists of the modern world to bolster an argument or advocate a point of view. We think the ancient scholars from the Greek islands spoke with less spin (and more virtue) than modern politicians and policymakers. This view is especially seen in the writings of traditional educators and philosophers who advocate the classics and great books approach to education.

It would be nice to envision America as the sole heir of Athens—where democracy first flourished—and to be a champion of moral virtue and humanitarianism. But we are also Romans. The same land that gave us Cierco and Virgil, and forged the foundations of our Republic, forced humans (gladiators) to square off against each other and against wild animals. It is true that Cierco had climbed from relatively humble surroundings to the highest offices of the Roman Empire. With Cierco’s death, however, more precisely his assassination, the Empire lost its most staunchest legal advocate and political conscience—and soon fell under the autocratic rule of a series of notorious and corrupt emperors who brought ruin and decay to Roman society.

In his last years of life, Cierco warned the Senate about patrician greed and class warfare, and to shame his colleagues in the Senate about growing inequality between the patrician and plebian classes. The orator’s words ring loud today: “A belief has become established—and harmful to the Republic…that these courts, with you senators as the jury, will never convict any man, however guilty if he has sufficient money.” We must also read Tacitus in terms of “diminutive rivalries.” Strong men will trample weak men in war, politics or business affairs “as long as there are prizes to contend for which move their avarice or their ambition.”

We overlook the fact that Greek and Roman society, like all the previous ancient societies, were built on the backs of slaves, and only a minority of Greeks and Romans had the rights and privileges described by the great Greek and Roman philosophers. We love to trace our philosophical thoughts to Greece and Rome, but we ignore that both civilizations believed in a government run by the well educated and property class—nothing more, if I may add, than an oligarchy—and what later would be called the European nobility.

The expectation remained in Europe, and the rest of the world (except America), that the masses were destined to live at the brink of starvation, famine and disease. This was the way it had been since the dawn of civilization. The human condition was characterized first by chaos and then misery—as the strong plundered the weak. Economic life was a struggle, pure and simple. Life was brutal and short, void of human rights or justice.

The idea of a social contract between government and the people or that people had natural rights and could live a descent life, with opportunities for improving their condition, was considered illogical and contrary to the norms of society. It violated the customs and traditions of the relations that bounded the Church and the faithful, Prince and subject people, property owner and peasant, master and servant. Equally disturbing was that in the normal course of events ordinary people did not expect anything but misfortune and privation, nor did they expect significant improvement in their social status or standard of living. From the beginning of recorded history, the workers and weaker members of society expected to be pressed down and exploited. The majority opinion was that the passions of men did not conform to the ideas of reason, fairness or justice; hence, there was the uncritical acceptance of the selfish nature of man—and that the strong would prey over the weak.

A slightly more optimistic current took hold in America, spearheaded by political leaders who were influenced by the humanitarian ideas of the Age of Enlightenment. Still, the concepts of slavery and indentured servants existed and were woven into the social order during the colonial and post-colonial era. The platitudes of moral behavior, the common good, and helping the less fortunate (Kant’s doctrines), the natural rights of men (Voltaire’s idea), a social contract between government and the people (Rousseau’s dictum), the notion of “life, liberty and property” (Locke’s statement) and the substitution of property for “pursuit of happiness” (Jefferson’s modification) were all abstract ideas that went against the tide of opinion and the dictates of reason prior to the American Revolution.

In Europe Locke, Voltaire, and Rousseau were considered extremely radical among their contemporaries, promoting ideas based on a false and untenable conception of human nature. In some ways they were the mouse that roared. Few people of power and property took them seriously, but eventually their writings began to seep into discussions at the taverns and coffee shops of Geneva, London and Paris. Despite the American and French Revolution, the upper classes in both the Old and New World did not subscribe to these doctrines, nor did they have faith and/or respect in the common people or the rights of the people. In fact, Thomas Jefferson was considered a traitor to the class interests of Southern plantation owners and northern bankers, similar to the way Franklin Roosevelt more than 150 years later was viewed by the Brahmins and business class when he implemented civilian work programs, unemployment insurance and Social Security for Americans during the Great Depression.

During the Industrial Revolution which started in merry-old England around the time of the American Revolution, special skills and special abilities of people resulted in slightly higher wages than the norm. But the fixed economic system and social traditions of prior societies directed toward the past remained intact, rather than toward a future which men themselves might shape. The amount of people who rose from pittance to what might be called middle class was miniscule in numbers compared to the masses who remained poor and destitute.

Actually, the Industrial Revolution increased inequality between the mercantile and manufacturing class with the labor and working class because the vast portion of wealth attributed to economic growth went to the economic elite, not the masses. To be sure, a rising tide does not always lift all boats in the water, not when the surrounding environment or custom is fixed and not when a person’s position in society is considered from a static position as it was viewed for centuries. We are not all in the same boat, as Jack found out the hard way in the movie Titanic . No doubt the new industries allowed a tiny number of entrepreneurial people to accumulate capital and equipment. Thus a few people endowed by nature, that is by strength and cunning, were able to take advantage of the fruits of their power and abilities.

This new concept of competition and productivity led to nineteenth century Darwinist thinking, that is “survival of the fittest” and Herbert Spencer’s dictum, the “law of the jungle.” Such ideas could be viewed as an outgrowth of the ancient world which set man against man in the pursuit of power, prestige and wealth—and left the masses to fend for themselves relative to their state of nature. This idea was modified in the New World, whereby common people could successfully compete and fit well into the American landscape, largely because of the frontier experience, the abundance of free land and natural resources, the constant flow of immigrants, and the long-favored notion of progress and change. Moreover, there was no history of warlords, family lineage or bloodlines; the land had not been carved up by centuries of war and strife, by warlords who later became known as Dukes, Earls, and Barons.

The point is that in the U.S., there was so much land and resources for the taking that it did not create a zero-sum game between the power elite and the common person; the people with new powers and property allowed the masses to accumulate their own riches because there was so much land available for anyone who was willing to risk the unknown and work hard. “Survival of the fittest” eventually blended into the folklore of the West and later the customs of the Gilded Age. The picture of the self-made man of the nineteenth century, epitomized by the robber baron, warped into Ayn Rand’s book, Atlas-Shrugged, published in 1957. In the twentieth century, Rand’s image of the self-reliant, egotistical person rejected the idea of the common good, altruism and helping less fortunate people. In both centuries, however, the capitalist system evolved from the brutal conditions of the ancient world: The strong survived and the weak barely existed or perished. Life was a struggle, a part of nature—where every group, every animal or human was always in a ceaseless struggle with its environment and its species.

Material wealth at the expense of “the herd” or ordinary people was common. Greed was and still is considered good; it’s the fuel or engine that supposedly drives the economy. There is little concern for the working person—as well as for the weak, the old, the disabled, etc.

The Promised Land

But America is the land of opportunity, where peoples’ aspirations and dreams come true, where ordinary citizens have rights guaranteed by law. Immigrants fleeing from oppressive governments or economic hardship can start a new life and have multiple chances to succeed.

Keep in mind our history: The ideas of the Enlightenment, when transported across the ocean, prevailed over authoritarianism and theocracy. Thank the heavens that a group of middle-aged rebels were willing to put their lives on the line, and thank Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence and said the right words at the right time and provided the framework that gave us the natural right to establish the rights of people and separate the church and state. Of course, the English aristocrats and conservatives did not see it the same way. Harping on the vulgarity and clumsiness of their former colonialists, one English novelist some 50 years ago summed up the American revolutionists as “malcontented” children and Americans in general as “cowards” who were “almost all the descendants of wretches who deserted their legitimate monarchs for fear of military service.”

The doctrine of natural rights of man, “the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” the idea that “all men are created equal,” a belief in “a government of the people and by the people,” the rights to own land, the rights to assemble, to protest and express opinions, the devotion to education and self-improvement for plain people—all these principles that we take for granted today did not come easily and required an uphill battle of ideas and for the minds of people. Liberty and freedom are not given to a country, but it is a result of hard-won struggles, a belief in the rights of all people and the protection of minority rights. It is not easy to transcend religion in a deeply religious country as ours, and to allow secular laws to prevail. It is not easy to overcome the power of the rich and allow the people to govern, whereby the rich ultimately have to answer to the people and where the rule of law prevails.

In the U.S. capitalism would be encouraged to expand, but there would be no feudal class, no peasant class, no serfs perpetually indentured to the monarch or nobility class. There would be genuine reform in which people of different classes and occupations would come nearer in speaking the same language and have similar opportunities than anywhere else in the world. The reward system based on inherited privilege and power would be curtailed so that the nation would not have the same “winners” and “losers” from one generation to the other. The ultimate question comes down to what we should do so all Americans could thrive. The answer was to use government to bring about reform so everyone had the potential to prosper. The country would have to work for everyone! A government of the people and for the people was the only counter force powerful enough to curtail corporate power and abuse.

So we are the lucky ones. Over the course of nearly 250 years, this nation has grown from a small cluster of colonies with a ragtag collection of people and a makeshift army, to a free, mighty, and wealthy nation—the most influential one in the history of humankind and on the present world stage. How was this possible? Does it boil down to accident, luck, or design?

I cannot give you a precise answer—why we are the chosen ones, or the lucky ones. The answer, to some extent, comes from the heart, from the feelings and emotions of plain people, immigrant people, and working people who inhabit our landscape and who know they are free: Free from the yoke of oppression, free from the sword, whip and boot—and therefore strive, innovate, and invent. Despite that we are a nation of many nations, with different customs and folklore, we all speak the same language as free men and women and breathe the same free air. The answer also comes from all the people around the world who clamor to come to our shores to escape their nations’ rulers, tyrants, and oligarchies, to find that pot of gold that can only be found in the New World. Here common people can fulfill their dreams. Here justice has a chance to prevail.

James Weaver, a Populist philosopher at the turn of the twentieth century, identified with the Founding Fathers of 1776 and put it this way: “Throughout all history we have had ample evidence that the new world is the theater upon which the great struggle for the rights of man is to be made,” Or, could the answer simply be what Otto von Bismarck, the Prussian chancellor, once muttered? “God has special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America.”

Alex de Tocqueville, perhaps the most influential visitor and profound observer of America, put it in more realistic terms in 1835: Whereas a “permanent inequality of condition prevailed” in the Old World, where the social conditions tended “to promote the despotism of the monarchs and ruling class on the masses,” the principle of democracy prevailed in the United States. Some 175 years later, another foreign gentleman, this time an immigrant from the far-off land of India, Dinesh D’Souza (someone much more conservative but just as idealistic as Weaver and de Tocqueville) commented: “America is a new kind of society that produces a new kind of human being. The human being—confident, self-reliant, tolerant, generous, future oriented—is a vast improvement over the wretched, fatalistic, and intolerant human being that traditional societies have always produced and…produce now.”

Then there is David Reynolds, a Cambridge historian, who recently wrote a lengthy history of the U.S., entitled America: Empire of Liberty . American contradictions are described between our lofty ideals and practice. He sees the nation as an empire pieced together by war and conquest, much like other empires of the past. But he also sees America as the successful integration of different people from around the world with diverse and innovative thoughts. Faceless and unknown, lacking hereditary privilege and wealth, people come to America seeking a new beginning, a fair chance, and a future that is offered no where else on earth.

The pictures at Ellis Island tell a story: A tale of people clamoring to come to America, some weeping for joy as they passed into the New York Harbor and saw the Statue of Liberty beckoning them—the huddled masses yearning to be free. The American dream is built on the aspirations and achievements of these immigrants risking life and limb to come to our shores, some seeking political asylum, others seeking economic opportunity and/or a new life. Indeed, there is no better way to judge this country, or any country, than by the numbers of people trying to get into it, as opposed to other parts of the world where people are desperately trying to get out of their country.

The Roots of Social Justice

The notion of social justice is based on the Christian doctrine of helping less fortunate people—the weak, sickly, and oppressed. To be sure, Jesus cared deeply about people. He went out of his way to help people facing injustices. The Bible is full of passages that advocate helping and caring for people. Instead of being motivated by power, pride, or material wealth, those clergy that follow the scriptures find purpose through acts of justice.

Since the 1920s, social democratic governments in Western Europe have reinforced the view that all citizens should be treated equally. Society cannot be fair or just if it has different categories or types of citizenship, such as nobility and the rest of the population, whites as first class citizens and blacks as second class, dominant and subordinate (or oppressed) groups, etc. Inequality must be reduced or eliminated; opportunities for poor and working people need to be expanded; government is obligated to provide free health and education (including college) services; the free market system needs to be regulated by government; labor has the right to organize into unions; resources need to be allocated more equally; and the rich have to pay higher taxes. In short, income and wealth should be redistributed so there is greater opportunity and equality among the populace, and therefore more justice.

Across the Atlantic Ocean, it was and still is considered unwise to associate with Europe’s “social democracy” to avoid being labeled as socialists. The word “liberalism” was used in lieu of socialism. When liberal became a derogatory word, the same ideas were expressed as “progressive.” Nonetheless, similar ideas were being promogated as part of Theodore Roosevelt’s “Square Deal,” Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Harry Truman’s “Fair Deal,” Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty and “Great Society” and Bill “Clintonomics.” The rational behind these policies were discussed in terms of human rights, rooted in the Age of Enlightenment and the U.S. Bill of Rights. Ideally government would be used to bring about reform so that every American could participate in the American dream; government legislation would right the wrongs of history.

Starting in the early 1960s social scientists began to touch on topics of justice without using or identifying the name. The conversation focused on equality—and issues related to class and caste. Indeed, the 1960s ushered in a period in which the social conscious of Americans burst forth—coinciding with our concern over racial discrimination, poverty, and equal opportunity. Three authors/books stand out during this period.

James Conant, the Harvard University president, was part of the Educational Establishment. In 1961 he published Slums and Suburbs. Slum schools were compared to their suburban counterparts; they lacked resources, experienced teachers, and a relevant curriculum that could meet the needs of their students. Slum schools were in grave physical condition— characterized by broken windows, broken toilets, and graffiti on the walls. Conant wrote that the students in the ghetto areas of large cities “either drop out or graduate from school [with minimal] prospects of future education or employment.” He argued that youth out of school and out of work was “a menace to the social and political health of the large cities.” He went on to coin the word “social dynamite” and warned that if the social/economic situation did not improve in these schools and cities there would be serious consequences. In short, he was predicting the social and racial upheaval that would soon grip the American landscape.

The same year (1961) John Gardner, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under the Johnson administration, wrote Excellence: Can We Be Equal Too? He discussed social issues that later gave rise to equal opportunity legislation and affirmative action policies. Gardner noted that extreme forms of egalitarianism in schools or jobs tended to eliminate both excellence and merit. On the other hand, extreme forms of competition and excellence could create a permanent underclass with the less abled. He tried to draw a middle position, including multiple chances for succeeding and identifying many different forms of talent—not just academic talent. “It takes more than an educated elite to run a complex, technical society.” Differences in rewards are accepted so long as people with special abilities serve the common good and do not use them against society, say in robbing a bank. There is also an expectation that society will establish appropriate institutions such as schools and colleges to nurture those differences in abilities and talents, but it must also provide opportunity for people who are not as smart and talented.

The following year (1962), Michael Harrington, who was a socialist writer published The Other America . The book focused on the forgotten, overlooked, and invisible American, that is the poor who he claimed comprised one third of the US population. Harrington’s main point was that poverty was no longer cyclical or temporary. The condition was permanent in the midst of general prosperity; it was a travesty in the richest nation of the world that so many Americans were struggling and living day-to-day. Although the book was small in size, it was a major factor in galvanizing nation-wide support for assisting the less fortunate in America. It was crucial in influencing both President Kennedy and Johnson, and led to the subsequent War on Poverty.

In 1971, John Rawls, a Harvard University professor, published A Theory of Justice . He criticized the gap between the highest and lowest paid workers, called for a floor and ceiling in earnings to close the gaps in income, and advocated that the rich pay more taxes. He also asserted that justice must be conceived in terms of fairness and basic moral principles. A social contract was needed to ensure basic rights for the people. Although Rawls’ writing was cumbersome and difficult to read, the book was instrumental in getting scholars and pundits to discuss and write about the principles and policies of justice. Eventually, the notion of justice was fused into the US civil rights movement, emphasizing the rights of all people and the moral principles of justice.

The Meaning of Social Justice

Social Justice means different things to different people. If you are going to speak or write about social justice you will need to have some understanding of what is a democracy, what rights do people have or should have, and how society should provide for less fortunate people. In the pages below, the author identifies 30 basic principles that should be considered as a framework for defining justice (social justice).

The history of Western society bends toward social justice. The fight for social justice is incremental and extends over centuries. The interpretation and judgment of social justice depends on who interprets it and who writes the laws of society.

Ordinary people can change the course of history by joining a movement. Social justice is a movement for improving the lives of people. You usually get one or two chances in life to join a movement and make a difference. The idea, to paraphrase Aretha Franklin, is to know when the train is coming, to get on board, and to hold your head up high. In short, the fight for social justice takes persistence, guts, and knowing and doing what’s right.

A fair and just society will encourage democratic principles of equality, opportunity, and mobility. It will also provide a legal framework for human rights (the concept is less than 350 years old), civil rights, and individual rights.

Every democratic society must try to reduce the gap in income and wealth among its citizenry. There must be a reasonable floor and ceiling in income and wealth.

The floor and ceiling is achieved through some form of monetary redistribution and taxation, as well as by political compromise. But just when you think you have reached some compromise or agreement, the political winds change and you have a new floor and ceiling.

In a just society, all lives have equal value, equal opportunity and equal chances for success.

A socially just society cannot forget or ignore people in need, nor leave the majority of its people behind. It must put people first—not property nor profits. It must be willing to examine and reexamine its beliefs and philosophy on a regular basis.

All groups, including those who define themselves as a political minority (blacks, Hispanics, women, gay lesbians, labor unions, etc.) recognize some bias and discrimination will always exist. But in a just society, the bias and discrimination are minimal and minority groups have the same rights as the majority and are able to fulfill their dreams.

In a fair or just society, the class structures are fluid in both directions—up and down, from lower class to upper class and from upper class to lower.

In a just society, there must be a political and legal framework that protects and enhances the rights of the people. Laws must not be based on partisan or tribal politics, or they will become temporary, but rooted in moral, social, and economic doctrines that provide opportunities and mobility for all people and groups in society.

In a just society, individual rights supersede group rights, corporate rights and property rights. Lawyers and judges have elevated status. The ordinary person can find legal protection as well as redress in the courts. The police must follow and obey the laws.

For social justice to flourish, the government must be prepared to intervene. A free-market system, without government restraints, leads to greater inequality whereby talented people make large sums of money and average and less than average workers (the common people or silent majority) are paid at best a living wage.

A society characterized by a wide income/wealth gap rewards special talent and entrepreneurship. A society characterized by a narrow gap pays descent wages to ordinary people and rewards the working and middle class.

Those who believe that a social contract exists between government and its people reject large gaps in income and wealth; such differences reflect the excesses of capitalism. Those who believe in limited government see large differences in income and wealth as a reflection of the success of capitalism.

Given a social contract, the government not only protects the people, but also provides revenue for building schools, roads, and bridges; it also provides safety nets and social programs for its disadvantaged populace, including the poor, sick, disabled, and elderly.

An innovative and entrepreneurial society will accept large amounts of inequality; a fair or just society will reduce these differences.

The people who believe that getting ahead is a matter of perspiration, talent, or enterprise tend to oppose government intervention and redistributive policies, as well as social programs, safety nets, or entitlements. On the other hand, those who believe that “success” is related to inherited advantages, socioeconomic advantages, or worse, being a member of a dominant group (i.e. born white and born in an upper-class family) support redistributive policies and/or reverse discrimination.

Those who believe in the Horacio Alger stories of hard work, self-denial, and honor contend that those who are “successful” have earned their money and deserve it. Those who believe that many wealthy people have acquired their money or assets by inheritance or by exploiting the system (Rockerfellers, Goulds, Kennedys, Trump) believe that ordinary people have little chance for “success.” That said, social justice has a long road ahead.

Those who control capital, property and/or equipment represent the dominant class—and how wealth is created. Mobility and opportunity must exist to the extent that the subordinate class, or more precisely the common people who work for a living, can improve their social-economic status.

In a just society, those who have the least benefit from those who have the most via charity works, philanthropy, and in fair tax code.

Although a dominant and subordinate group may exist in all societies, in a just society, the differences do not lead to institutional racism, class consciousness, or economic warfare.

If the assignment of personal responsibility is used to justify inequality of income and wealth, then there is little chance for social justice. Of course, there could be other reasons for the difference in outcomes such as personal characteristics, luck, or making the right choice at the right time. It is fair if people have more money or assets than others if there is equal opportunity for all citizens.

Power corrupts; power must be held accountable. In a just society, the people have the ability to peacefully remove their political leaders and elected officials whenever they deem it necessary.

For social justice to be part of the fabric of society, the people must be afforded the right and legal mechanism to investigate, impeach, convict and/or jail their political leaders for incompetence, corruption and/or unlawful behavior.

Government laws or executive orders that discriminate against specific groups (racial, ethnic or religious), under the guise of protecting the majority of people or preserving a way of life, are morally wrong and usually illegal. In democratic societies, such laws and orders must be challenged and rejected by the people in the courts or legislated bodies of that country.

In a fair and just society, people are paid on the basis of the goods and services they produce for the common good. In a society that stresses excellence, people are paid on the basis of supply/demand, the profit they generate or the cost occurred by hiring them. Those who generate profits are paid the most, sometimes hundreds or thousands of times more than those who are considered cost factors. Teachers are cost factors. The idea is for school boards to control the budget and limit salaries.

So long as Americans have the view that the Sam Waltons, Mark Zuckerbergs Michael Jordans and Madonnas of the world, and all their descendants are entitled to all their wealth, because they worked hard, founded highly successful companies, or could shoot a ball through a hoop or entertain large crowds, then the millions and billions they make will continue to create social injustices and economic imbalance—and doom the rest of us to a bleak future characterized by vast inequality.

Globalization affects social justice. The market is seven billion people, not just the size of our country. This means a bigger pie for millionaires and billionaires to build their wealth, thus increasing inequality and reducing social justice around the world. In a just society, the majority of people must be committed to a level playing field, and some legitimate form of equality, even if it means that income and wealth will be redistributed to less fortunate people.

When two and two is considered to be five (or up is down and down is up), by a majority populace or by those in power, social justice is at risk and/or significantly diminished.

Words count. They are the instrument for both reflection and revolution. A just society permits and defends free speech, a free press and the right to protest peacefully. It recognizes and supports poetry, plays, songs, speeches and film, as well as the publication of newspapers, magazines and books as essential for the health and vitality of society. Words can be used for waging war or for healing.

Consider that the rich and powerful have always kept the masses in a subordinate position, thus curtailing the opportunity for the majority populace. Only in recent times, with the rise of democratic governments in Western society do the common people have a chance to curtail the dominant class (the rich and powerful) by voting at the ballot box, as well as a chance to reach for the stars and fulfill their own dreams. With the twenty-first century unfolding in the U.S., there should be continuous pressure to increase equality and redistribute income and wealth.

The commitment to provide a fair chance for everyone to succeed and develop their abilities and talents remains central to the national creed for the vast majority of Americans; this is what distinguishes us from the rest of the world. Virtually no one in the U.S. favors equal distribution of income for it would discourage hard work, risk taking and innovation. Some form of inequality, based on abilities and talent, is the price we pay for a dynamic economy and the right for each person to retain the benefits of his or her labor, capital investment or property. The idea is not to focus on the outcomes of inequality, but to address the reasons for inequality—and what can be done to improve the human condition.

It is doubtful if inequality of income and wealth can be reduced simply by education, because the gap between the rich and the rest of us is so great and continues to grow wider. A moral society needs to redistribute income and wealth in order to make its nation more democratic, fair and just. Finding the right mechanism, reaching some compromise, setting limits on income and wealth (a floor and ceiling) is no easy task. Nonetheless, it is essential that we begin to make such changes if most of us in this country are to share in the American dream.

Every generation going forward is obligated to interpret and reinterpret the principles of human rights and justice. Every person in a free society must learn the government’s obligations to its people and the peoples’ obligation to their fellow citizens and humanity in general. That said, the meaning you find in the above 30 principles of justice depends on your own sense of history and life experiences. The list is not permanent, and should evolve as society changes. The handwriting is on the wall. You only have to see six inches in front of your eyeballs. As the population changes and we become more diverse, educated and tolerant as a nation, we can expect a more liberal or progressive interpretation of justice.

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Education, Sullivan Hall, 5th Fl, St. John’s University, 8000 Utopia Parkway, Queens, NY, 11439, USA

Allan C. Ornstein

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Allan C. Ornstein .

Additional information

This article is dedicated to Sophia and Carissa who will eventually come to understand the meaning and implications of the article below.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Ornstein, A.C. Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning. Soc 54 , 541–548 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-017-0188-8

Download citation

Published : 27 October 2017

Issue Date : December 2017

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-017-0188-8

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

  • Find a journal
  • Publish with us
  • Track your research
  • Search Search Please fill out this field.

What Is Social Justice?

Understanding social justice.

  • Main Principles

Areas of Focus

Equity vs. equality, social justice in law.

  • Social Justice FAQs

The Bottom Line

Social justice meaning and main principles explained.

Erika Rasure is globally-recognized as a leading consumer economics subject matter expert, researcher, and educator. She is a financial therapist and transformational coach, with a special interest in helping women learn how to invest.

social justice essay definition

Investopedia / Dennis Madamba

Social justice refers to a fair and equitable division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. Originally a religious concept, it has come to be conceptualized more loosely as the just organization of social institutions that deliver access to economic benefits. It is sometimes referred to as "distributive justice."  

Social justice is a broad term, and there are many variations in how advocates apply the perspective. However, social determinants like the racial wealth gap or inequitable access to health care feature heavily in social justice analysis. Some applications related to social justice, such as critical race theory, have become a battleground for American politics.

Key Takeaways

  • Social justice refers to the fair division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society.
  • It emphasizes fairness in how society divides its social resources.
  • One of the most famous examinations of social justice is John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice (1971) .
  • Gender inequality, racism, and LGBTQ+ discrimination are frequent subjects of social justice advocacy.
  • Some applications of social justice, like critical race theory, have become embattled in the American culture wars.

The phrase "social justice" draws its roots from Christian theology, with the first noted use occurring in the early 1840s in Theoretical Treatise on Natural Law by Luigi Taparelli. Taparelli was an Italian Jesuit priest writing during the rise of Risorgimento , a 19th-century Italian nationalist movement, and debates around the unification of Italy.

Taparelli’s version of social justice was simply an application of justice to social affairs and held that people should do what’s right based on a conceptualization of morality based on natural theology and religion, and for much of its history social justice has been a religious concept.

Not all notions of social justice emphasized religion, though. With the social impact of the Industrial Revolution , the term grew. Later theorists would focus on social justice as a moral obligation for people within a society to work for the common good; the most famous example is discussed below. 

The term, which has been historically contentious, has become more popular since the end of the 20th century. Some scholars point toward the neoliberal policies of the Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan administrations as a possible reason for this change.

An Old Concept

Though the phrase is attributed to Luigi Taparelli, social justice builds on older concepts. Taparelli relied heavily on the work of Catholic theologian Thomas Aquinas (who was relying on the work of the Macedonian philosopher Aristotle).

One of the most influential explorations of social justice comes from the 20th-century American philosopher John Rawls. In A Theory of Justice (1971) , which he labeled as a theory of social justice, Rawls outlined his vision of “justice as fairness.”

For Rawls, this meant that people ought to consider the rules for a fair allotment of social goods within a society as well as the levels of inequality that can be allowed within a society. Rawls famously used the concept of a "veil of ignorance," a pretense of ignorance about where one will end up in any given society that Rawls thought ought to be used to arrange society, as well as the "principle of difference," which holds that social and economic inequalities can be acceptable if they benefit the whole of society.

The basic element of fairness is crucial, especially in the access to social resources, sometimes called “social goods.” While it may sound abstract, how social goods are distributed is immensely impactful. Importantly, the “social determinants” of outcomes are considered central to whether or not a system is just.

In public health, for example, the place of birth can alter what health care options a person has and, therefore, also how long that person lives. To account for this, social justice advocates in healthcare might focus on extending the probability that people will be healthy despite resource inadequacies they may face for historical or economic reasons.

Main Principles of Social Justice

While there is no single definition of social justice, most approaches share the broad goals of inclusion and fairness. In order to achieve those goals, they establish a set of ethical principles for a just society.

These principles may include:

Equal access to social goods is one of the most fundamental principles of social justice. This holds that society's resources should be equally available to all. For example, many social justice theorists believe that people should have equal access to education, health care, and employment opportunities. Public servants can uphold this principle by ensuring that everyone has access to these resources.

Equity is the principle that people should have the same opportunities to succeed, despite any past injustices or systemic discrimination. This may mean that resources are distributed in a way that addresses the specific needs of underprivileged communities or people.

Diversity is the principle that government and business leaders should be broadly representative of the communities they serve. This means that not only should there be women and people of color in positions of power, but also that minority communities should be equally represented in public institutions. On a policy level, this principle may entail prohibitions on discrimination or providing resources in multiple languages.

Participation

Participation is the principle that everyone in a community should have a voice in making important decisions. In many societies, public policies are set by a small group of powerful people, without consulting the communities they represent. This may have the unintended effect of excluding a large part of the community.

Public policymakers can address this shortcoming by consulting the advocates of minority communities and considering their needs.

Human Rights

The final principle of social justice, and arguably the most fundamental, is human rights. In addition to political rights, such as freedom of conscience, it also requires freedom from police abuse and respect for one's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.

Careers in Social Justice

The most common jobs relating to social justice are related to public administration and social work since these occupations deal directly with providing access to social and government resources. People who work in these professions should be conscious of the explicit and implicit biases that may reduce access to these resources for some members of society.

But it is also possible to advocate for social justice in other fields. For example, lawyers can help ensure equitable access to the justice system by representing clients who are traditionally underserved by existing institutions, and lobbyists can push for legislation that addresses community injustices. Other social justice-oriented occupations include mental health workers, victim advocates, and community developers.

While social justice seeks to ensure equality and fairness for all, it may focus on those groups that have been the victims of historical oppression. The following are some areas of focus for social justice workers:

Racial Equality

Racial equality is one of the most common issues in social justice, and many countries have a history of discrimination or oppression of minority ethnic or racial groups. Members of these groups may be at an economic disadvantage or suffer from unequal access to education, health services, or other essential institutions.

Gender Equality

Almost every country suffers from some sort of gender inequality, whether in the form of wage gaps , glass ceilings , or other forms of gender-based discrimination. In addition, women are also more likely to suffer from violence or sexual assault. or face threats to reproductive rights. Gender equality also affects other rights, such as racial equality. Many social justice advocates consider this a key aspect of social reform.

LGBTQ+ Equality

Starting in the 20th century, LGBTQ+ rights emerged as another issue for social justice advocates. Members of the LGBTQ+ community face high levels of violence and discrimination and may be denied access to healthcare or employment.

Although they are both related to the distribution of social goods and privileges within a society, equality and equity have taken on slightly different meanings in conversations around social justice. Equality, in this context, means that people are given the same access to opportunities, regardless of historical or other forms of injustice that may alter how much someone can access those opportunities. Equity, in contrast, tries to account for an imbalanced social system by providing the resources to create an equal outcome.

It is social justice’s adoption of equity that most of its critics focus on, but those in favor of the concept suggest that equity is a vital part of ensuring a just society. Paula Braveman, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, for instance, has commented that “health equity” and social justice in health are interchangeable. The goal of social justice in health care, she implies, “[is that] no one is denied the possibility to be healthy for belonging to a group that has historically been economically/socially disadvantaged.”

In law, social justice perspectives have become a touchpoint for the American culture wars. Critical race theory (CRT), an approach to law that actively seeks to account for how racial prejudices affect legal outcomes, has drawn particular outcry.

The term was developed by American legal theorists such as Kimberlé Crenshaw to analyze how racism is advanced by American legal structures, even in some cases in the absence of racist individuals. Central to CRT is the notion that race is not validated by science, and that the law has maintained an unjust order.

The Critics

Detractors of critical race theory have claimed that it is merely a way of permitting discrimination. According to the Brookings Institute, a public policy think tank, opponents of critical race theory tend to view the claim that American institutions are racist as a way of accusing White people of being individually racist, rather than as an attempt at broad analysis about the effect of institutions on social outcomes.

Campaigns against CRT have become increasingly vocal in state legislatures across the U.S., with many banning its teaching in primary and secondary schools. To date, 36 states have moved to install legislation to ban teaching about racial bias in the U.S., and 17 have moved to expand that teaching, according to a state legislative tracker created by Chalkbeat, a nonprofit newsroom focused on the American education system.

In 2020, President Donald Trump had also forbidden diversity and equity training from federal contracts, which has been described as an "equity gag order." That executive order conflated diversity training and CRT, calling both "divisive." The ban was reversed in 2021.

What Does Social Justice Mean?

Social justice is the belief that the social benefits and privileges of a society ought to be divided fairly.

Why Is Social Justice Important?

Advocates say that social justice is worth pursuing because it defends people from suffering deprivations due to unfair prejudices and because it tries to provide everyone with the essentials for a good life.

How Is Social Justice Related to Equity?

The concept of equity focuses on outcomes. It’s related to the belief that social determinants massively affect how people’s lives turn out and that, therefore, a truly fair arrangement of society will account for the tangible ways that this harms socially and economically disadvantaged groups.

Social justice is a political and philosophical movement aiming for a more division of resources and opportunities. By addressing historical injustices and directing resources to underserved communities, social justice advocates hope to establish a more fair and equal society.

United Nations. " Social Justice in an Open World ," Page 13.

Center for Economic and Social Justice. " Defining Economic Justice and Social Justice ."

Intercollegiate Studies Institute. " The Origins of Social Justice: Taparelli D'Azeglio ."

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. " Original Position ."

Kent State Online. " The Five Principles of Social Justice ."

Online MSW Programs. " Introduction to Social Justice in Social Work ."

Human Rights Careers. " What Does Social Justice Mean? "

Stanford Social Innovation Review. " What the Heck Does 'Equity' Mean? "

National Institute of Health. " What Are Health Disparities and Health Equity? We Need to Be Clear ."

American Bar Association. " A Lesson on Critical Race Theory ."

Brookings Institute. " Why Are States Banning Critical Race Theory? "

Chalkbeat. " CRT Map: Efforts to restrict teaching racism and bias have multiplied across the U.S ."

UCLA Law. " Biden Reverses Trump Executive Order Banning Diversity Training ."

Human Rights Careers. " 10 Reasons Why Social Justice Is Important ."

  • A History of Income Inequality in the United States 1 of 30
  • How Education and Training Affect the Economy 2 of 30
  • Education vs. Experience: Which One Gets the Job? 3 of 30
  • Unemployment Rate by State 4 of 30
  • Can a Family Survive on the U.S. Minimum Wage? 5 of 30
  • The Economics of Labor Mobility 6 of 30
  • Forced Retirement: What it is, How it Works, FAQ 7 of 30
  • Predatory Lending: How to Avoid, Examples and Protections 8 of 30
  • Unbanked: What It Means, Statistics, Solutions 9 of 30
  • Underbanked: What It Is and Who They Are 10 of 30
  • Underinsurance: What it is, How it Works, FAQ 11 of 30
  • The History of Unions in the United States 12 of 30
  • What Is Middle Class Income? Thresholds, Is It Shrinking 13 of 30
  • What's Poverty? Meaning, Causes, and How to Measure 14 of 30
  • Gini Index Explained and Gini Coefficients Around the World 15 of 30
  • Measuring Inequality: Forget Gini, Go with the Palma Ratio Instead 16 of 30
  • Lorenz Curve 17 of 30
  • What Is the Human Development Index (HDI)? 18 of 30
  • What Are the Criticisms of the Human Development Index (HDI)? 19 of 30
  • Poverty Trap: Definition, Causes, and Proposed Solutions 20 of 30
  • Conflict Theory Definition, Founder, and Examples 21 of 30
  • America's Middle Class Is Losing Ground Financially 22 of 30
  • Hollowing Out: What It Means, How It Works 23 of 30
  • Social Justice Meaning and Main Principles Explained 24 of 30
  • Economic Justice: Meaning, Examples of How to Achieve It 25 of 30
  • Welfare Economics Explained: Theory, Assumptions, and Criticism 26 of 30
  • Egalitarianism: Definition, Ideas, and Types 27 of 30
  • The Nordic Model: Pros and Cons 28 of 30
  • Equity-Efficiency Tradeoff: Definition, Causes, and Examples 29 of 30
  • The Economic Message Behind Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Dream' Speech 30 of 30

social justice essay definition

  • Terms of Service
  • Editorial Policy
  • Privacy Policy
  • Your Privacy Choices

SEP home page

  • Table of Contents
  • Random Entry
  • Chronological
  • Editorial Information
  • About the SEP
  • Editorial Board
  • How to Cite the SEP
  • Special Characters
  • Advanced Tools
  • Support the SEP
  • PDFs for SEP Friends
  • Make a Donation
  • SEPIA for Libraries
  • Entry Contents

Bibliography

Academic tools.

  • Friends PDF Preview
  • Author and Citation Info
  • Back to Top

The idea of justice occupies centre stage both in ethics, and in legal and political philosophy. We apply it to individual actions, to laws, and to public policies, and we think in each case that if they are unjust this is a strong, maybe even conclusive, reason to reject them. Classically, justice was counted as one of the four cardinal virtues (and sometimes as the most important of the four); in modern times John Rawls famously described it as ‘the first virtue of social institutions’ (Rawls 1971, p.3; Rawls, 1999, p.3). We might debate which of these realms of practical philosophy has first claim on justice: is it first and foremost a property of the law, for example, and only derivatively a property of individuals and other institutions? But it is probably more enlightening to accept that the idea has over time sunk deep roots in each of these domains, and to try to make sense of such a wide-ranging concept by identifying elements that are present whenever justice is invoked, but also examining the different forms it takes in various practical contexts. This article aims to provide a general map of the ways in which justice has been understood by philosophers, past and present.

We begin by identifying four core features that distinguish justice from other moral and political ideas. We then examine some major conceptual contrasts: between conservative and ideal justice, between corrective and distributive justice, between procedural and substantive justice, and between comparative and non-comparative justice. Next we turn to questions of scope: to who or what do principles of justice apply? We ask whether non-human animals can be subjects of justice, whether justice applies only between people who already stand in a particular kind of relationship to one another, and whether individual people continue to have duties of justice once justice-based institutions have been created. We then examine three overarching theories that might serve to unify the different forms of justice: utilitarianism, contractarianism, and egalitarianism. But it seems, in conclusion, that no such theory is likely be successful.

More detailed discussions of particular forms of justice can be found in other entries: see especially distributive justice , global justice , intergenerational justice , international distributive justice , justice and bad luck , justice as a virtue , and retributive justice .

1.1 Justice and Individual Claims

1.2 justice, charity and enforceable obligation, 1.3 justice and impartiality, 1.4 justice and agency, 2.1 conservative versus ideal justice, 2.2 corrective versus distributive justice, 2.3 procedural versus substantive justice, 2.4 comparative versus non-comparative justice, 3.1 human vs non-human animals, 3.2 relational vs non-relational justice, 3.3 individuals vs institutions, 3.4 recognition vs. redistribution, 4.1 accommodating intuitions about justice, 4.2 utilitarian theories of justice: three problems, 5.1 gauthier, 5.3 scanlon, 6.1 justice as equality, 6.2 responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism, 6.3 relational egalitarianism, 7. conclusion, other internet resources, related entries, 1. justice: mapping the concept.

‘Justice’ has sometimes been used in a way that makes it virtually indistinguishable from rightness in general. Aristotle, for example, distinguished between ‘universal’ justice that corresponded to ‘virtue as a whole’ and ‘particular’ justice which had a narrower scope (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, chs. 1–2). The wide sense may have been more evident in classical Greek than in modern English. But Aristotle also noted that when justice was identified with ‘complete virtue’, this was always ‘in relation to another person’. In other words, if justice is to be identified with morality as such, it must be morality in the sense of ‘what we owe to each other’ (see Scanlon 1998). But it is anyway questionable whether justice should be understood so widely. At the level of individual ethics, justice is often contrasted with charity on the one hand, and mercy on the other, and these too are other-regarding virtues. At the level of public policy, reasons of justice are distinct from, and often compete with, reasons of other kinds, for example economic efficiency or environmental value.

As this article will endeavour to show, justice takes on different meanings in different practical contexts, and to understand it fully we have to grapple with this diversity. But it is nevertheless worth asking whether we find a core concept that runs through all these various uses, or whether it is better regarded as a family resemblance idea according to which different combinations of features are expected to appear on each occasion of use. The most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the Institutes of Justinian , a codification of Roman Law from the sixth century AD, where justice is defined as ‘the constant and perpetual will to render to each his due’. This is of course quite abstract until further specified, but it does throw light upon four important aspects of justice.

First, it shows that justice has to do with how individual people are treated (‘to each his due’). Issues of justice arise in circumstances in which people can advance claims – to freedom, opportunities, resources, and so forth – that are potentially conflicting, and we appeal to justice to resolve such conflicts by determining what each person is properly entitled to have. In contrast, where people’s interests converge, and the decision to be taken is about the best way to pursue some common purpose – think of a government official having to decide how much food to stockpile as insurance against some future emergency – justice gives way to other values. In other cases, there may be no reason to appeal to justice because resources are so plentiful that we do not need to worry about allotting shares to individuals. Hume pointed out that in a hypothetical state of abundance where ‘every individual finds himself fully provided with whatever his most voracious appetites can want’, ‘the cautious, jealous virtue of justice would never once have been dreamed of’ (Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals , pp. 183–4). Hume also believed – and philosophical controversy on this point persists until today – that justice has no place in close personal relationships, such as the family, where (it is alleged) each identifies with the others’ interests so strongly that there is no need and no reason for anyone to make claims of personal entitlement. (See Sandel 1982 for a defence of this view; for a critique, see Okin 1989. See also the entry on feminist perspectives on reproduction and the family) .

That justice is a matter of how each separate person is treated appears to create problems for theories such as utilitarianism that judge actions and policies on the basis of their overall consequences aggregated across people – assuming that these theories wish to incorporate rather than discard the idea of justice. In Section 4 below we examine how utilitarians have attempted to respond to this challenge.

Although justice is centrally a matter of how individuals are treated, it is also possible to speak of justice for groups – for example when the state is allocating resources between different categories of citizens. Here each group is being treated as though it were a separate individual for purposes of the allocation.

Second, Justinian’s definition underlines that just treatment is something due to each person, in other words that justice is a matter of claims that can be rightfully made against the agent dispensing justice, whether a person or an institution. Here there is a contrast with other virtues: we demand justice, but we beg for charity or forgiveness. This also means that justice is a matter of obligation for the agent dispensing it, and that the agent wrongs the recipient if the latter is denied what is due to her. It is a characteristic mark of justice that the obligations it creates should be enforceable: we can be made to deliver what is due to others as a matter of justice, either by the recipients themselves or by third parties. However it overstates the position to make the enforceability of its requirements a defining feature of justice (see Buchanan 1987). On the one hand, there are some claims of justice that seem not to be enforceable (by anyone). When we dispense gifts to our children or our friends, we ought to treat each recipient fairly, but neither the beneficiaries themselves nor anyone else can rightfully force the giver to do so. On the other hand, in cases of extreme emergency, it may sometimes be justifiable to force people to do more than justice requires them to do – there may exist enforceable duties of humanity. But these are rare exceptions. The obligatory nature of justice generally goes hand-in-hand with enforceability.

The third aspect of justice to which Justinian’s definition draws our attention is the connection between justice and the impartial and consistent application of rules – that is what the ‘constant and perpetual will’ part of the definition conveys. Justice is the opposite of arbitrariness. It requires that where two cases are relevantly alike, they should be treated in the same way (We discuss below the special case of justice and lotteries). Following a rule that specifies what is due to a person who has features X , Y , Z whenever such a person is encountered ensures this. And although the rule need not be unchangeable – perpetual in the literal sense – it must be relatively stable. This explains why justice is exemplified in the rule of law, where laws are understood as general rules impartially applied over time. Outside of the law itself, individuals and institutions that want to behave justly must mimic the law in certain ways (for instance, gathering reliable information about individual claimants, allowing for appeals against decisions).

Finally, the definition reminds us that justice requires an agent whose will alters the circumstances of its objects. The agent might be an individual person, or it might be a group of people, or an institution such as the state. So we cannot, except metaphorically, describe as unjust states of affairs that no agent has contributed to bringing about – unless we think that there is a Divine Being who has ordered the universe in such a way that every outcome is a manifestation of His will. Admittedly we are tempted to make judgements of what is sometimes called ‘cosmic injustice’ – say when a talented person’s life is cut cruelly short by cancer, or our favourite football team is eliminated from the competition by a freak goal – but this is a temptation we should resist.

This agency condition, however, is less restrictive than it might at first appear. It by no means excludes the possibility that agents can create injustice by omission – for example by failing to create the institutions or to enact the policies that would deliver vital resources to those who need them. Thus it is now common to speak of ‘systemic injustice’ in the case of bad outcomes that no-one intends to occur but that could be prevented by a shift in social norms or institutional practices. The agents in these cases are all those who by acting together to change these things could invert the injustice, but have so far failed to do so.

2. Justice: Four Distinctions

We have so far looked at four elements that are present in every use of the concept of justice. Now it is time to consider some equally important contrasts.

Philosophers writing on justice have observed that it has two different faces, one conservative of existing norms and practices, the other demanding reform of these norms and practices (see Sidgwick 1874/1907, Raphael 2001). Thus on the one hand it is a matter of justice to respect people’s rights under existing law or moral rules, or more generally to fulfil the legitimate expectations they have acquired as a result of past practice, social conventions, and so forth; on the other hand, justice often gives us reason to change laws, practices and conventions quite radically, thereby creating new entitlements and expectations. This exposes an ambiguity in what it means to ‘render each his due’. What is ‘due’ might be what a person can reasonably expect to have given existing law, policy, or social practice, or it might be what the person should get under a regime of ideal justice: this could mean what the person deserves, or needs, or is entitled to on grounds of equality, depending on which ideal principle is being invoked.

Conceptions of justice vary according to the weight they attach to each of these faces. At one extreme, some conceptions interpret justice as wholly concerned with what individuals can claim under existing laws and social conventions: thus for Hume, justice was to be understood as adherence to a set of rules that assign physical objects to individuals (such as being the first possessor of such an object) (Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature , Book III, Part II). These rules can be explained by reference to the natural associations that form in people’s minds between persons and external objects, and although the system of justice as a whole can be shown to be socially useful, there are no relevant independent standards by which its principles can be assessed (Hume briskly dismissed equality and merit as principles for allocating property to persons). In similar vein, Hayek argued that justice was a property of individual behaviour, understood as compliance with the ‘rules of just conduct’ that had evolved to enable a market economy to function effectively. For Hayek, to speak of ‘social justice’ as an ideal standard of distribution was as meaningless as to speak of a ‘moral stone’ (Hayek 1976, p. 78)

At the other extreme stand conceptions of justice which posit some ideal principle of distribution such as equality, together with a ‘currency’ specifying the respect in which justice requires people to be made equally well off, and then refuse to acknowledge the justice of any claims that do not arise directly from the application of this principle. Thus claims deriving from existing law or practice are dismissed unless they happen to coincide with what the principle requires. More often, however, ideal justice is seen as proposing principles by which existing institutions and practices can be assessed, with a view to reforming them, or in the extreme case abolishing them entirely, while the claims that people already have under those practices are given some weight. Rawls, for example, whose two principles of justice count as ideal principles for this purpose, is at pains to stress that they are not intended to be applied in a way that disregards people’s existing legitimate expectations. About the ‘difference principle’, which requires social and economic inequalities to be regulated so that they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society, he says:

It applies to the announced system of public law and statutes and not to particular transactions or distributions, nor to the decisions of individuals and associations, but rather to the institutional background against which these transactions and decisions take place. There are no unannounced and unpredictable interferences with citizens’ expectations and acquisitions. Entitlements are earned and honored as the public system of rules declares. (Rawls 1993, p. 283)

Here we see Rawls attempting to reconcile the demands of conservative and ideal justice. Yet he does not directly address the question of what should happen when changing circumstances mean that the difference principle requires new laws or policies to be enacted: do those whose prior entitlements or expectations are no longer met have a claim to be compensated for their loss? We could call this the question of transitional justice (though this phrase is often used now in a more specific sense to refer to the process of reconciliation that may occur following civil war or other armed conflicts: see the entry on transitional justice ).

A second important contrast, whose pedigree reaches back at least as far as Aristotle, is between justice as a principle for assigning distributable goods of various kinds to individual people, and justice as a remedial principle that applies when one person wrongly interferes with another’s legitimate holdings. Thus suppose Bill steals Alice’s computer, or sells Alice faulty goods which he claims to be in perfect order: then Alice suffers a loss, which justice demands that Bill should remedy by returning the computer or fulfilling his contract honestly. Corrective justice, then, essentially concerns a bilateral relationship between a wrongdoer and his victim, and demands that the fault be cancelled by restoring the victim to the position she would have been in had the wrongful behaviour not occurred; it may also require that the wrongdoer not benefit from his faulty behaviour. Distributive justice, on the other hand, is multilateral: it assumes a distributing agent, and a number of persons who have claims on what is being distributed. Justice here requires that the resources available to the distributor be shared according to some relevant criterion, such as equality, desert, or need. In Aristotle’s example, if there are fewer flutes available than people who want to play them, they should be given to the best performers (Aristotle, The Politics , p. 128). In modern debates, principles of distributive justice are applied to social institutions such as property and tax systems, which are understood as producing distributive outcomes across large societies, or even the world as a whole.

The conceptual distinction between distributive and corrective justice seems clear, but their normative relationship is more difficult to pin down (see Perry 2000, Ripstein 2004, Coleman 1992, chs. 16–17). Some have claimed that corrective justice is merely instrumental to distributive justice: its aim is to move from a situation of distributive injustice brought about by the faulty behaviour to one that is more nearly (if not perfectly) distributively just. But this view runs into a number of objections. One is that so long as Alice has a legitimate title to her computer, her claim of corrective justice against Bill does not depend on her having had, prior to the theft, the share of resources that distributive justice ideally demands. She might be richer than she deserves to be, yet corrective justice still require that the computer be returned to her. In other words, corrective justice may serve to promote conservative rather than ideal justice, to use the distinction introduced in 2.1. Another objection is that corrective justice requires the wrongdoer himself to restore or compensate the person he has wronged, even if the cause of distributive justice could be better served by transferring resources from a third party – giving Alice one of even-more-undeservedly-rich Charles’s computers, for example. This underlines the bilateral nature of corrective justice, and also the fact that it comes into play in response to faulty behaviour on someone’s part. Its primary demand is that people should not lose out because others have behaved wrongfully or carelessly, but it also encompasses the idea that ‘no man should profit by his own wrong’. If Alice loses her computer in a boating accident, she might, under an insurance scheme, have a claim of distributive justice to a new machine, but she has no claim of corrective justice.

If corrective justice cannot be subsumed normatively under distributive justice, we need to explain its value. What is achieved when we make Bill return the computer to Alice? Aristotle ( Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, ch. 4) suggested that corrective justice aims to restore the two parties to a position of equality; by returning the computer we cancel both Bill’s unjustified gain and Alice’s unjustified loss. But this assumes that the computer can be returned intact. Corrective justice requires that Alice be made no worse off than she was before the theft, even if that means Bill suffering an absolute loss (e.g. by paying for a new computer if he has damaged Alice’s). Aristotle himself recognized that the idea of evening out gain and loss made no literal sense in a case where one person assaults another and has to compensate him for his injury – there is no ‘gain’ to be redistributed. It seems, then, that the value of corrective justice must lie in the principle that each person must take responsibility for his own conduct, and if he fails to respect the legitimate interests of others by causing injury, he must make good the harm. In that way, each person can plan her life secure in the knowledge that she will be protected against certain kinds of external setbacks. Philosophers and lawyers writing on corrective justice disagree about what standard of responsibility should apply – for example whether compensation is required only when one person wilfully or negligently causes another to suffer loss, or whether it can also be demanded when the perpetrator displays no such fault but is nevertheless causally responsible for the injury.

A third distinction that must be drawn is between the justice of the procedures that might be used to determine how benefits and burdens of various kinds are allocated to people, and the justice of the final allocation itself. It might initially seem as though the justice of a procedure can be reduced to the justice of the results produced by applying it, but this is not so. For one thing, there are cases in which the idea of an independently just outcome makes no sense. A coin toss is a fair way of deciding who starts a game, but neither the Blues nor the Reds have a claim of justice to bat first or kick off. But even where a procedure has been shaped by a concern that it should produce substantively just outcomes, it may still have special properties that make it intrinsically just. In that case, using a different procedure to produce the same result might be objectionable. In an influential discussion, John Rawls contrasted perfect procedural justice , where a procedure is such that if it is followed a just outcome is guaranteed (requiring the person who cuts a cake to take the last slice himself is the illustration Rawls provides), imperfect procedural justice , where the procedure is such that following it is likely, but not certain, to produce the just result, and pure procedural justice , such as the coin-tossing example, where there is no independent way to assess the outcome – if we call it just, it is only on the grounds that it has come about by following the relevant procedure (Rawls 1971, 1999, § 14).

Theories of justice can then be distinguished according to the relative weight they attach to procedures and substantive outcomes. Some theories are purely procedural in form. Robert Nozick distinguished between historical theories of justice, end-state theories, and patterned theories in order to defend the first against the second and third (Nozick 1974). An end-state theory defines justice in terms of some overall property of a distribution (of resources, welfare, etc.) – for example whether it is egalitarian, or whether the lowest position in the distribution is as high as it can be, as Rawls’ difference principle requires. A patterned theory looks at whether what each receives as part of a distribution matches some individual feature such as their desert or their need. By contrast, an historical theory asks about the process by which the final outcome has arisen. In Nozick’s particular case, a distribution of resources is said to be just if everyone within its scope is entitled to what they now own, having acquired it by legitimate means – such as voluntary contract or gift – from someone who was also entitled to have it, leading back eventually to a just act of acquisition – such as labouring on a plot of land – that gave the first owner his valid title. The shape of the final distribution is irrelevant: according to Nozick, justice is entirely a matter of the sequence of prior events that created it (for critical assessments of Nozick’s position, see Paul 1982, Wolff 1991, Cohen 1995, chs. 1–2).

For most philosophers, however, the justice of a procedure is to a large extent a function of the justice of the outcomes that it tends to produce when applied. For instance, the procedures that together make up a fair trial are justified on the grounds that for the most part they produce outcomes in which the guilty are punished and the innocent are acquitted. Yet even in these cases, we should be wary of assuming that the procedure itself has no independent value. We can ask of a procedure whether it treats the people to whom it is applied justly, for example by giving them adequate opportunities to advance their claims, not requiring them to provide personal information that they find humiliating to reveal, and so forth. Studies by social psychologists have shown that in many cases people care more about being treated fairly by the institutions they have to deal with than about how they fare when the procedure’s final result is known (Lind and Tyler 1988).

Justice takes a comparative form when to determine what is due to one person we need to look at what others can also claim: to determine how large a slice of pie is rightfully John’s, we have to know how many others have a claim to the pie, and also what the principle for sharing it should be – equality, or something else. Justice takes a non-comparative form when we can determine what is due to a person merely by knowing relevant facts about that particular person: if John has already been promised the whole of the pie, then that is what he can rightfully claim for himself. Some theories of justice seem to imply that justice is always a comparative notion – for example when it is said that justice consists in the absence of arbitrary inequality – whereas others imply that it is always non-comparative. But conceptually, at least, both forms seem admissible; indeed we can find cases in which it appears we have to choose between doing justice comparatively and doing it non-comparatively (see Feinberg 1974; for a critical response, see Montague 1980). For example, we might have several candidates all of whom are roughly equally deserving of an academic honour, but the number of honours we are permitted to award is smaller than the number of candidates. If we honour some but not others, we perpetrate a comparative injustice, but if to avoid doing so we honour no-one at all, then each is treated less well than they deserve, and so unjustly from a non-comparative perspective.

Theories of justice can then be categorised according to whether they are comparative, non-comparative, or neither. Principles of equality – principles requiring the equal distribution of some kind of benefit – are plainly comparative in form, since what is due to each person is simply an equal share of the benefit in question rather than any fixed amount. In the case of principles of desert, the position is less straightforward. These principles take the form ‘ A deserves X by virtue of P ’, where X is a mode of treatment, and P is a personal characteristic possessed by A (Feinberg 1970). In the case of both X and P , we can ask whether they are to be identified comparatively or non-comparatively. Thus what A deserves might either be an entitlement, or an absolute amount of some benefit – ‘a living wage’, say – or it might be a share of some collective benefit, or a multiple or fraction of what others are receiving – ‘twice what B is getting’, say. Turning to P , or what is often called the desert basis, this may be a feature of A that we can identify without reference to anyone else, or it may be a comparative feature, such as being the best student in a graduating class. So desert-based claims of justice might take one of four different forms depending on whether the basis of desert and/or the deserved mode of treatment is comparative or non-comparative (see Olsaretti 2003 for essays that address this question; for a more advanced treatment, see Kagan 2012, Part III).

Among principles of justice that are straightforwardly non-comparative are ‘sufficiency’ principles which hold that what justice requires is that each person should have ‘enough’, on some dimension or other – for instance, have all of their needs fulfilled, or have a specified set of capabilities that they are able to exercise (for a general defence of sufficiency, though not one that links it specifically to justice, see Frankfurt 2015; for a critique, see Casal 2007). Such principles, however, need to be supplemented by other principles, not only to tell us what to do with the surplus (assuming there is one) once everyone has sufficient resources, but also to guide us in situations where there are too few resources to bring everyone up to the sufficiency threshold. Should we, for example, maximise the number of people who achieve sufficiency, or minimise the aggregate shortfall suffered by those in the relevant group? Unless we are prepared to say that these are not matters of justice, a theory of justice that contains only the sufficiency principle and nothing else looks incomplete.

Some theories of justice cannot readily be classified either as comparative or as non-comparative. Consider one part of Rawls’ theory of social justice, the difference principle, which as noted above requires that social and economic inequalities be arranged to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (Rawls 1971, 1999, §12–13). Under this principle, ideally just shares are calculated by determining what each person would receive under the set of social institutions whose economic effect is to raise the worst off person to the highest possible level. This is neither a fixed amount, nor one that depends in any direct sense on what other individuals are receiving, or should receive. Applying the difference principle does require making comparisons, but these are comparisons between the effects of different social institutions – say different tax laws, or different ways of defining property rights – not between individual people and the amounts of benefit they are receiving. We might call theories of this kind ‘holistic’ or ‘systemic’.

3. The Scope of Justice

When we raise questions about the scope of justice, we are asking about when principles of justice take effect and among whom . We have already, when discussing Hume, encountered the idea that there might be circumstances in which justice becomes irrelevant – circumstances in which resources are so abundant that it is pointless to allocate individual shares, or, as Hume also believed, in which resources are so scarce that everyone is permitted to grab what he can in the name of self-preservation. But even in circumstances that are less extreme than these, questions about scope arise. Who can make claims of justice, and who might have the corresponding obligation to meet them? Does this depend on the kind of thing that is being claimed? If comparative principles are being applied, who should be counted as part of the comparison group? Do some principles of justice have universal scope – they apply whenever agent A acts towards recipient B , regardless of the relationship between them – while others are contextual in character, applying only within social or political relationships of a certain kind? The present section examines some of these questions in greater detail.

What does a creature have to do, or be like, to be included within the scope of (at least some) principles of justice? Most past philosophers have assumed that the line should be drawn so as to exclude all non-human animals, but more recently some have been prepared to defend ‘justice for animals’ (Nussbaum 2006, ch. 6; Garner 2013). Against this, Rawls asserts that although we have ‘duties of compassion and humanity’ towards animals and should refrain from treating them cruelly, nonetheless they are ‘outside the scope of the theory of justice’ (Rawls 1971, p. 512; Rawls 1999, p. 448). How could this claim be justified?

We can focus our attention either on individual features that humans possess and animals lack, and that might be thought relevant to their inclusion within the scope of justice, or on asymmetries in the relationship between humans and other animals. To begin with the latter, Hume claimed that the domination humans exercised over animals – such that an animal could only possess something by virtue of our permission – meant that we were ‘bound by the laws of humanity to give gentle usage to these creatures, but should not, properly speaking, lie under any restraint of justice with regard to them’ (Hume, Enquiry , p. 190). For Rawls and those influenced by him, principles of distributive justice apply among agents who are related to one another as participants in a ‘cooperative venture for mutual advantage’, and this might seem to exclude animals from the scope of such principles. Critics of this view have pointed to cases of human-animal co-operation (Donaldson and Kymlicka 2011, Valentini 2014); however these arguments focus mainly or entirely on the special case of dogs , and it seems implausible to generalise from them in an attempt to show that human-animal relationships generally have a co-operative character.

But the claim that justice only applies to participants in co-operative practices is anyway vulnerable to the objection that it risks excluding seriously disabled people, people living in isolated communities, and future generations from the scope of justice, so it does not seem compelling as a claim about justice in general (see further below). Might there be other reasons why animals cannot make claims of justice on us? Another Rawls-inspired suggestion is that animals lack the necessary moral powers, in particular the capacity to act on principles of justice themselves. They cannot distinguish what is justly owed to them from what is not; and they cannot determine what they owe to others – whether to humans or to other non-human animals – as a matter of justice. This suggestion interprets justice as involving a kind of reciprocity: an agent to whom justice is due must also in principle be an agent who could dispense justice to others, by virtue of having the relevant capacity, even if for physical reasons – such as suffering from severe disability – they cannot do so in practice.

If this suggestion is rejected, and we allow that some animals, at least, should be included within the scope of justice, we can then ask about the form that justice should take in their cases. Using the distinction drawn in 2.4 above, it appears that justice for animals must be non-comparative. For example, we might attribute rights to the animals over whom we exercise power – rights against cruel treatment, and rights to food and shelter, for instance. This would involve using a sufficiency principle to determine what animals are owed as a matter of justice. It is much less plausible to think that comparative principles might apply, such that giving special treats to one cat but not another could count as an injustice.

The Rawlsian view introduced in the previous section, which holds that principles of social justice apply among people who are engaged together in a co-operative practice, is a leading example of a relational theory of justice. Other theories offer different accounts of the relevant justice-generating feature: for example, Nagel has argued that principles of distributive justice apply among people who by virtue of being citizens of the same state are required both to comply with, and accept responsibility for, the coercive laws that govern their lives (Nagel 2005). In both cases, the claim being made is that when people stand in a certain relationship to one another, they become subject to principles of justice whose scope is limited to those within the relationship. In particular, comparative principles apply within the relationship, but not beyond it. If A stands in a relationship (of the right kind) to B , then it becomes a matter of justice how A is treated relative to B , but it does not matter in the same way how A is treated relative to C who stands outside of the relationship. Justice may still require that C be given treatment of a certain kind, but that will be justice in its non-comparative guise.

Whether justice is relational in either of the ways that Rawls and Nagel suggest has large implications for its scope. In particular it bears on the question whether there is such a thing as global distributive justice, or, in contrast, whether distributive principles only apply to people who are related together as members of the same society or citizens of the same state. For example, might the global inequalities that exist between rich and poor in today’s world be unjust simply as inequalities, or are they unjust only insofar as they prevent poor people from living lives that we judge to be acceptable? (see entries on international distributive justice and global justice ) So much hangs on the question whether, and if so in virtue of what, distributive justice has a relational character. What reason can be given for thinking that it does?

Suppose we have two people A and B , of whom one is significantly better off than another – has greater opportunities or a higher income, say. Why should this be a concern of justice? It seems it will not be a concern unless it can be shown that the inequality between A and B can be attributed to the behaviour of some agent, individual or collective, whose actions or omissions have resulted in A being better off than B – in which case we can ask whether the inequality between them is justifiable, say on grounds of their respective deserts. This reiterates the claim in 1.4 above that without an agent to whom the outcome can be attributed there can only be justice or injustice in a metaphorical, ‘cosmic’, sense. Relational theorists claim that when people associate with one another in the relevant way, they become agents of justice. On a small scale they can organize informally to ensure that each receives what is due to him relative to the rest. On a larger scale, distributive justice requires the creation of legal and other institutions to achieve that outcome. Moreover failure to co-ordinate their actions in this way is likely to be a source of injustice by omission.

Debates about the scope of justice then become debates about whether different forms of human association are of the right kind to create agency in the relevant sense. Take the question of whether principles of social justice should apply to market transactions. If we see the market as a neutral arena in which many individual people freely pursue their own purposes, then the answer will be No. The only form of justice that arises will be justice in the conduct of each agent, who must avoid inflicting harm on others, must fulfil her contracts, and so forth. Whereas if we see the market as governed by a humanly-constructed system of rules that the participants collectively have the power to change – by legislation, for example – then we cannot avoid asking whether the outcomes it currently produces meet relevant standards of distributive justice, whatever we take these to be. A similar issue arises in the debate about over principles of global justice referred to above: is the current world order such that it makes sense to regard humanity as a whole as a collective agent responsible for the distributive outcomes it allows to occur?

Once institutions are established for the purpose (among other things) of delivering justice on a large scale, we can ask what duties of justice individual people have in consequence. Is their duty simply to support the institutions, and comply with whatever rules of conduct apply to them personally? Or do they have further duties to promote justice by acting directly on the relevant principles in their daily lives? No one doubts that some duties of justice fall directly on individuals, for example duties not to deceive or defraud when engaging in commercial transactions (and duties of corrective justice where behaviour is faulty), or duties to carry out one’s fair share of an informally organized project from which one expects to benefit, such as cleaning up the neighbourhood park. Others fall on them because they are performing a role within a social institution, for example the duty of an employer not to discriminate on grounds of race or gender when hiring workers, or the duty of a local government officer to assign public housing to those in greatest need. But what is much more in dispute is whether individual people have more extensive duties to promote social justice (for contrasting views, see Cohen 2008, ch. 3, Murphy 1998, Rawls 1993, Lecture VII, Young 2011, ch. 2).

Consider two cases: the first concerns parents who confer advantages on their children in ways that undermine fair equality of opportunity. If the latter principle of justice requires, to cite Rawls, that ‘those who have the same level of talent and ability and the same willingness to use these gifts should have the same prospects of success regardless of their social class of origin’ (Rawls 2001, p. 44) then there are myriad ways in which some parents can bestow advantages on their children that other parents cannot – financial benefits, educational opportunities, social contacts, and so forth – that are likely to bring greater success in later life. Are parents therefore constrained as a matter of justice to avoid conferring at least some of these advantages, or are they free to benefit their children as they choose, leaving the pursuit of equal opportunities entirely in the hands of the state (for a careful analysis, see Brighouse and Swift 2014)?

The second example concerns wage differentials. Might individuals whose talents can bring them high rewards in the labour market have a duty not to make use of their bargaining power, but instead be willing to work for a fair wage – which if fairness is understood in egalitarian terms might mean the same wage as everyone else (perhaps with extra compensation for those whose labour is unusually burdensome)? Rawls, as we saw above, argued that economic justice meant arranging social and economic inequalities to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged, and in formulating the principle in this way he assumed that some inequalities might serve as incentives to greater production that would also raise the position of the worst-off group in society. But if individuals were willing to forego incentives, and so economic inequalities served no useful purpose, then the arrangement that worked to the greatest benefit of the (otherwise) least advantaged would be one of strict equality. Cohen (2008) argues that Rawls’ position is internally inconsistent. As citizens designing our institutions we are supposed to be guided by the difference principle, but as private actors in the marketplace, we are permitted to ignore that principle and bargain for higher wages, even though doing so will work to the disadvantage of the worst-off group. Justice, according to Cohen, requires us to embrace an ethos of service that disdains material incentives.

Why might we hesitate before agreeing that in cases such as these, justice requires people to refrain from doing things that they are permitted to do by the public rules of their society (passing on benefits to their children; seeking higher wages)? One reason is that the refraining is only going to have a significant effect if it is practised on a large scale, and individuals have no assurance that others will follow their example; meanwhile they (or their children) will lose out relative to the less scrupulous. A connected reason has to do with publicity: it may be hard to detect whether people are following the required ethos or not (see Williams 1998). Is the person who sends her child to a private school because she claims he has special needs that the local state school cannot meet being sincere, or is she just trying to buy him comparative advantage? How can we tell whether the person who claims more money, but merely, he says, as compensation for the unusual stress that his work involves, is reporting honestly? (for Cohen’s response, see Cohen 2008, ch. 8) It appears, then, that there are principles of justice that apply to what Rawls calls ‘the basic structure of society [as] a public system of rules’ that do not apply in the same way to the personal behaviour of the individuals who live within that structure. Attending to the scope , as well as the content , of justice is important.

Recent philosophical writing on justice has drawn attention to forms of injustice that do not involve the material treatment that people receive, either from other persons or from institutions, but the harms they suffer through failures of recognition. They are impacted by social norms and social practices that diminish their sense of agency and induce them to see themselves as of lesser value than others. Here then justice is understood as being adequately and appropriately recognized, and injustice as involving failures of recognition, or in some cases ‘misrecognition’, when a person is placed in a category or assigned an identity that is not their own. In one influential formulation of this idea, ‘it is unjust that some individuals and groups are denied the status of full partners in social interaction simply as a consequence of institutionalized patterns of cultural value in whose construction they have not equally participated and which disparage their distinctive characteristics or the distinctive characteristics assigned to them’ (Fraser in Fraser and Honneth 2003, p. 29).

What, then, does it mean to be recognized? In general it means to be viewed and treated by others in the way that is appropriate to the features that you possess, but most philosophers regard recognition as multidimensional. In particular, they distinguish between being recognized as an equal, where a person is accorded the kind of standing that gives them an equal status with other members of the relevant group, and being recognized for having characteristics, achievements or an identity that may be uniquely their own. Recognition in this second sense may involve the unequal granting of social esteem. Justice as recognition, therefore, is internally complex. At the social level, Axel Honneth distinguishes ‘three forms of social recognition, based in the sphere-specific principles of love, equal legal treatment, and social esteem’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003 p. 180)

The question that arises is how best to understand the relationship between justice of this kind and distributive justice, involving the allocation of material resources and so forth. For Honneth, justice as recognition is understood expansively so that it can also capture issues of economic justice, the thought being that the harm inflicted when, say, labour is not adequately rewarded can be understood as a failure to offer adequate recognition of the worker’s social contribution. For Nancy Fraser, by contrast, recognition and redistribution are seen as two mutually irreducible but jointly necessary conditions for social justice. Failures of recognition can be experienced by some among the economically privileged – such as ‘the African-American Wall Street banker who cannot get a taxi to pick him up’ (Fraser and Honneth 2003, p. 34). Justice as recognition requires cultural shifts in the way that different forms of identity and different types of achievement are valued that are independent of the institutional changes required to achieve distributive justice.

A particular form of recognitional injustice is epistemic injustice as diagnosed by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007). This occurs when someone is wronged in their capacity as a source of knowledge, and it takes two main forms: testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice. As Fricker explains ‘testimonial injustice occurs when prejudice causes a hearer to give a deflated level of credibility to a speaker’s word; hermeneutical injustice occurs at a prior stage when a gap in collective interpretive resources puts someone as at an unfair disadvantage when it comes to making sense of their social experiences’ (Fricker 2007, p. 1). She argues that testimonial injustice matters for two reasons. First, the person who suffers from it is less able to protect or advance their interests – for example they are less likely to be believed when having to defend themselves in court. Second, since others are unwilling to regard them as competent sources of knowledge, they may lose trust in their own capacity to know, leading in some cases to ‘prolonged self-doubt and loss of intellectual confidence’.

Hermeneutical injustice arises in the context of unequal relationships in which the subordinated party lacks the concept or concepts needed to make sense of their experience (and thereby to challenge their subordination). Fricker uses the example of a woman who suffered sexual harassment at the time before feminists had developed that concept, and so had no adequate word to describe what she was experiencing. Hermeneutical injustice matters most when it is systematic, brought about by power inequalities that leave certain groups ‘hermeneutically marginalised’. However she treats epistemic justice as a virtue that individual hearers can develop, in contrast to recognition theorists like Fraser and Honneth for whom achieving recognitional justice requires collective action to change social and cultural norms on the part of misrecognized groups.

4. Utilitarianism and Justice

Can justice be understood in utilitarian terms? This may in the first place depend on how we interpret utilitarianism. We treat it here as a normative theory whose aim is to supply a criterion – the greatest happiness principle – that can be used, directly or indirectly, both by individuals and by institutions (such as states) in deciding what to do, rather than simply as a tool for evaluating states of affairs. Utilitarianism cannot plausibly provide a theory of justice unless it is interpreted in this action-guiding way, in light of what was said above about justice and agency. We also assume that the most likely candidate will be a rule-utilitarian view that treats principles of justice as belonging to the set of rules which when followed by the relevant agents will tend to produce the greatest total utility (for different ways of formulating this view, see the entry on rule consequentialism) .

Most utilitarians have regarded it as part of their task in defending utilitarianism to show that it can both accommodate and explain much of what we intuitively believe about justice. This is certainly true of two of the greatest among them, John Stuart Mill and Sidgwick, both of whom went to considerable lengths to show that familiar principles of justice could be given a utilitarian rationale (Mill Utilitarianism , ch. 5; Sidgwick 1874/1907, Book III, ch.5). Bentham, in contrast, was more cavalier: ‘justice, in the only sense in which it has a meaning, is an imaginary personage, feigned for the convenience of discourse, whose dictates are the dictates of utility, applied to certain particular cases’ ( The Principles of Morals and Legislation , pp. 125–6). If we follow the lead of Mill and Sidgwick in wishing to take seriously how justice is commonly understood, the utilitarian has two challenges to face. First he or she must show that the demands of justice as commonly understood correspond roughly to the rules that when followed by persons, or implemented by institutions, are most conducive to the greatest happiness. They need not mirror the latter exactly, because utilitarians will argue, as both Mill and Sidgwick did, that our intuitions about justice are often ambiguous or internally inconsistent, but there must be enough overlap to warrant the claim that what the utilitarian theory can accommodate and explain is indeed justice . (As Sidgwick (1874/1907, p. 264) put it, ‘we may, so to speak, clip the ragged edge of common usage, but we must not make excision of any considerable portion’.) Second, some explanation must be given for the distinctiveness of justice. Why do we have a concept that is used to mark off a particular set of requirements and claims if the normative basis for these requirements and claims is nothing other than general utility? What accounts for our intuitive sense of justice? The task confronting the utilitarian, then, is to systematize our understanding of justice without obliterating it.

By way of illustration, both Mill and Sidgwick recognize that desert , of both reward and punishment, is a key component of common understandings of justice, but they argue that if we remain at the level of common sense when we try to analyse it, we run into irresolvable contradictions. For instance, we are inclined to think that a person’s deserts should depend on what they have actually achieved – say the economic value of what they have produced – but also, because achievement will depend on factors for which the person in question can claim no credit, such as inborn talent, that their deserts should depend only on factors for which they are directly responsible, such as the amount of effort they expend. Each of these conceptions, when put into practice, would lead to a quite different schedule of rewards, and the only means to escape the impasse, these utilitarians claim, is to ask which schedule will generate most utility by directing people’s choices and efforts in the most socially productive way. Similar reasoning applies to the principles of punishment: the rules we should follow are the rules that are most conducive to the ends for which punishment is instituted, such as deterring crime.

To explain the distinctiveness of justice, Mill suggests that it designates moral requirements that, because of their very great importance to human well-being, people have a right to have discharged, and are therefore matters of perfect obligation. A person who commits an injustice is always liable to punishment of some kind, he argues. So he explains our sense of justice in terms of the resentment we feel towards someone who breaches these requirements. Sidgwick, who laid greater stress than Mill on the connection between justice and law, also underlined the relationship between justice and gratitude, on one side, and resentment, on the other, in order to capture the way in which our concern for justice seems to differ from our concern for utility in general.

Yet despite these efforts to reconcile justice and utility, three serious obstacles still remain. The first concerns what we might call the currency of justice: justice has to do with the way that tangible benefits and burdens are assigned, and not with the happiness or unhappiness that the assignees experience. It is a matter of justice, for example, that people should be paid the right amount for the jobs that they do, but, special circumstances aside, it is no concern of justice that John derives more satisfaction from his fairly-earned income than Jane does from hers (but see Cohen 1989 for a different view). There is so to speak, a division of labour, under which rights, opportunities, and material benefits of various kinds are allocated by principles of justice, while the conversion of these into units of utility (or disutility) is the responsibility of each individual recipient (see Dworkin 2000, ch. 1). Utilitarians will therefore find it hard to explain what from their point of view seems to be the fetishistic concern of justice over how the means to happiness are distributed, rather than happiness itself.

The second obstacle is that utilitarianism judges outcomes by totalling up utility levels, and has no independent concern for how that utility is distributed between persons. So even if we set aside the currency issue, utilitarian theory seems unable to capture justice’s demand that each should receive what is due to her regardless of the total amount of benefit this generates. Defenders of utilitarianism will argue that when the conduct-guiding rules are being formulated, attention will be paid to distributive questions. In particular, when resources are being distributed among people we know little about individually, there are good reasons to favour equality, since in most cases resources have diminishing marginal utility – the more of them you have, the less satisfaction you derive from additional instalments. Yet this is only a contingent matter. If some people are very adept at turning resources into well-being – they are so-called ‘utility monsters’ – then a utilitarian should support a rule that privileges them. This seems repugnant to justice. As Rawls famously put the general point, ‘each member of society is thought to have an inviolability founded on justice which….even the welfare of every one else cannot override’ (Rawls 1971, p. 28; Rawls 1999, pp. 24–25).

The third and final difficulty stems from utilitarianism’s thoroughgoing consequentialism. Rules are assessed strictly in the light of the consequences of adopting then, not in terms of their intrinsic properties. Of course, when agents follow rules, they are meant to do what the rule requires rather than to calculate consequences directly. But for a utilitarian, it is never going to be a good reason for adopting a rule that it will give people what they deserve or what they are entitled to, when desert or entitlement are created by events in the past, such as a person’s having performed a worthwhile action or entered an agreement. Backward-looking reasons have to be transmuted into forward-looking reasons in order to count. If a rule such as pacta sunt servanda (‘agreements must be kept’) is going to be adopted on utilitarian grounds, this is not because there is any inherent wrongness in defaulting on a compact one has made, but because a rule that compacts must be kept is a useful one, since it allows people to co-ordinate their behaviour knowing that their expectations about the future are likely to be met. But justice, although not always backward-looking in the sense explained, often is. What is due to a person is in many cases what they deserve for what they have done, or what they are entitled to by virtue of past transactions. So even if it were possible to construct a forward-looking rationale for having rules that closely tracked desert or entitlement as these are normally understood, the utilitarian still cannot capture the sense of justice – why it matters that people should get what is due to then – that informs our common-sense judgements.

Utilitarians might reply that their reconstruction preserves what is rationally defensible in common sense beliefs while what it discards are elements that cannot survive sustained critical reflection. But this would bring them closer to Bentham’s view that justice, as commonly understood, is nothing but a ‘phantom’.

5. Contractarianism and Justice

The shortcomings of utilitarianism have prompted several recent philosophers to revive the old idea of the social contract as a better way of bringing coherence to our thinking about justice. The idea here is not that people actually have entered a contract to establish justice, or that they should proceed to do so, but that we can understand justice better by asking the question: what principles to govern their institutions, practices and personal behaviour would people choose to adopt if they all had to agree on them in advance? The contract, in other words, is hypothetical; but the search for agreement is meant to ensure that the principles chosen would, when implemented, not lead to outcomes that people could not accept. Thus whereas a utilitarian might, under some circumstances, be prepared to support slavery – if the misery of the slaves were outweighed by the heightened pleasures of the slave-owners – contractarians claims that no-one could accept a principle permitting slavery, lest they themselves were destined to be slaves when the principle was applied.

The problem that contractarians face is to show how such an agreement is possible. If we were to ask people, in the real world, what principles they would prefer to live under, they are likely to start from a position of quite radical disagreement, given their interests and their beliefs. Some might even be willing to endorse slavery, if they were fairly certain that they would not end up as slaves themselves, or if they were sado-masochists who viewed the humiliations inflicted on slaves in a positive light. So in order to show how agreement could be achieved, contractarians have to model the contracting parties in a particular way, either by limiting what they are allowed to know about themselves or about the future, or by attributing to them certain motivations while excluding others. Since the modelling can be done differently, we have a family of contractarian theories of justice, three of whose most important members are the theories of Gauthier, Rawls and Scanlon.

Gauthier (1986) presents the social contract as a bargain between rational individuals who can gain through co-operating with one another, but who are competing over the division of the resulting surplus. He assumes that each is interested only in trying to maximise his own welfare, and he also assumes that there is a non-co-operative baseline from which the bargaining begins – so nobody would accept a solution that left her less well off than in the baseline condition. Each person can identify the outcome under which they fare best – their maximum gain – but they have no reason to expect others to accept that. Gauthier argues that rational bargainers will converge on the principle of Minimax Relative Concession , which requires each to concede the same relative proportion of their maximum possible gain relative to the non-co-operative baseline. Thus suppose there is a feasible arrangement whereby each participant can achieve two-thirds of their maximum gain, but no arrangement under which they all do better than that, then this is the arrangement that the principle recommends. Each person has made the same concession relative to the outcome that is best for them personally – not accepting the same absolute loss of welfare, let it be noted, but the same proportionate loss.

There are some internal difficulties with Gauthier’s theory that need to be recorded briefly (for a full discussion, see Barry 1989, esp. Part III). One is whether Minimax Relative Concession is in fact the correct solution to the bargaining problem that Gauthier introduces, as opposed to the standard Nash solution which (in a simple two-person case) selects the outcome in which the product of the two parties’ utilities is maximised (for discussion of different solutions to the bargaining problem, see the entry on contemporary approaches to the social contract , § 3.2). A second is whether Gauthier is able to justify positing a ‘Lockean’ baseline, under which each is assumed to respect the natural rights of the others, as the starting point for bargaining over the surplus – as opposed to a more conflictual ‘Hobbesian’ baseline in which individuals are permitted to use their natural powers to threaten one another in the process of establishing what each could expect to get in the absence of co-operation. But the larger question is whether a contract modelled in this way is an appropriate device for delivering principles of justice. On the one hand, it captures the idea that the practice of justice should work to everyone’s advantage, while requiring all those involved to moderate the demands they make on one another. On the other hand, it prescribes a final distribution of benefit that appears morally arbitrary, in the sense that A ’s bargaining advantage over B – which stems from the fact that his maximum possible gain is greater than hers – allows him to claim a higher level of benefit as a matter of justice . This seems implausible: there may be prudential reasons to recommend a distribution that reflects the outcome that self-interested and rational bargainers would arrive at, but claims of justice need a different basis.

John Rawls’ theory of justice is the most widely-cited example of a contractarian theory, but before outlining it, two words of caution are necessary. First, the shape of the theory has evolved from its first incarnation in Rawls (1958) through his major work A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971) and on to Rawls (1993) and Rawls (2001). Second, although Rawls has consistently claimed that the principles of justice he defends are the principles that would be selected by people in a suitably designed ‘original position’ in which they are asked to choose the social and political institutions they will live under – this is what qualifies his theory as contractarian – it is less clear how important a role the contract itself plays in his thinking. His principles, which are discussed elsewhere (see the entry on John Rawls) , can be defended on their own merits as a theory of social justice for a modern liberal society, even if their contractual grounding proves to be unsound. Rawls presents the contracting parties as seeking to advance their own interests as they decide which principles to favour, but under two informational constraints. First, they are not allowed to know their own ‘conception of the good’ – what ends they personally find it most valuable to pursue – so the principles must be couched in terms of ‘primary goods’, understood as goods that it is better to have more rather than less of whatever conception of the good you favour. Second, they are placed behind a ‘veil of ignorance’ that deprives them of any knowledge of personal characteristics, such as their gender, their place in society, or the talents and skills they possess. This means that they have no basis on which to bargain for advantage, and have to consider themselves as generic persons who might be male or female, talented or untalented, and so forth. In consequence, Rawls argues, all will choose to live under impartial principles that work to no-one’s advantage in particular.

The problem for Rawls, however, is to show that the principles that would be selected in such an original position are in fact recognizable as principles of justice . One might expect the parties to calculate how to weigh the primary goods (which Rawls catalogues as ‘rights and liberties, opportunities and powers, income and wealth’) against each other, and then to choose as their social principle ‘maximise the weighted sum of primary goods, averaged across all persons’. This, however, would bring the theory very close to utilitarianism, since the natural method of weighing primary goods is to ask how much utility having a given quantity of each is likely, on average, to bring (for the claim that utilitarianism would be chosen in a Rawlsian original position, see Harsanyi 1975). Since Rawls wishes to reject utilitarianism, he has to adjust the psychology of the parties in the original position so that they reason differently. Thus he suggests that, at least in developed societies, people have special reason to prioritise liberty over the other goods and to ensure that it is equally distributed: he argues that this is essential to safeguard their self-respect. In later writing his argument is less empirical: now the parties to the contract are endowed with ‘moral powers’ that must be exercised, and it is then fairly easy to show that this requires them to have a set of basic liberties.

When he turns to the distribution of income and wealth, Rawls has to show why his choosers would pick the difference principle, which considers only the position of the worst-off social group, over other principles such as maximising average income across the whole society. In Theory of Justice he does this by attributing special psychological features to the choosers that make it appropriate for them to follow the ‘maximin’ rule for decisions under uncertainty (choose the option whose worst possible outcome is least bad for you). For example, they are said to be much more concerned to achieve the minimum level of income that the difference principle would guarantee them than to enjoy increases above that level. In his later work, he abandons this reliance on maximin reasoning and gives greater prominence to another argument hinted at in Theory . This portrays the contracting parties as starting out from the presumption that income and wealth should be distributed equally, but then recognizing that all can benefit by permitting certain inequalities to arise. When these inequalities are governed by the difference principle, they can be justified to everyone, including the worst off, thus creating the conditions for a more stable society. But we need then to ask why equal distribution should be treated as the benchmark, departures from which require special justification. When Rawls says that it is ‘not reasonable’ for any of the parties initially to expect more than an equal share (Rawls 1971, p. 150; Rawls 1999, p. 130), is this simply a corollary of their position as rational choosers behind a veil of ignorance, or has Rawls in addition endowed them with a substantive sense of justice that includes this presumption of equality?

Although Rawls throughout presents his theory of justice as contractarian, we can now see that the terms of the contract are in part determined by prior normative principles that Rawls engineers the parties to follow. So in contrast to Gauthier, it is no longer simply a case of self-interested contractors negotiating their way to an agreement. Rawls candidly admits that the contractual situation has to be adjusted so that it yields results that match our pre-existing convictions about justice. But then we may ask how much work the contractual apparatus is really doing (see Barry 1989, ch. 9 for a critical appraisal).

Scanlon (1998) does not attempt to deliver a theory of justice in the same sense as Rawls, but his contractarian account of that part of morality that specifies ‘what we owe to each other’ covers much of the same terrain (for an explicit attempt to analyse justice in Scanlonian terms, see Barry 1995). Like Rawls, Scanlon is concerned to develop an alternative to utilitarianism, and he does so by developing a test that any candidate moral principle must pass: it must be such that no-one could reasonably reject it as the basis for informed, unforced general agreement (see the entry on contractualism ). Scanlon’s contractors are not positioned behind a veil of ignorance. They are able to see what effect adopting any proposed principle would have on them personally. If that effect is unacceptable to them, they are permitted to reject it. Each person has, so to speak, a veto on any general principle for regulating conduct. Those that survive this test are defensible as principles of justice – Scanlon concedes that there might be alternative sets of such principles appropriate to different social conditions.

It might seem, however, that giving each person a veto would lead straightforwardly to deadlock, since anyone might reject a principle under which he fared badly relative to some alternative. Here the idea of reasonable rejection becomes important. It would not, Scanlon thinks, be reasonable to reject a principle under which one does badly if the alternatives all involve someone else faring worse still. One needs to take account of other people’s reasons for rejecting these alternatives. It might then appear that Scanlon’s contractualism yields the difference principle, which requires the worst-off group in society to be as well of as they can be. But this is not the conclusion that Scanlon draws (though he acknowledges that there might be special reasons to follow Rawls in requiring basic social institutions to follow the difference principle). The claims of other groups must be considered too. If a policy greatly benefits many others, while slightly worsening the position of a few, though without leaving them very badly off, it may well not be rejectable. Scanlon’s position leaves some room for aggregation – it makes a difference how many people will be benefitted if a principle is followed – though not the simple form of aggregation that utilitarians defend.

Scanlon also says that a person can have a reason for rejecting a principle if it treats them unfairly, say by benefitting some but not others for arbitrary reasons. This presupposes a norm of fairness that the contractarian theory does not itself attempt to explain or justify. So it looks as though the purpose of the theory is to provide a distinctive account of moral reasoning (and moral motivation) but not to defend any substantive principles of distributive justice. In this respect, Scanlon’s contractualism is less ambitious than either Gauthier’s or Rawls’.

6. Egalitarianism and Justice

In the recent past, many philosophers have sought to establish a close connection between justice and equality: they ask the question ‘what kind of equality does justice require?’, and to that several competing answers have been given (see, for example Cohen 1989, Dworkin 2000, Sen 1980). But we should not be too hasty to assume that what justice demands is always equality, whether of treatment or of outcome. Perhaps it does so only in a formal sense. As we saw in sect 1.3, justice requires the impartial and consistent application of rules, from which it follows that when two people are alike in all relevant respects, they must be treated equally. But, as Aristotle among others saw, justice also involves the idea of proportional treatment, which implies recipients getting unequal amounts of whatever good is at issue (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , Book V, ch. 3). If A is twice as deserving or twice as needy as B , justice may require that she receives more than B does. So here formal equality of treatment – the same rule applied to both – leads to an unequal outcome. Again, when justice takes the conservative form of respect for existing entitlements or legitimate expectations (see para 2.1) there is no reason to anticipate that what is due to different people will be substantively the same.

So we need to ask about the circumstances in which justice requires a substantively equal distribution of advantages. One rather obvious case occurs when the members of the group within which the distribution is going to occur have no relevant distinguishing features, so there are no grounds on which some can claim greater shares of benefit than others. Suppose a group experiences a windfall gain for which no-one can claim any credit: a pot of gold somehow appears in their midst. Then unless any member can make a justice-related claim for a larger-than-equal share – say that she has special needs that she lacks sufficient resources to meet – an equal distribution of the gold is what justice demands, since any other distribution would be arbitrary. Equality here is the default principle that applies in the absence of any special claims that can be presented as reasons of justice.

Equality also acts as a default in circumstances where, although people may indeed have unequal claims to whatever good is being distributed, we have no reliable way of identifying and measuring those claims. By sharing the good equally, we can at least ensure that every claim has been partially satisfied. Thus suppose we have limited supplies of a drug that can treat malaria, and a number of patients displaying symptoms of the disease, but lacking specialised medical knowledge we cannot tell whether one person’s condition is more serious than another’s; then by sharing out the drug equally, we can guarantee that each person at least receives the highest fraction of what they really need. Any other distribution must leave at least one person with less (this of course assumes that there is no threshold amount of the drug beneath which it is ineffective; if that assumption is wrong, justice under the stated conditions might require a lottery in which the chosen ones receive threshold-size doses).

If justice requires equality only by default, it might seem to apply only in a narrow range of cases. How could egalitarian justice be made more robust? One approach involves declaring a wider range of factors irrelevant to just distribution. Thus one formulation of the principle holds that no-one should be worse-off than anyone else as a result of their ‘morally arbitrary’ characteristics, where a characteristic is morally arbitrary when its possessor cannot claim credit for having it. This captures a widespread intuition that people should not be advantaged or disadvantaged by virtue of their race or gender, but extends it (more controversially) to all personal features with a genetic basis, such as natural talents and inborn dispositions. In doing so, it discounts most claims of desert, since when people are said to deserve benefits of various kinds, it is usually for performing actions or displaying qualities that depend upon innate characteristics such as strength or intelligence. In the following section, we will see how egalitarian theories of justice have tried to incorporate some desert-like elements by way of response. But otherwise justice as equality and justice as desert appear to be in conflict, and the challenge is to show what can justify equal treatment in the face of inequalities of desert.

A second approach answers this challenge by explaining why it is positively valuable to afford people equal treatment even if they do display features that might appear to justify differential treatment. A prominent advocate of this approach is Dworkin, who argues that fundamental to justice is a principle of equal concern and respect for persons, and what this means in more concrete term is that equal resources should be devoted to the life of each member of society (Dworkin 2000). (The reference to membership here is not redundant, because Dworkin understands egalitarian justice as a principle that must be applied within sovereign states specifically – so in the terms of 3.2, this is a relational view of justice.) The thought is that showing persons equal respect may sometimes require us to afford them equal treatment, even in the face of relevant grounds for discrimination. Thus we insist on political equality – one person, one vote – even though we know that there are quite large differences in people’s competence to make political decisions.

As noted above, justice as simple equality of treatment seems open to the objection that it fails to acknowledge the agency of the recipients, who may have acted in ways that appear to qualify them to receive more (or less) of whatever benefit is being distributed. To answer this objection, several recent philosophers have presented alternative versions of ‘responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism’ – a family of theories of justice that treat equal distribution as a starting point but allow for departures from that baseline when these result from the responsible choices made by individuals (see Knight and Stemplowska 2011 for examples). These theories differ along several dimensions: the ‘currency of justice’ used to define the baseline of equality, the conditions that must be fulfilled for a choice to qualify as responsible, and which among the consequences that follow from a choice should count when the justice of an outcome is being assessed (it may in particular appear unjust to allow people to suffer the full consequences of bad choices that they could not reasonably have anticipated). The label that is often used to describe a sub-class of these theories is ‘luck egalitarianism’. According to luck egalitarians, justice requires that no-one should be disadvantaged relative to others on account of ‘brute’ bad luck, whereas inequalities that arise through the exercise of personal responsibility are permissible (for a full discussion of luck egalitarianism, see the entry on justice and bad luck ). ‘Brute’ luck is interpreted widely to include not only external circumstances such as one person’s initially having access to more resources than another, but also internal factors such as possessing natural abilities or disabilities, or having involuntarily acquired expensive tastes. All such inequalities are to be ironed out by redistribution or compensation, while people’s choices about how to use the assets they are granted should be respected, even if this leads to significant inequality in the long run.

Luck egalitarianism has proved surprisingly influential in recent debates on justice, despite the evident difficulties involved in, for example, quantifying ‘brute luck disadvantage’ in such a way that a compensatory scheme could be established. There are, however, a number of problems it has to face. By giving scope to personal responsibility, it seeks to capture what is perhaps the most attractive part of the conventional idea of desert – that people should be rewarded for making good choices and penalised for making bad ones – while filtering out the effects of having (undeserved) natural talents. But in reality the choices that people make are influenced by the talents and other qualities that they happen to have already. So if we allow someone to reap advantages by, for example, devoting long hours to learning to play the piano at a high level, we must recognize that this is a choice that she would almost certainly not have made unless early experiment showed that she was musically gifted. We cannot say what she would have chosen to do in a counterfactual world in which she was tone deaf. There seems then to be no coherent half-way house between accepting full-blooded desert and denying that people can justly claim relative advantage through the exercise of responsibility and choice (see further Miller 1999, ch. 7) .

A second problem is that one person’s exercise of responsibility may prove advantageous or disadvantageous to others, even though they have done nothing to bring this change about, so from their point of view it must count as ‘brute’ luck. This will be true, for example, in any case in which people are competing to excel in some field, where successful choices made by A will worsen the comparative position of B , C , and D . Or again, if A acts in a way that benefits B , but does nothing comparable to improve the position of C and D , then an inequality is created that counts as ‘brute bad luck’ from the perspective of the latter. One of the most influential exponents of luck egalitarianism seems to have recognized the problem in a late essay: ‘unlike plain egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism is paradoxical, because the use of shares by people is bound to lead to a distribution flecked by luck’ (Cohen 2011, p. 142).

We have seen that equality can sometimes be understood as required by justice; but it can also be valued independently. Indeed there can be circumstances in which the two values collide, because what justice demands is inequality of outcome. The kind of inequality that is independently valuable is social equality, best understood as a property of the relationships that prevail within a society: people regard and treat each other as social equals, and the society’s institutions are designed to foster and reflect such attitudes. A society of equals contrasts with one in which people belong to different ranks in a social hierarchy, and behave towards one another as their relative ranking prescribes. Different reasons can be given for objecting to social inequality, and conversely for valuing social equality (see Scanlon 2003).

Those who find equality valuable for reasons other than reasons of distributive justice are often described as ‘relational egalitarians’ (see Anderson 1999, Wolff 1998, Fourie, Schuppert and Wallimann-Helmer 2015). It is tempting to regard relational egalitarianism as a rival theory of justice to the luck egalitarian theory outlined in §6.2, but it may be more illuminating to see it instead as providing an alternative account of why we should care about limiting material inequality. Thus, faced with a world like the one we currently inhabit in which income differences are very large, justice theorists are likely to criticize these inequalities on grounds that they are not deserved, or arise from brute luck, etc., whereas relational egalitarians will say that they create a divided society in which people are alienated from each other, and cannot interact in a mutually respectful way. Relational equality does not address issues of distribution directly, and so cannot function as a theory of justice itself, but it can provide grounds for preferring one theory of justice to its rivals – namely that implementing that particular theory is more likely to create or sustain a society of equals.

We saw at the beginning of this article that justice can take a number of different forms, depending on the practical context in which it is being applied. Although we found common elements running through this diversity of use – most readily captured in Justinian’s ‘suum cuique ’ formula – these were formal rather than substantive. In these circumstances, it is natural to look for an overarching framework into which the various contextually specific conceptions of justice can all be fitted. Three such frameworks were examined: utilitarianism, contractarianism and egalitarianism. None, however, passed what we might call the ‘Sidgwick/Rawls test’, namely that of incorporating and explaining the majority at least of our considered convictions about justice – beliefs that we feel confident in holding about what justice requires us to do in a wide and varied range of circumstances (for Rawls’ version of the test see the entry on reflective equilibrium ). So unless we are willing to jettison many of these convictions in order to uphold one or other general framework, we will need to accept that no comprehensive theory of justice is available to us; we will have to make do with partial theories – theories about what justice requires in particular domains of human life. Rawls himself, despite the bold title of his first book ( A Theory of Justice ), came to recognize that what he had outlined was at best a theory of social justice applied to the basic institutional structure of a modern liberal state. Other forms of justice – familial, allocative, associational, international – with their associated principles would be applicable in their respective domains (for an even more explicitly pluralist account of justice, see Walzer 1983; for a fuller defence of a contextual approach to justice, see Miller 2013, esp. ch. 2).

One way to loosen up our thinking about justice is by paying greater attention to the history of the concept. We can learn a great deal by reading what Aristotle, or Aquinas, or Hume, has to say about the concept, but as we do so, we also see that elements we would expect to find are missing (there is nothing about rights in Aristotle, for example), while others that we would not anticipate are present. This may in some part be due to the idiosyncrasies of each thinker, but more importantly it reflects differences in the form of social life in which each was embedded – its economic, legal and political structure, especially. Various attempts have been made to write histories of justice that are more than just catalogues of what individual thinkers have said: they aim to trace and explain systematic shifts in the way that justice has been interpreted (for contrasting examples, see MacIntyre 1988, Fleischacker 2004, Johnston 2011). These should not be read as enlightenment stories in which our understanding of justice steadily improves as the centuries roll by. MacIntyre’s view, for example, is that modern liberal societies cannot sustain the practices within which notions of justice find their proper home. We can get a better grasp of what justice means to us by seeing the various conceptions that compete for our attention as tied to aspects of our social world that did not exist in the past, and are equally liable to disappear in the future.

  • Anderson, Elizabeth, 1999, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics , 109: 287–337.
  • Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics , translated by Roger Crisp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
  • –––, The Politics , translated by Thomas Sinclair, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962.
  • Barry, Brian, 1989, Theories of Justice , Hemel Hempstead: Harvester-Wheatsheaf.
  • –––, 1995, Justice as Impartiality , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Bentham, Jeremy, The Principles of Morals and Legislation , ed. Laurence Lafleur, New York: Hafner Press, 1948.
  • Brighouse, Harry and Adam Swift, 2014, Family Values: the ethics of parent-child relationships , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Buchanan, Allen, 1987, “Justice and Charity,” Ethics , 97: 558–75.
  • Casal, Paula, 2007, “Why Sufficiency Is Not Enough,” Ethics , 117: 296–326.
  • Cohen, G.A., 1989, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics , 99: 906–44.
  • –––, 1995, Self-Ownership, Freedom, and Equality , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • –––, 2008, Rescuing Justice and Equality , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 2011, “Fairness and Legitimacy in Justice, and: Does Option Luck ever Preserve Justice?” in On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice and Other Essays in Political Philosophy , edited by Michael Otsuka, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Coleman, Jules, 1992, Risks and Wrongs , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Donaldson, Sue and Will Kymlicka, 2011, Zoopolis: a political theory of animals rights , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Dworkin, Ronald, 2000, Sovereign Virtue: the theory and practice of equality , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Feinberg, Joel, 1970, “Justice and Personal Desert,” in Doing and Deserving: essays in the theory of responsibility , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • –––, 1974, “Noncomparative Justice,” Philosophical Review , 83: 297–338.
  • Fleischacker, Samuel, 2004, A Short History of Distributive Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Fourie, Carina, Fabian Schuppert and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer (eds.), 2015, Social Equality: on what it means to be equals , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Frankfurt, Harry, 2015, On Inequality , Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  • Fraser, Nancy and Axel Honneth, 2003, Redistribution or Recognition? : a political-philosophical exchange , London: Verso.
  • Fricker, Miranda, 2007, Epistemic Injustice; power and the ethics of knowing , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Garner, Robert, 2013, A Theory of Justice for Animals , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Gauthier, David, 1986, Morals by Agreement , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Harsanyi, John, 1975, “Can the Maximin Principle Serve as a Basis for Morality? A Critique of John Rawls’s Theory,” American Political Science Review , 69: 594–606.
  • Hayek, Friedrich, 1976, Law, Legislation and Liberty (Volume II: The Mirage of Social Justice ), London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
  • Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature , edited by L.A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1978.
  • –––, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals , edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge, revised by P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
  • Johnston, David, 2011, A Brief History of Justice , Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
  • Kagan, Shelly, 2012, The Geometry of Desert , New York: Oxford University Press.
  • Knight, Carl and Zofia Stemplowska (eds.), 2011, Responsibility and Distributive Justice , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Lind, E. Allan and Tom Tyler, 1988, The Social Psychology of Procedural Justice , New York and London: Plenum Press.
  • MacIntyre, Alasdair, 1988, Whose Justice? Which Rationality? , London: Duckworth.
  • Mill, John Stuart, Utilitarianism in Utilitarianism, On Liberty, Representative Government , ed. A.D. Lindsay, London: Dent, 1964.
  • Miller, David, 1999, Principles of Social Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 2013, Justice for Earthlings: essays in political philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Montague, Phillip, 1980, “Comparative and Non-Comparative Justice,” Philosophical Quarterly , 30: 131–40.
  • Murphy, Liam, 1998, “Institutions and the Demands of Justice,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27, 251–91.
  • Nagel, Thomas, 2005, “The Problem of Global Justice,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 33, 113–47.
  • Nozick, Robert, 1974, Anarchy, State and Utopia , Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Nussbaum, Martha, 2006, Frontiers of Justice: disability, nationality, species membership , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Okin, Susan, 1989, Justice, Gender, and the Family , New York: Basic Books.
  • Olsaretti, Serena (ed.), 2003, Justice and Desert , Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Paul, Jeffrey (ed.), 1982, Reading Nozick : essays on Anarchy, State, and Utopia , Oxford: Blackwell.
  • Perry, Stephen, 2000, “On the Relationship between Corrective and Distributive Justice,” in Oxford Essays in Jurisprudence, Fourth Series , edited by Jeremy Horder, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Raphael, D. D., 2001, Concepts of Justice , Oxford: Clarendon Press.
  • Rawls, John, 1958, “Justice as Fairness,” Philosophical Review , 67: 164–94.
  • –––, 1971, A Theory of Justice , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 1993, Political Liberalism , New York: Columbia University Press.
  • –––, 1999, A Theory of Justice , revised edition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 2001, Justice as Fairness: a restatement , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • Ripstein, Arthur, 2004, “The Division of Responsibility and the Law of Tort,” Fordham Law Review , 72: 1811–44.
  • Sandel, Michael, 1982, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Scanlon, T. M., 1998, What We Owe to Each Other , Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  • –––, 2003, “The Diversity of Objections to Inequality,” in The Difficulty of Tolerance: essays in political philosophy , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sen, Amartya, 1980, “Equality of What?” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Volume 1 , ed. S. McMurrin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Sidgwick, Henry, 1874/1907, The Methods of Ethics , London: Macmillan.
  • Valentini, Laura, 2014, “Canine Justice: An Associative Account,” Political Studies , 62: 37–52.
  • Walzer, Michael, 1983, Spheres of Justice: a defence of pluralism and equality , New York: Basic Books.
  • Williams, Andrew, 1998, “Incentives, Inequality, and Publicity,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27: 225–47.
  • Wolff, Jonathan, 1991, Robert Nozick : property, justice and the minimal state , Cambridge: Polity.
  • –––, 1998, “Fairness, Respect and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy and Public Affairs , 27: 97–122.
  • Young, Iris Marion, 2011, Responsibility for Justice , New York: Oxford University Press.
How to cite this entry . Preview the PDF version of this entry at the Friends of the SEP Society . Look up topics and thinkers related to this entry at the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project (InPhO). Enhanced bibliography for this entry at PhilPapers , with links to its database.
  • Justice , course lectures by Michael Sandel
  • Justice Everywhere , a group blog about justice in public affairs

Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | consequentialism | consequentialism: rule | contractualism | feminist philosophy, topics: perspectives on reproduction and the family | justice: as a virtue | justice: distributive | justice: global | justice: intergenerational | justice: international distributive | justice: retributive | justice: transitional | luck: justice and bad luck | Rawls, John | reflective equilibrium | social contract: contemporary approaches to

Copyright © 2021 by David Miller < david . miller @ nuffield . ox . ac . uk >

  • Accessibility

Support SEP

Mirror sites.

View this site from another server:

  • Info about mirror sites

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2023 by The Metaphysics Research Lab , Department of Philosophy, Stanford University

Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

  • Publications
  • Account settings
  • Advanced Search
  • Journal List

Logo of bmcnurs

Social justice in health system; a neglected component of academic nursing education: a qualitative study

Hosein habibzadeh.

Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, Urmia, Iran

Madineh Jasemi

Fariba hosseinzadegan, associated data.

The interview dataset generated and analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to promises of participant anonymity and confidentiality. However, on reasonable request the data could be available from the corresponding author. All applications should be sent to [email protected]. All requests will be answered within a maximum of 1 month by email.

In recent decades, increasing social and health inequalities all over the world has highlighted the importance of social justice as a core nursing value. Therefore, proper education of nursing students is necessary for preparing them to comply with social justice in health systems. This study is aimed to identify the main factors for teaching the concept of social justice in the nursing curriculum.

This is a qualitative study, in which the conventional content analysis approach was employed to analyze a sample of 13 participants selected using purposive sampling method. Semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect and analyze the data.

Analysis of the interviews indicated that insufficient education content, incompetency of educators, and inappropriate education approaches made social justice a neglected component in the academic nursing education. These factors were the main sub-categories of the study and showed the negligence of social justice in academic nursing education.

Research findings revealed the weaknesses in teaching the concept of social justice in the nursing education. Accordingly, it is necessary to modify the content of nursing curriculum and education approaches in order to convey this core value. Since nursing educators act as role models for students, especially in practical and ethical areas, more attention should be paid to competency of nursing educators, specially training in the area of ethical ideology and social justice.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12912-021-00534-1.

Professional values include action standards that are accepted by group members and provide a framework for evaluating beliefs and notions affecting behavior [ 1 ]. Acquisition of professional nursing values is a prerequisite for resolving conflicts; it improves service quality and increases job satisfaction of nurses [ 2 ]. The core values accepted and presented by American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) (1998) include human dignity, integrity, autonomy, altruism, and social justice [ 3 ], out of which social justice has attracted more attention in recent years. Disproportionate burden of diseases and deaths in parts of the society associated with environmental and socioeconomic factors has been recognized for decades; however, the number of documents on these issues has increased dramatically over the past 15 years [ 4 ]. The WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health attributes these differences to social inequalities in the distribution of power, income, shelter, education, and healthcare as well as climate change, vulnerability, and other life conditions. It also prioritizes social justice as a mechanism for correcting and eliminating inequalities [ 5 ]. Social justice in the health system refers to providing equal healthcare services for all individuals, regardless of their personal characteristics [ 6 ]. The AACN defines social justice as fair treatment, regardless of one’s economic status, race, ethnicity, age, citizenship, disability, or sexual orientation [ 7 ].

Although social justice has been identified as a professional value in documents issued by reputable nursing associations such as International Council of Nurses (ICN), Canadian Nurses Association (CNA), American Nurses Association (ANA), and AACN [ 8 ], the discussion of social justice in nursing profession has always been accompanied by serious doubts and concerns [ 9 ]. In addition, nurses’ responses to social injustice have not always been admirable, and nursing profession’s poor performance originates from various factors such as unawareness [ 10 ].

Development of a professional value such as social justice is a continuous and long-term process that begins with professional nursing education and continues throughout years of nursing practice. Education plays a key role in acquiring professional values [ 11 ]. Students, educators, faculties, clinical and educational experiences, and individual values are among the most important components of learning and development of professional values [ 12 ]. It is very important to train highly skilled and qualified nurses to provide necessary care for heterogeneous populations in today’s ever-changing demographic prospect. Nursing students must understand their responsibility for poplulation health issues and social factors affecting health (eg, world hunger, environmental pollution, lack of access to health care, violation of human rights, and inequitable distribution of health care resources, including nursing services) and in this regard acquire the necessary knowledge and skills [ 13 ].

To institutionalize the concept of social justice in nursing students, especially in developed countries, measures have been taken in the area of education, which include modifications made to nursing curriculum and education approaches [ 14 ]. For instance, simulation is a one of new methods utilized for teaching this concept [ 15 ]. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an increase in tendency towards online learning [ 16 ], co-curricular experiences [ 17 ], and digital storytelling [ 18 ] in order to promote students’ understanding of social justice issues. Nevertheless, some studies have addressed the weaknesses of nursing curriculum in teaching social justice [ 19 , 20 ] and have attributed nurses’ inability in pursuing social justice to their poor scientific and practical competencies [ 21 ]. Although several quantitative and qualitative studies have been conducted in recent decades to institutionalize the concept of social justice among nursing graduates [ 22 – 25 ], academic nursing education has unfortunately failed to train competent nurses who seek information and training on social justice. Considering the importance of this subject, a qualitative approach [ 26 ] was adopted to provide an in-depth understanding of social justice based on the realistic results derived from the participants’ real experiences. Therefore, in this study, the experiences of nursing educators and students in identifying the main factors for teaching the concept of social justice in nursing education program were analyzed.

Study design and setting

This qualitative study was conducted using a conventional content analysis method. The participants were recruited from three nursing faculties (Urmia, Tabriz, and Tehran) and two teaching hospitals of Tehran (Motahari Hospital) and Urmia (Talegani Hospital) in Iran. These cities were selected due to their large size and forerun in educational, clinical, and social nursing activities.

Study participants

In view of the objective of the study - identify the main factors for teaching the concept of social justice in the nursing curriculum - we initially selected nursing educators by purposive sampling method. Nursing educators who had more than 5 years of service experience and among the prominent educators with activity in nursing institutions that involved in developing social justice were selected. The data from the study then led us to students and clinical nurses. Among the students, the final year undergraduate students, exemplary and active in social fields, and among the nurses, those with more than 2 years of service experience, accepted by the system professionally and actively in the field of social justice, such as voluntary activities in public health promotion, were selected for the interview.

The participants included 6 men and 9 women with the mean age of 39.07 ± 12.92 years old and mean work experience of 20.00 ± 7.22 years. Out of all the participants, 5 individuals had PhD, whereas 2 had Master’s degrees; the rest had Bachelor’s degrees in nursing. In total, 7 individuals were nursing educators, 2 individuals were clinical nurses, and 4 individuals were nursing students (Table  1 ).

Demographic Characteristics of the Participants

Data collection

The data were collected using in-depth, semi-structured individual interviews conducted at the times and in the places selected by the participants (mainly at nursing faculties). Each interview lasted for 30–90 min; they were audio recorded upon the participants’ permission and transcribed verbatim. All the 13 interviews were conducted by the research team (FH, MJ, and HH) between February and November 2019. The participants were asked questions about their experiences of (learning/teaching) social justice issues. Considering the abstract nature of the research subject, the researchers raised more objective questions. For instance, the educators were asked to “describe their experiences of modification to the curriculum to cover social justice issues”, whereas the students were asked to “describe their experiences of social justice-based practices during internships”. In addition, to better identify factors affecting social justice education in nursing, the educators and students were asked questions such as “Considering your experiences, what factors have affected your engagement in social justice in education?” and “How do you describe education approaches adopted by educators for teaching social justice?”, respectively. (See Additional file  1 for details). The researchers continued the interviews until the data were completely saturated, i.e. when no new idea, concept, or category was derived from the final interviews.

To better relate to the environments of the study and the participants and analyze the data realistically, the researchers also used field notes. Field notes are a brief summary of the observations made while collecting data. This is not limited to a particular type of activity or behavior and assesses the non-verbal behaviors of the participants and their interactions with others. It also depicts a picture of a social position. In this study, field notes also made a detailed presentation of the situation in the right place immediately after the interview and provided the opportunity to confirm the psychological and emotional reactions of the participants. For example, attending the emergency ward of one of the teaching hospitals in Urmia city and observing nursing education in the clinical environment led to a field note focusing the training on the clinical procedures that confirm the insufficient educational content and lack of attention to social justice in nursing education.

Data analysis

After the data were collected, they were analyzed using the conventional content analysis approach. For this purpose, Grundheim and Lundman’s (2004) method was adopted [ 27 ]. In this method, an entire interview is regarded as an analysis unit involving notes that must be analyzed and coded. The researchers listened to the interviews for several times and transcribed the recorded interviews verbatim. The paragraphs, sentences, and words were considered meaning units. A meaning unit is a set of words and sentences that are related to each other in content and are categorized based on their content and context. The texts were reviewed several times to highlight words containing key concepts or meaning units and extract the initial codes. The codes were then reviewed several times in a continuous process from code extraction to labeling. Similar codes were merged, categorized, and labeled and the subcategories were determined. The extracted subcategories were finally compared and merged (if possible) to form the main categories.

Assessing data accuracy and stability

Guba and Lincoln’s (1986) criteria were used to ensure the accuracy and stability of the research data. The credibility of the data was assessed using member-checking and prolonged engagement techniques. For member-checking technique, the participants reviewed the content of the interview and the resulting codes to ensure the accurate meaning and for really reflecting their experiences. The data were also assessed by an external researcher (peer debriefing). To ensure the dependability, data collection methods, interview, taking notes, coding, and data analysis were expressed in detail in order to make judging by the external auditor (external auditing). In order to achieve confirmability, the audit trail method was used, so that all stages of the research, especially the stages of data analysis and the results, were provided to checking of two expert colleagues in the field of qualitative research. The transferability of the findings was also established by providing a rich description of the research report and the content of the interviews was represented by the selected quotations from the participants [ 28 ].

Ethical considerations

The participants were selected after the approval of Ethics Committee of Urmia University of Medical Sciences and the necessary permissions (Code: IR.UMSU.REC.1397.223) were granted. Prior to the interviews, the participants were informed about their anonymity, confidentiality of their information, the research method and objectives, and their right to leave the study at will. The participants also signed informed consent forms.

Classification of the interviews showed that three sub-categories of “insufficient educational content”, “limited competency of nursing educators”, and “inappropriate education approaches” led to the emergence of the main category called “social justice; a neglected component of academic education” (Table  2 ).

Categories, Subcategories, and Codes Extracted from the Interview Analysis

Social justice; a neglected component of academic education

Proper education plays a major role in training justice-seeking nurses. Social justice and its importance in healthcare are constituents of the nursing syllabus. Paying more attention to this issue in practical and objective areas of education by educators can influence students’ thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors to pursue justice in health systems. However, Iran’s education system has unfortunately failed to promote justice because of insufficient educational content, limited competency of nursing educators, and inappropriate education approaches.

Insufficient educational content

Development of a comprehensive nursing curriculum, especially on ethical issues such as social justice, could substantially contribute to the preparation of socially and morally conscious nurses who are able to make significant changes in the public health at local, national, and international levels. In this study, the participants highlighted some weaknesses in the content of the existing nursing curriculum such as lack of attention to social justice, discontinuity in presenting courses on ethical values, and allocating most of the nursing courses to medical issues and clinical care.

Lack of attention to social justice in nursing curriculum

Social justice is a core nursing value which plays a significant role in promoting justice by nursing students and nurses. However, according to the participants, it has unfortunately been neglected in the existing nursing curriculum. In this regard, one participant stated,

“In the fourth semester, we studied a course on nursing ethics. I think there was no discussion on social justice because I don’t remember anything about this topic” (Participant No. 7/Nursing Student).

Regarding the importance of teaching social determinants of health, another participant stated,

“I was not aware of the importance of social issues in health until I participated in a workshop called ‘Social Justice in Health’. It really changed my beliefs and broadened my perspective” (Participant No. 10/Clinical Nurse).

Discontinuity in presenting courses on ethical values

Values are major components of the nursing profession. The institutionalization and development of professional values such as social justice contribute significantly to the future of this profession. The few number of courses presented on ethical values and discontinuity in the presented courses (for instance, no course on ethical values is provided for post-graduate students) were major items mentioned by the participants. In this regard, one of the participants stated,

“When students are repeatedly reminded of the importance of a value, they will realize its importance and the value will be institutionalized in them. We partially studied professional values and social justice issues in the fourth semester of our undergraduate courses; however, no similar course was provided for us afterwards during the Master’s program” (Participant No. 5/ Faculty Member).

Or another participant stated:

“We cannot deny that the ethical issues have been institutionalized in our professional graduates to some extent. But, these issues are not worked on in a principled and scientific manner and that there is no constant focus on them. After all, the effect of the hidden curriculum has been more prominent.”(Participant No.1/Faculty Member).

Allocating most of nursing courses to medical issues and clinical care

Diseases and clinical care are among the most fundamental parts of theoretical and practical training provided for nursing students; however, due to the multi-dimensional nature of the nursing profession, special attention should be paid to other dimensions as well. According to the research results, the existing nursing curriculum focuses mainly on transferring knowledge and skills associated with physical and routine care. One participant expressed,

“Most of our courses were related to various diseases and nursing care, and educators rarely talked about ethical and legal issues during their lectures” (Participant No. 6/ Nursing Student).

Another participant stated the reasons for the focus of nursing education on the physical and caring dimensions:

“Well, when we see that our graduates have problems in providing quality clinical care, we also have to do more in the field of clinical care.”(Participant No.3/ Faculty Member).

Limited competency of nursing educators

Educators play an undeniable role in training competent nurses through institutionalizing beliefs and behaviors. Using proper teaching and behavioral approaches, educators can improve students’ critical thinking skills and prepare them to promote justice in health systems. According to the participants, insufficient competency of nursing educators in teaching social justice issues and inappropriate value perspectives of educators in developing social justice were the main properties of this category.

Insufficient capabilities of educators in teaching social justice issues

Educators must be equipped with sufficient scientific, practical, and ethical capacities in order to effectively institutionalize the concept of social justice in students. According to the participants, nursing educators’ insufficient knowledge and experience about social justice issues make it difficult for them to transfer such knowledge to their students. One participant said,

“When I was a student, I once informed my educator about the unjust patient admission procedure in the surgical department. Yet, my educator recommended me to do what the head nurses would say. I did not see the necessary authority in my educator to establish justice” (Participant No. 11/ Clinical Nurse).

Low presence of nursing educators in clinical and community settings is also one of the factors that, according to the participants, has contributed to this problem.

“Unfortunately, our professors are so involved in education and research, especially to promote themselves, that they do not have the opportunity to address social issues.” (Participant No.9/ Faculty Member).

Inappropriate value perspectives of educators in developing social justice

The participants highlighted the important role of nursing educators’ ethical perspectives in promoting the quality of education and training qualified nurses who would provide services tailored to the needs of the society. They also argued that ethical values could help educators establish and expand social justice in health systems. According to the results, most of the educators had undesirable value perspectives on establishing social justice in the area of health. In this respect, participant no. 5 stated,

“When a nurse has no right to make any decisions in a healthcare system, what can I say to the student about social justice?” (Participant No. 5/ Faculty Member).
“My main responsibility is to transfer knowledge in the field of nursing and I think ethics should be taught by educators in medical ethics.” (Participant No.2/ Faculty Member).

Inappropriate education approaches

Education approaches are considered an essential part of the educational structure and play a key role in transferring ethical values such as social justice to students. Given the abstract nature of social justice, choosing the best education approach could help educators resolve complicated problems during teaching in order to institutionalize professional values and beliefs. According to the findings, educators adopt poor education approaches to transfer ethical values such as social justice and self-awareness to students. In this regard, focusing on traditional education approaches and using insufficient affective learning approaches were cited by the participants.

Focusing on traditional education approaches

Undoubtedly, lecturing is one of the most widely used education approaches; however, this traditional method is very ineffective in teaching abstract concepts such as social justice. According to the participants, educators mostly use lecturing approach to teach social justice issues and students are rarely involved in the teaching process. One participant argued that educators mainly use teacher-centered approaches in ethical discussions, stating,

“We (the students) had no active role in the professional ethics class. The educator spoke on relevant topics based on the availed syllabus and provided some examples of clinical ethical issues. However, I think that educators must discuss social justice issues with students to help them visualize and understand cases of injustice and discuss appropriate reactions in such situations” (Participant No. 13/ Nursing Student).

Another participant stated this:

“The predominant teaching method in professional ethics classes has been lecturing. Every now and then, there was some discussions in between, but it was very rare. Other nursing educators were also using the lecture method when talking about ethics” (Participant No. 7/ Nursing Student).

Using insufficient affective learning approaches

The use of affective learning strategies such as reflective activities and simulations leading to emotional responses plays an important role in creating self-reflection and transferring professional knowledge and skills to nursing students. However, based on the participants’ experience, affective learning approaches are not used effectively and systematically in teaching ethical issues such as social justice. In this regard, one participant stated,

“Since there are too many topics on professional ethics, we (educators) can only convey basic issues to students and it is difficult for us to adopt other learning strategies such as the affective approach” (Participant No. 4/ Faculty Member).

The same participant further stated:

“Now, in the professional ethics class, I do my best to teach the content with a combination of methods. For example, we have formed a group for medical students in the cyberspace (WhatsApp) and asked students to express the issues and questions of clinical ethics. They should raise it there because there is no time in the classroom for these issues. However, we have not performed the same for nursing students yet” (Participant No. 4/ Faculty Member).

According to the research findings, social justice in a health system is a neglected component of academic nursing education due to factors including insufficient educational content, limited competency of nursing educators, and inappropriate education approaches. These factors were introduced as the main research subcategories in this study.

Some weaknesses were observed in the content of nursing curriculum, which is an main factor in promoting professional nursing values such as social justice in nursing students. Lack of attention to the issue of social justice in nursing curriculum has also been mentioned in other studies [ 13 , 20 ]. Based on the participants’ experience, most of the nursing courses are allocated to medical issues and clinical care. According to Thurman, clinical specialties have received the main focus of nursing curriculum, whereas little attention has been paid to social justice issues [ 21 ] . This problem can be attributed to the poor performance of nurses in clinical care. The participants also believed that there was discontinuity in presenting courses on ethical values because the professional ethics course was presented only to undergraduate students. This issue disrupts the proper institutionalization of ethical values such as social justice in nursing students. Frenk et al. believe that the preparation of healthcare professionals to address current healthcare inequalities and challenges has been slowed down by obsolete, fragmented, and static curriculum [ 29 ]. In addition, Rozendo et al. highlighted inconsistencies in terms of presenting social justice-related issues in nursing curricula and argued that there was little material on social justice in post-graduate nursing programs [ 14 ].

Nursing educators’ competencies also affect teaching social justice issues. In today’s rapidly-changing world facing numerous crises, experienced educators play a significant role in training qualified nurses equipped with various skills enabling them to create social development. Accordingly, Read et al. highlighted the critical role of nursing educators in institutionalizing fundamental principles of social justice and health equity in students [ 30 ]. According to Ellis, educators should shift nursing students’ learning and thinking attitudes from individualism to community-centered frameworks and from tertiary (reactionary) to primary (preventive) care approaches [ 31 ]. However, unfortunately, the research findings indicated that nursing educators are not sufficiently qualified to teach and institutionalize social justice in students. In this regard, educators’ insufficient knowledge and experience in teaching social justice issues were highlighted by the participants. Borhani et al. found that ethical knowledge of nursing educators determined their students’ professional ethics competencies [ 32 ]. Akbas et al also argued that nursing educators’ knowledge and skills were the first and most important factors affecting their success in teaching issues of professional ethics [ 33 ]. As mentioned by the participants, inappropriate value perspectives of educators in developing social justice was another weakness of nursing educators. The significant impact of educators’ perspectives on teaching ethical values such as social justice has also been emphasized by Parandeh et al. [ 12 ].

Education approaches adopted to present and convey ethical values to students are of high importance. In this regard, Einhellig discussed the ineffectiveness of traditional approaches such as lecturing in institutionalizing social justice in nursing graduates and outlined the benefits of affective learning approaches [ 19 ]. According to the findings, lecturing is the dominant approach used to teach social justice in Iran’s nursing faculties, which is an inefficient teaching approach, as suggested by the research literature. This is probably due to the large number of students and limited time allocated to each academic course. While cognitive learning approaches rely on principles and concepts, affective learning approaches support the integration of knowledge with emotions, attitudes, and personal beliefs [ 34 ]. Neumann found that affective education approaches could enhance students’ understanding and use of ethical values [ 35 ]. Einhellig highlighted that nursing faculties need to use various strategies with a focus on behavior changes in order to successfully institutionalize the concept of social justice in nursing graduates [ 24 ].

Limitations

The findings of the present study were limited to factors affecting education of social justice in the nursing curriculum in the health system in the culture of Iran. Other limitations of this study was the consideration of the three nursing faculties and two teaching hospitals in Iran. As such, it may not be a representative of the experiences of all the nursing profession members in Iran. Limitations of our study proposed the need for conducting further studies with larger and mixed groups and in different cultures.

The research findings provided researchers with an insight into the weaknesses of nursing curricula, educators, and education approaches in social justice development in Iran. It seems that more attention must be paid to professional values and social determinant of health in nursing curricula in order to train justice-seeking nurses with a sense of responsibility. Educators play a prominent role in training competent individuals who are aware of and sensitive to social issues and inequalities. It is necessary to change the education approaches adopted by nursing educators in order to institutionalize the concept of social justice in students. After changing the content of nursing curriculum and applying different education approaches, future studies can focus on the impact of such changes on social development and social justice promotion.

Acknowledgments

This study is a part of a PhD dissertation approved and funded by Vice Chancellor for Research, Urmia University of Medical Sciences. The researchers would like to thank the authorities of School of Nursing and Midwifery, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, as well as the participants for their kind cooperation.

Abbreviations

Authors’ contributions.

The study was designed by HH,MJ and FH. FH participated as the main interviewer. The initial deductive data analysis was done by FH and used as validation of the analysis carried out by HH and MJ. The final data analysis of the interviews was discussed and consented to by all authors. A first draft of the article was developed by FH and MJ. All authors then contributed to this, and finalized it together. FH was responsible for the final draft of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

This study was funded by Department of Research, Urmia University of Medical Sciences, which had no role in the design of the study, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, or writing the manuscript.

Availability of data and materials

Ethics approval and consent to participate.

The participants were selected after the approval of Ethics Committee of Urmia University of Medical Sciences and necessary permissions (Code: IR.UMSU.REC.1397.223) were granted. Prior to the interviews, the participants were informed about their anonymity, confidentiality of their information, the research method and objectives, and their right to leave the study at will. The participants also signed informed consent forms.

Consent for publication

Not applicable.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Publisher’s Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Finding Humanity in Our Criminal Justice System

Caution Tape

I t was dark and windy the evening of Sunday, September 8, 2019, when Luis Alberto Quiñonez—everyone called him Sito—and his girlfriend, Ariana Bassard, left his girlfriend’s mother’s new apartment in San Francisco’s Mission District. Sito noticed that one of the tires on his car seemed low on air. After reinflating it at a service station, Sito made a quick, hard right into heavy traffic, which caused his girlfriend Arianna to drop her cell phone underneath her seat. They pulled over around the corner so she could retrieve it.

A young man in a hooded sweatshirt stepped up to the car’s driver’s-side window, raised an automatic pistol to the glass, and started shooting . By the time the shooter finished, 21 cartridges littered the car, inside and out. Seventeen of those bullets had cut through Sito’s neck, shoulder, chest, and stomach. Arianna survived. Sito did not.

Sito was my stepson’s half-brother. His murder forced my family to grapple with the cyclical tragedy of gang violence, vengeance, and an indifferent criminal justice system. Whenever I reflect on the circumstances of his death, one question keeps coming back to haunt me: when a life is extinguished by street violence, how does a victim’s family heal?

This question isn’t new to me, but the personal context is. As a professor of Anthropology and Public Affairs at Princeton, my work focuses on patterns and cultures of American urban violence. For a very long time, I have been aware of the terrible effects of incarcerating young people. But it wasn’t until Sito’s murder that I really understood how worthless a victim’s family can be made to feel in their encounter with the criminal justice system—especially if, in the past, the system has treated them or their loved ones as perpetrators.

This humanity and care are rarely available to those caught up in this country’s justice system, especially the juvenile justice system. Sito was one of these young people: when he was 14 years old, Sito was accused of murdering a former classmate. He spent five months in the San Francisco Youth Guidance Center (otherwise known as juvenile hall) while the district attorney decided whether to try him as an adult. Sito was lucky: a private investigator uncovered surveillance footage of the attack, showing clearly that Sito did not kill the young man. The DA dropped the charges against Sito, and he was released.

Read More: Youth Prisons Don’t Work. Here’s What Does.

But despite the clearing of Sito’s name, it was far from cleared in a practical sense—and just about everyone who goes through the system can tell a similar tale. In the shadow of a wrongful accusation, the accused and their families often bear the stigma of a “criminal” label both with the public and in their personal lives. Wrongful accusation typically results in severe post-traumatic stress , and that murder allegation would haunt Sito for the rest of his short life. Five years after he was accused of this murder, Sito was murdered by the young man’s little brother, who could not be convinced that Sito wasn’t responsible for his brother’s death.

This tragic cycle of violence—played out in my family here, but typical for families across the U.S. dealing with the pervasiveness and pain of urban violence—has forced me to think about accountability in new ways. It is my firm belief that the people whom the system accused of crimes, wrongfully or not, need to be humanized at every step of the process—from the moment a news story about a crime breaks to when the gavel sounds and a verdict is announced.

Humanizing both victims and perpetrators of violence may seem like a simple and obvious strategy. Of course, it isn’t: Violence provokes compassion for the victim, and oftentimes, rage against the perpetrator. This is especially true within the criminal justice system, where one or the other emotion is considered an appropriate response—but never both, and never at the same time. The system is designed to crush complexity because of this binary, which is then relentlessly reduced to slogans and soundbites on social media.

Read More: The Path to Redemption for Our Criminal Justice System

But what if we could embrace the grey areas of this binary rather than diminish it, and instead, promote healthy debates regarding imprisonment? Because in doing so, we might begin to recognize that people who commit crimes—or are even just accused of doing so—are human beings worthy of empathy and care just as much as crime victims.

To help the public grapple with hot button issues like crime and violence, our institutions must dedicate themselves to reducing misinformation about crimes existing—and spreading—in the first place. Schools, for example, should promote media literacy programs to educate individuals about verifying information before sharing. Social media platforms should continue to enforce strict policies against the spread of false information, flagging misinformation while empowering users to report incorrect information. And responsible reporting by the news media would ensure that when someone like Sito is exonerated of a crime, official sources, such as police statements and government announcements, amplify this news. The result would be a more sober, equitable, and humane approach to criminal accountability.

Before Sito’s murder, I did not know that I could experience compassion and rage at the same time. Yet in writing about his life and death, I came to see that our society needs a form of accountability that blends these seemingly contradictory emotions. As an alternative to criminal punishment, restorative justice allows for that possibility.

In some settings, victims and offenders communicate directly with one another so that the perpetrator can acknowledge fault and offer some form of restitution to the victim. The victim, in turn, may forgive the perpetrator, bringing a sense of closure to the crime. The perpetrator may also become more willing to embark on a journey of self-improvement. In other settings, community stakeholders publicly discuss their grief , and the perpetrator receives their messages later. Whether the victim’s communication with the perpetrator is private and direct or public and indirect, the goal is for the victim and the perpetrator to understand each other better—or at least stop thinking of each other as enemies. Researchers have proven that restorative justice reduces imprisonment (and therefore costs to the system), provides greater satisfaction for both victims and offenders, and decreases recidivism rates.

Restorative justice is as much a mindset as it is a collection of standardized techniques. Its core principles include public accountability and a commitment to investigating the root causes of wrongful acts. Can we borrow something of this model, and apply it to the criminal justice system, more broadly? To reject complexity and yearn for purity, is, after all, to turn away from the intricate nature of the human situation. We do so at our peril—and at the expense of young lives that could be so much more.

More Must-Reads From TIME

  • Why We're Spending So Much Money Now
  • The Fight to Free Evan Gershkovich
  • Meet the 2024 Women of the Year
  • John Kerry's Next Move
  • The Quiet Work Trees Do for the Planet
  • Breaker Sunny Choi Is Heading to Paris
  • Column: The Internet Made Romantic Betrayal Even More Devastating
  • Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time

Contact us at [email protected]

You May Also Like

Home — Essay Samples — Sociology — Social Justice — Definition of Racism: From Historical Roots to Modern Impact

test_template

Definition of Racism: from Historical Roots to Modern Impact

  • Categories: Art History Social Justice

About this sample

close

Words: 490 |

Published: Mar 16, 2024

Words: 490 | Page: 1 | 3 min read

Table of contents

Historical roots of racism, contemporary manifestations of racism, impact of racism, addressing racism.

Image of Dr. Oliver Johnson

Cite this Essay

Let us write you an essay from scratch

  • 450+ experts on 30 subjects ready to help
  • Custom essay delivered in as few as 3 hours

Get high-quality help

author

Verified writer

  • Expert in: Arts & Culture Sociology

writer

+ 120 experts online

By clicking “Check Writers’ Offers”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy . We’ll occasionally send you promo and account related email

No need to pay just yet!

Related Essays

3 pages / 1193 words

2 pages / 760 words

3 pages / 1148 words

2 pages / 1019 words

Remember! This is just a sample.

You can get your custom paper by one of our expert writers.

121 writers online

Still can’t find what you need?

Browse our vast selection of original essay samples, each expertly formatted and styled

Related Essays on Social Justice

In today's music industry, artists often use their platform to address social issues and provoke thought among their listeners. J Cole's song "She Knows" from his album "Born Sinner" is a prime example of this trend. This essay [...]

Social justice is a concept that has been a driving force in societal progress and change for centuries. It encompasses a wide range of issues including poverty, inequality, and discrimination, and is essential for ensuring a [...]

The historical and literary processes of the second half of the 20th century demonstrate the merging of the civil rights movement with the left-wing literary movement, driven by critical sentiments and a deep desire for social [...]

Shirley Chisholm left an enduring legacy through her tireless advocacy for social justice and political empowerment. As the first Black woman elected to the United States Congress and a pioneer in the presidential race, Chisholm [...]

Power is something that must people tend to struggle with while other want it and some, abuse it. We live in a government where power is everything. Power is defined as the ability to influence a person behavior by getting them [...]

Malcolm X is a figure who has been the subject of much debate and controversy. His character traits, in particular, have been a topic of interest for many scholars, historians, and individuals alike. As a civil rights activist, [...]

Related Topics

By clicking “Send”, you agree to our Terms of service and Privacy statement . We will occasionally send you account related emails.

Where do you want us to send this sample?

By clicking “Continue”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy policy.

Be careful. This essay is not unique

This essay was donated by a student and is likely to have been used and submitted before

Download this Sample

Free samples may contain mistakes and not unique parts

Sorry, we could not paraphrase this essay. Our professional writers can rewrite it and get you a unique paper.

Please check your inbox.

We can write you a custom essay that will follow your exact instructions and meet the deadlines. Let's fix your grades together!

Get Your Personalized Essay in 3 Hours or Less!

We use cookies to personalyze your web-site experience. By continuing we’ll assume you board with our cookie policy .

  • Instructions Followed To The Letter
  • Deadlines Met At Every Stage
  • Unique And Plagiarism Free

social justice essay definition

Logo

Essay on Social Justice

Students are often asked to write an essay on Social Justice in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Social Justice

Understanding social justice.

Social justice is the fair treatment of all people in society. It’s about making sure everyone has equal opportunities, irrespective of their background or status.

Importance of Social Justice

Social justice is important because it promotes equality. It helps to reduce disparities in wealth, access to resources, and social privileges.

Role of Individuals

Every person can contribute to social justice. By treating others fairly, respecting diversity, and standing against discrimination, we can promote social justice.

In conclusion, social justice is vital for a balanced society. It ensures everyone has a fair chance to succeed in life.

Also check:

  • Paragraph on Social Justice

250 Words Essay on Social Justice

Social justice, a multifaceted concept, is the fair distribution of opportunities, privileges, and resources within a society. It encompasses dimensions like economic parity, gender equality, environmental justice, and human rights. The core of social justice is the belief that everyone deserves equal economic, political, and social opportunities irrespective of race, gender, or religion.

The Importance of Social Justice

Social justice is pivotal in fostering a harmonious society. It ensures that everyone has access to the basic necessities of life and can exercise their rights without discrimination. It is the cornerstone of peace and stability in any society. Without social justice, the divide between different socio-economic classes widens, leading to social unrest.

Challenges to Social Justice

Despite its importance, achieving social justice is fraught with challenges. Systemic issues like discrimination, poverty, and lack of access to quality education and healthcare are significant roadblocks. These challenges are deeply ingrained in societal structures and require collective efforts to overcome.

The Role of Individuals in Promoting Social Justice

Every individual plays a crucial role in promoting social justice. Through conscious efforts like advocating for equal rights, supporting policies that promote equality, and standing against discrimination, individuals can contribute to building a just society.

In conclusion, social justice is a fundamental principle for peaceful coexistence within societies. Despite the challenges, each individual’s conscious effort can contribute significantly to achieving this noble goal. The journey towards social justice is long and arduous, but it is a path worth treading for the betterment of humanity.

500 Words Essay on Social Justice

Introduction to social justice.

Social justice, a multifaceted concept, is often described as the fair and equitable distribution of resources and opportunities, where outside factors that categorize people into social strata are irrelevant. It encompasses the idea that all individuals should have equal access to wealth, health, well-being, justice, privileges, and opportunity irrespective of their legal, political, economic, or other circumstances.

Origins and Evolution of Social Justice

The concept of social justice emerged during the Industrial Revolution and subsequent civil revolutions as a counter to the vast disparities in wealth and social capital. It was a call for societal and structural changes, aiming to minimize socio-economic differences. The term was first used by Jesuit priest Luigi Taparelli in the mid-19th century, influenced by the teachings of Thomas Aquinas. Since then, the concept has evolved and expanded, encompassing issues like environmental justice, health equity, and human rights.

The Pillars of Social Justice

Social justice rests on four essential pillars: human rights, access, participation, and equity. Human rights are the fundamental rights and freedoms to which all individuals are entitled. Access involves equal opportunities in terms of resources, rights, goods, and services. Participation emphasizes the importance of all individuals contributing to and benefiting from economic, social, political, and cultural life. Equity ensures the fair distribution of resources and opportunities.

Social Justice in Today’s World

In the 21st century, social justice takes many forms and intersects with various areas such as race, gender, sexuality, and class. It is increasingly associated with the fight against systemic issues like racism, sexism, and classism. The Black Lives Matter movement, for instance, is a social justice movement fighting against systemic racism and violence towards black people. Similarly, the #MeToo movement is a fight for gender justice, aiming to end sexual harassment and assault.

Despite the progress, numerous challenges to social justice persist. Systemic and structural discrimination, political disenfranchisement, economic inequality, and social stratification are just a few. Moreover, the rise of populism and nationalism worldwide has further complicated the fight for social justice, as these ideologies often thrive on division and inequality.

Promoting social justice requires collective action. Individuals can contribute by becoming more aware of the injustices around them, advocating for policies that promote equity, and standing up against discrimination. Education plays a crucial role in this process, as it can foster a deeper understanding of social justice issues and equip individuals with the tools to effect change.

In conclusion, social justice is a powerful concept that advocates for a fairer, more equitable society. While significant strides have been made, numerous challenges remain, necessitating a continued commitment to promoting social justice. Through education and advocacy, individuals can play a crucial role in this ongoing effort. The pursuit of social justice, therefore, is not just a societal or institutional responsibility, but an individual one as well.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

  • Essay on Justice
  • Essay on Journalism
  • Essay on Job Experience

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

Happy studying!

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Opinion How Oct. 7 is forcing Jews to reckon with Israel

Noah Feldman is a professor of law at Harvard University, a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion and the author, most recently, of “To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People,” from which the following is excerpted.

Since the 2023 Hamas-Israel war broke out, almost no subject has garnered more global attention than Israel. For many Jews, both outside and inside Israel, the Gaza conflict feels pivotal. Since Oct. 7 , Jews everywhere, whether sympathetic to Israel or critical or some combination, have found they have no choice but to deal with Israel’s impact and significance on their lives and feelings — whether they want to or not. This experience calls for a new account of what Israel means for being a Jew today.

Excerpted from “ To Be a Jew Today: A New Guide to God, Israel, and the Jewish People ” by Noah Feldman. Copyright 2024 by Noah Feldman. Reprinted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

To avoid oversimplifying would take a whole book — and in fact this essay is drawn from a book about being a Jew today that I’ve been writing for the past three years and thinking about most of my adult life. In it, I argue that the Jews are like a big, loving, sometimes dysfunctional family, united in their struggle to make sense of their relationship to God (whether He exists or not) and one another. Indeed, what makes the Jewish way of seeing the world distinctive is precisely that love and struggle are inextricably intertwined in it, as they are in most families.

This love-struggle is the key to understanding what’s going on for many Jews today, in the aftermath of Oct. 7. To understand it, you have to go back to what the classical, secular Zionists who dreamed up and first built Israel wanted it to mean. The Zionists wanted the Jews to be a sovereign nation, not a feuding family. For them, a Jewish state was not supposed to be an event in Jewish history. It was supposed to be the end of Jewish history, understood as a tale of suffering in the diaspora. Israel was meant to transcend and replace religious Jewishness and begin a new national era — picking up where Israelite sovereignty had ended at the hands of Rome, 2,000 years before.

In this way, the original Zionist idea of Israel intended to secularize the old Jewish idea of the messiah into a modern nationalism disenchanted with outmoded religious faith. The utopian, secular-messianic age and the ingathering of the exiles would put an end to the vicissitudes of Jewish survival and suffering that marked God’s intermittent reward and punishment of the Jewish people. A secular state would make the world’s Jews into an ordinary, normal nation, like France or Italy, not a far-flung people doomed to live as an oppressed, neurotic minority wherever they might wash up.

It didn’t work out exactly as planned. Over the years, bolstered by military success, economic growth and skillful statecraft, Israel grew increasingly secure. Yet, notwithstanding its nuclear weapons, it did not fully achieve the Zionists’ aspiration of being independently capable of protecting the Jews who lived there, much less all Jews everywhere. Israel remains partly dependent for its security on a close relationship with the United States, and this relies in no small part on the support of the American Jewish community.

What was more, the Jewish state did not end the diaspora. Most Jews who lived in the United States or behind the Iron Curtain or in other places did not flock to the country, at least not willingly. So instead of becoming the homeland of a single Jewish nation, Israel became its own nation of Israelis. Modern Israeli Hebrew became their national language, not the language of Jews everywhere. Jews around the world might care about Israel, but they were citizens of their own countries — and many of them, whether they were secular or Reform or Conservative or traditionalist Orthodox, chose not to define their Jewishness primarily in relation to Israel.

Meanwhile, inside Israel, religious Jewishness did not fade away as the secular Zionists had anticipated. Rather, Jewish religion experienced an unforeseen renaissance. Haredi Jews multiplied and flourished and used democratic politics to gain influence and state subsidies. Religious Zionists infused Israel with messianic meaning, regarding its advent as a miraculous sign of the messianic age as depicted by the biblical prophets and the ancient rabbis.

Eventually, over the past 30 years or so, the idea of Israel began to transform Jewish religious thought from within. Jews of various religious stripes all over the world, including those who are not sure they have a theology at all, have learned to see their Jewishness in terms of Israel.

To see how this happened, and to get a sharper view of the Jewish love-struggle today, dive with me into one subtype of Jewish thought: progressive American Judaism. This worldview, prevalent today among Reform Jews (37 percent of the American Jewish population), Conservative Jews (17 percent), Reconstructionist Jews (4 percent) and many unaffiliated Jews, finds its roots among 19th century Jews living in Germany who sought to reform Judaism along the lines of Reformation Protestantism. Looking back to the Bible, they found a God who loves not only his people but all the peoples of the world; who wants social justice, not ritualized obedience; and who teaches that to be holy is to love your neighbor as yourself.

The social justice strand of progressive Judaism transferred well to the United States. An iconic photograph, taken on March 21, 1965 , sums up its essence. Seven people, arms linked, lead the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery: John Lewis, Sister Mary Leoline, Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Ralph Bunche, Abraham Joshua Heschel and Fred Shuttlesworth. The Black men in the picture, all Southern ordained ministers except Bunche, a Nobel Prize-winning diplomat, are giants of the civil rights movement. Heschel, born in Warsaw in 1907 , was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi and later earned a doctorate in Berlin. After fleeing from Poland in 1939, he became a renowned teacher and scholar of Jewish mysticism affiliated with the leading Reform and Conservative rabbinical schools. His participation in the march, and the progressive beliefs that put him there, stand for a vision of God derived from the ancient Hebrew prophets and the most foundational teachings of the rabbis.

In the past half-century, the progressive teaching of divinely inspired social justice acquired a slogan: tikkun ‘olam, literally, repairing the world. The phrase echoed the much older Kabbalistic, mystical idea that in creating the finite world, the infinite God contracted, then shattered and broke into a multitude of shards. In the aftermath of that cosmic disaster, the ultimate, mystical purpose of the Jewish people is to repair the universe and the Godhead itself by redeeming the sparks of divine light that were lost or hidden in the process. As adapted by contemporary Jewish progressives, tikkun ‘olam has a this-worldly, concrete meaning. It calls for human effort, alongside God, to make the world more just.

In the 1980s and ’90s, the social justice vision of progressive Judaism acquired two new theological pillars: the centrality of the Holocaust and the redemptive narrative of the creation of Israel.

The slogan “Never Again” gave social justice guidance to the intuition that the Holocaust determined Jewish uniqueness. Jews must never again allow a Holocaust to occur.

Zionism, for its part, came to offer progressive American Jews a supplemental account of post-Holocaust redemption. The modern state of Israel had been born from the ashes of the Holocaust, so Israel redeemed the suffering of its martyrs. From destruction came rebuilding. And Israel’s existence would prevent another Holocaust from occurring by providing an escape hatch for diaspora Jews should antisemitic pressures make life untenable.

Progressive American Jews could thus integrate Israel into their theological picture of the relationship between God and the Jewish people.

This pairing made some partial sense of the deaths of the 6 million. And it enabled progressive American Jews to organize for two main purposes: memorializing the Holocaust and supporting Israel. Today 16 Holocaust museums and hundreds of public Holocaust memorials exist in the United States, with more planned to open soon. The United States Holocaust Museum, built on almost two acres of land allocated by Congress near the Washington Monument, has hosted 47 million visitors since it opened in 1993.

It would be crude and inaccurate to argue that the role of the Holocaust in progressive American Jewish thought is to drive support for Israel. The lessons of the Holocaust museums are meant to be universal. Yet the idea of Israel nevertheless comes into complex interplay with the idea of the Holocaust in progressive American Jewish thought. In the Middle Ages, Jewish theology around martyrdom existed in a complicated relationship with Christian ideas, even as Jews were being martyred by Christians. Today, progressive Jewish theology also exists in a complex relation with American Protestant thought. Seen in comparative terms, the Holocaust might stand in for the passion and the state of Israel for the resurrection. The social gospel of tikkun ‘olam can sit comfortably alongside this implicit theology.

To be clear, no progressive American Jewish thinker ever consciously intended to re-create the theological structure of American Protestantism. God forbid. What I am suggesting is that the enormous theological challenge posed by the Holocaust called out for a response. In the context of American religious thought generally, the attraction of Israel as a redemptive supplement to the Holocaust was overwhelming. The result was a coherent progressive Jewish theology of the Holocaust and Israel.

As you read these words, the community of progressive American Jews is going through a painful generational conflict — a family struggle tinged by love and pain. On one side are the people roughly my age: the Gen X leaders of the movement, rabbis and lay people alike. They are, for the most part, center or center-left Democrats.

Gen X progressive Jewish leaders are (still) liberal Zionists. They love Israel. They also criticize it. They wish Israel would be more just to Palestinians. They wish there were some solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. They often don’t identify with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which coordinates much pro-Israel lobbying by American Jews and allies itself closely with whatever government is in power in Israel.

Instead, Gen X progressive Jewish leaders have their own liberal Zionist organizations, like J Street, a lobbying body that calls itself “the political home of pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans,” and the New Israel Fund, which says its “aim is to advance liberal democracy, including freedom of speech and minority rights, and to fight the inequality, injustice and extremism that diminish Israel.” They publish anguished books justifying their positions with titles like “Fault Lines: Exploring the Complicated Place of Progressive American Jewish Zionism.” When Israel is attacked, however, they respond instinctively with solidarity and support. Their commitment to the Jewish state and to fellow Jews is unquestioned.

On the other side of the conflict are the kids, whose views on Israel are often very different. Some Gen Z progressive Jews participate in campus organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, a “collective of organizers that supports over 200 Palestine solidarity organizations on college campuses across occupied Turtle Island (U.S. and Canada).” On Oct. 12, as Israel began its response to Hamas’s attack on Israeli civilians, SJP’s national office posted on social media “condemning the Zionist project and their latest genocidal attack on the Palestinian people.”

Jewish Voice for Peace is a group that supports the campaign for boycott, divestment and sanctions and works alongside SJP. Its website boasts of 60 chapters, 200,000 supporters and 10,000 donors. The organization says it “is guided by a vision of justice, equality and freedom for all people.” It follows, for JVP, that “we unequivocally oppose Zionism because it is counter to those ideals.” On Oct. 14, the organization posted : “As U.S. Jews [we] believe that never again means never again for anyone, and that includes Palestinians. Never again is now.”

It seems probable that a relatively small proportion of Gen Z progressive Jews has been radicalized to the point of outright anti-Zionism. Many are conflicted about what they should think about Israel. Others would prefer not to focus on Israel at all. Yet it is fair to generalize by saying that many have been moved by the analogy, widespread on college campuses, between Israel and apartheid-era South Africa.

Today, Gen X and Gen Z progressive Jewish leaders and activists find themselves at odds with each other about Israel. The disagreement is painful for both sides, the way generational arguments often are. The middle-aged progressives think the kids have failed to learn how important Israel should be for them as Jews. The kids think the old folks are mired in a discredited ideology.

I want to suggest that the generational rift reflects not two different conceptions of progressive Jewishness but two different visions of Israel, refracted through a common commitment to social justice. Progressive Judaism gives expression to what it considers the biblical values of justice, equality, freedom and the like. When the Holocaust and Israel became part of this social justice theology, both had to accord with it. The Holocaust became a moral lesson of Never Again on par with the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt. Israel became a model of aspirational redemption, a role it could play only because it was possible to imagine the Jewish state as liberal and democratic.

If Israel does not embody the values of liberal democracy, however, it cannot serve as a moral ideal for progressive Jews whose beliefs mandate universal human dignity and equality. In the starkest possible terms, a God of love and justice cannot bless or desire a state that does not seek to provide equality, dignity, or civil and political rights to many of the people living under its authority.

To progressive Jews, a state that denies equal treatment to its subjects is neither democratic nor properly Jewish. Nor is it democratic in the American progressive political sense. From this it follows that for sincere, committed progressive Jews, it would be a betrayal of their Jewish commitments to remain Zionists if Israel does not match the ideals of liberal democracy.

Zionists who are shocked by this development have forgotten that progressive Judaism was long skeptical of Zionism because Jewish progressives historically saw Jewishness as a set of moral teachings, not a national identity. Israeli Zionists often assume that progressives are irreligious (in Hebrew, hiloni), as secular Israelis typically describe themselves. This is mistaken. Today’s Israeli Zionists sometimes think and act as though American Jewish progressives owe Israel a duty of loyalty. For Jewish progressives, however, the higher duty of loyalty is owed to divine principles of love and justice.

One can feel sympathy for the generation of Jewish progressives who made Israel central to their theology. On one hand, the association is as powerful as ever: Images of Israelis murdered and taken hostage recall the horrors of the Holocaust. On the other hand, Israel is a real-world nation-state populated by Israelis whose beliefs and views differ from those of American Jewish progressives. With its geopolitical and domestic political struggles, Israel has driven the older generation of progressives into turmoil that can be resolved only by holding fast to an interpretation of Israel’s form of political governance that might not convince their own grandchildren.

The most thoughtful of the young progressives also face a deep challenge. They believe in the teachings of social justice that compel them to social action. But they also find that they cannot avoid what they see as the broken reality of Israel.

Their great-grandparents, if they were Reform Jews, had the option of de-emphasizing Israel, almost to the point of ignoring Zionism. Before the state of Israel existed, they did not need to reconcile their beliefs about Judaism as a private, diasporic religion with the aspirations of Zionist Jews. Even after the state arose, it was possible for a time to treat it as separate from Jewish thought, practice and identity.

The young progressives do not have this luxury. They inherited a form of Judaism that already incorporated Israel into its theology. They do not know how to be Jews without engaging Israel. Yet the content of their broader theology — their beliefs about Jewish morality and tikkun ‘olam — make support of Israel difficult or even repugnant.

Their solution — their Jewish, progressive, sincerely felt solution — is to express their belief in social justice by criticizing or condemning Israel for its failures of equality, liberty, dignity and human rights.

It emerges that young progressive Jewish critics of Israel feel an unstated connection to Israel even as they resist and reject it. They feel no commitment to the existing state. But they do feel a particular need to criticize Israel because it matters to their worldview as Jews. They cannot easily ignore Israel, as early Reform Jews ignored Zionism. So they engage Israel — through the vehicle of progressive critique. The phrase “ not in our name ” captures the sense of personal implication in Israel’s conduct that both marks and challenges their sense of connection.

This is why many young progressive Jews are at the forefront of the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses. Difficult as it is for older generations to accept, the cause is not self-hatred. It is, rather, that criticism of Israel and support for the Palestinian cause is the essence of their progressive Jewish self-expression.

As today’s college students become adults and gradually assume leadership of their movements, progressive Judaism will have to work out its long-term attitude toward Israel. One possibility is for progressive Jews to tack away from the focus on Israel, to engage their Jewishness in other ways — familial, spiritual and personal. This would entail real theological change.

But so would embracing simultaneously a God of loving social justice and a state that rejects liberal democracy. Israel will not change just because progressive American Jews want it to. They will have to find their own answers to the looming crisis facing them — and soon, before a new generation finds itself alienated from a Jewishness whose inner contradictions it cannot reconcile.

At the individual level, Jews who want to think less about Israel also face serious challenges because Jewishness is a collective identity. If most Jews self-define in relation to Israel, positively or negatively, it is hard for any Jews to choose not to do so.

Yet a turn to a Jewishness that is more personal, familial and spiritual and less national-political may be the inevitable result, even if no formal movement within Jewish life consciously adopts such a policy. If this happens, Jews will have to draw more than ever on their rich traditions of faith, doubt, struggle and love — and do so as families, rather than as a nation.

About guest opinion submissions

The Washington Post accepts opinion articles on any topic. We welcome submissions on local, national and international issues. We publish work that varies in length and format, including multimedia. Submit a guest opinion or read our guide to writing an opinion article .

  • Opinion | I want to support Trump. He keeps making that harder for me. March 14, 2024 Opinion | I want to support Trump. He keeps making that harder for me. March 14, 2024
  • Opinion | The plants that can grow in your backyard are changing. Look up your area. March 13, 2024 Opinion | The plants that can grow in your backyard are changing. Look up your area. March 13, 2024
  • Opinion | All that is true about aging is illuminated on a walk March 14, 2024 Opinion | All that is true about aging is illuminated on a walk March 14, 2024

social justice essay definition

IMAGES

  1. ≫ The Development Of The Social Justice System Free Essay Sample on

    social justice essay definition

  2. EDU-330 WK 7 Social Justice Essay

    social justice essay definition

  3. Social Justice Essay

    social justice essay definition

  4. Social Justice Essay

    social justice essay definition

  5. ≫ Importance of Social Justice Free Essay Sample on Samploon.com

    social justice essay definition

  6. social justice essay

    social justice essay definition

COMMENTS

  1. Social justice

    social justice, in contemporary politics, social science, and political philosophy, the fair treatment and equitable status of all individuals and social groups within a state or society.

  2. PDF Social justice: Concepts, principles, tools and challenges

    Social justice is a normative concept centred on the notion of fairness and the principles of equality, equity, rights and participation. ... There is no generally accepted definition of social justice. The contemporary understanding of this normative concept has its roots in political philosophy, but different disciplines - including ...

  3. Faculty Essay: What is social justice?

    In textbooks, researchers and educators define social justice as "involving the recognition of the existence of social injustices based upon being a member of a non-dominant or marginalized social group."

  4. What Does Social Justice Mean?

    Participation Who gets to have a say in society? Social justice isn't possible if only a few voices are respected. Unfortunately, the voices of the marginalized and vulnerable are often silenced in favor of those with more wealth, cultural influence, and political power.

  5. 8 Tips For Writing A Social Justice Essay

    When writing a social justice essay, you should brainstorm for ideas, sharpen your focus, identify your purpose, find a story, use a variety of sources, define your terms, provide specific evidence and acknowledge opposing views. #1. Brainstorm creatively Before you start writing your social justice essay, you need a topic.

  6. What is Social Justice?

    United Nations "Social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal economic, political and social rights and opportunities. Social workers aim to open the doors of access and opportunity for everyone, particularly those in greatest need." National Association of Social Workers "Social justice encompasses economic justice.

  7. Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning

    Social Justice: History, Purpose and Meaning Social Science and Public Policy Published: 27 October 2017 Volume 54 , pages 541-548, ( 2017 ) Cite this article Download PDF Aims and scope Allan C. Ornstein 50k Accesses 11 Citations 4 Altmetric Explore all metrics

  8. Social justice

    Social justice is justice in relation to a fair balance in the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. [1]

  9. PDF Justice as Freedom, Fairness, Compassion, and Utilitarianism: How My

    Finally, justice means "conformity to truth, fact, or reason." I have my own conception of jus tice which is consistent with many of the above definitions. My sense of justice emerged early in life and has evolved over the years. In this essay, I offer my definition of justice and discuss specific life experiences that led to its emergence.

  10. Writing Through the Lens of Social Justice

    WD Editor-at-Large Tyler Moss makes the case for reporting on issues of social justice in freelance writing—no matter the topic in this article from the July/August 2021 issue of Writer's Digest. Tyler Moss. Jun 23, 2022. Last February, at a virtual event put on by my alma mater, Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, I ...

  11. A Definition Of Social Justice: [Essay Example], 3042 words

    As stated social justice is the key fundamental in valuing of 'fairness and equity in resources, rights and treatment for marginalized individuals and groups of people, who do not share equal power in society because of their immigration, racial, ethnic, age, socio economic, religious heritage, physical ability, or sexual orientation status grou...

  12. Social Justice Meaning and Main Principles Explained

    Social justice refers to the fair division of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. It emphasizes fairness in how society divides its social resources. One of the most famous...

  13. 200 Social Justice Essay Topics for Students

    March 15, 2024. Words. 2292 (10 min read) Crafting essays on social justice empowers students to articulate their perspectives on the vast spectrum of challenges that confront our societies. It encourages a deep dive into the complexities of societal structures and the mechanisms of oppression and privilege that define our lived realities.

  14. Social Justice Essay

    Social justice is an idea of a general public where each individual is dealt with fairly, without segregation dependent on budgetary status, race, gender, nationality, and so forth. You can also find more Essay Writing articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

  15. Justice

    1. Justice: Mapping the Concept 1.1 Justice and Individual Claims 1.2 Justice, Charity and Enforceable Obligation 1.3 Justice and Impartiality 1.4 Justice and Agency 2. Justice: Four Distinctions 2.1 Conservative versus Ideal Justice 2.2 Corrective versus Distributive Justice 2.3 Procedural versus Substantive Justice

  16. (PDF) Social Justice

    Social justice concerns the fairness with which the goods and burdens arising from collective life are shared among members of society. ... On that definition, social . ... Essays in Social ...

  17. (PDF) Social Justice Theory

    2796 SSocial Justice Theory. competencies and decrease problems in young people. in order to empower them (W olf 2005). They strive to. give youth the knowledge and skills needed to more ...

  18. Social justice in health system; a neglected component of academic

    How can academic institutions promote social justice in health systems? This article explores this neglected component of health research and education, and proposes a framework for integrating social justice principles into health system analysis and action. The article also discusses the challenges and opportunities for advancing social justice in health systems in the context of the COVID ...

  19. Social Justice Essays

    3 Dimensions of Social Justice: Historical, Cultural, and Strategies 1 page / 520 words Social justice is a concept that has been a driving force in societal progress and change for centuries.

  20. Social Justice in Education: Definition, Importance and Examples

    What is Social Justice in Education: General Definition. To define social justice in education is a real challenge. You need knowledge of the principles and practices to promote equity and equality. ... Writing essays on social justice in education is a rewarding and challenging task. When having troubles with academic essays, feel free to ...

  21. Social Justice Essay

    about social justice in its dif ferent exhibits for social justice. The first source was "February One," which is a story of the Greensboro four young college freshman: Ezell Blair , Jr ., David Richmond, F ranklin M cCain, and Joseph McNeil.

  22. Social Justice Key Terminology and Cultural Identifiers

    Essay Pre-Write Part 1: Social Justice Key Terminology Term Definition School or Classroom Setting Description. Social Justice Social justice requires ensuring that every individual has equal access to possibilities, arrives at their full potential, and engages fully in what society as a whole has to offer (Hytten &Bettez, 2011).

  23. Finding Humanity in Our Criminal Justice System

    A young man in a hooded sweatshirt stepped up to the car's driver's-side window, raised an automatic pistol to the glass, and started shooting. By the time the shooter finished, 21 cartridges ...

  24. Definition of Racism: from Historical Roots to Modern Impact

    A Definition Of Social Justice Essay Before considering social justice, it is important to understand why it matters. Social justice is a powerful idea in society today, buts its origins and meanings are partially unclear.

  25. Essay on Social Justice

    Social justice, a multifaceted concept, is the fair distribution of opportunities, privileges, and resources within a society. It encompasses dimensions like economic parity, gender equality, environmental justice, and human rights.

  26. Opinion

    The social justice strand of progressive Judaism transferred well to the United States. An iconic photograph, taken on March 21, 1965, sums up its essence. Seven people, arms linked, lead the ...