Tradition

Social justice

Overview

Social justice is justice in relation to the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society where individuals' rights are recognized and protected. In Western and Asian cultures, the concept of social justice has often referred to the process of ensuring that individuals fulfill their societal roles and receive their due from society. In the current movements for social justice, the emphasis has been on the breaking of barriers for social mobility, the creation of safety nets, and economic justice. Social justice assigns rights and duties in the institutions of society, which enables people to receive the basic benefits and burdens of cooperation. The relevant institutions often include taxation, social insurance, public health, public school, public services, labor law and regulation of markets, to ensure distribution of wealth, and equal opportunity.

Modernist interpretations that relate justice to a reciprocal relationship to society are mediated by differences in cultural traditions, some of which emphasize the individual responsibility toward society and others the equilibrium between access to power and its responsible use. Hence, social justice is invoked today while reinterpreting historical figures such as Bartolomé de las Casas, in philosophical debates about differences among human beings, in efforts for gender, ethnic, and social equality, for advocating justice for migrants, prisoners, the environment, and the physically and developmentally disabled.

While concepts of social justice can be found in classical and Christian philosophical sources, from early Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle to Catholic saints Augustine of Hippo and Thomas Aquinas, the term social justice finds its earliest uses in the late eighteenth century, albeit with unclear theoretical or practical meanings. The use of the term was subject to accusations of rhetorical flourish, perhaps related to amplifying one view of distributive justice. In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, in the early 1840s, Taparelli established the natural law principle that corresponded to the evangelical principle of brotherly love—i.e. social justice reflects the duty one has to one's other self in the interdependent abstract unity of the human person in society. After the Revolutions of 1848, the term was popularized generically through the writings of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.

In the late industrial revolution, Progressive Era American legal scholars began to use the term more, particularly Louis Brandeis and Roscoe Pound. From the early 20th century it was also embedded in international law and institutions; the preamble to establish the International Labour Organization recalled that "universal and lasting peace can be established only if it is based upon social justice." In the later 20th century, social justice was made central to the philosophy of the social contract, primarily by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice (1971). In 1993, the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action treats social justice as a purpose of human rights education.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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And of this latter there are two parts: because of transactions some are voluntary and some involuntary; voluntary, such as follow; selling, buying, use, bail, borrowing, deposit, hiring: and this class is called voluntary because the origination of these transactions is voluntary. The involuntary again are either such as effect secrecy; as theft, adultery, poisoning, pimping, kidnapping of slaves, assassination…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
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This does not belong to God, since, as the Apostle says: "Who hath first given to Him, and recompense shall be made him?" (Rom. 11:35). The other consists in distribution, and is called distributive justice; whereby a ruler or a steward gives to each what his rank deserves. As then the proper order displayed in ruling a family or any kind of multitude evinces justice of this kind in the ruler, so the order of the…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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But when a man has taken away the money of the citizens and made slaves of them, then instead of these dishonorable names, he is called happy and blessed, not only by the citizens but by all who hear of his having achieved the consummation of injustice. For injustice is censured because the censurers are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice. And thus, as I have shown…
John Dewey, Ethics
States what Social justice is; the author is tied to Social justice in the knowledge graph.
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Social justice

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