New Thinking about Social Justice

We all hunger to live in a just world. Most of us work constantly, in ways great and small, to promote justice. But what is justice? The classic definition—the “constant and perpetual will to render to each what is due him” (Justinian n.d.)—is a solid foundation on which to build. But what is social justice? At this point, there is considerable disagreement. For many, the term social justice is baffling and useless, with no real meaning. Most who use it argue that social justice is the moral fairness of the system of rules and norms that govern society. Do these rules work so that all persons get what is due to them as human beings and as members of the community? Shifting from the will of individuals in rendering justice to the outcome of the system of rules in achieving justice can be a dangerous leap. To some, it suggests that virtually every inequality arises because the rules of the game are unfair and that the state must intervene whenever there are unequal outcomes. The dangers of this leap are the primary focus of the symposium that fills up the pages of this issue of The Independent Review. In this symposium, fourteen authors have accepted the Independent Institute’s challenge to “explore, reassess, and critique the concept of social justice—relating it to ongoing debates in economics, history, philosophy, politics, public policy, religion, and the broader culture.” We organized the symposium because many thinkers pondering “social justice” have reached for something great but have failed in their grasp. Because of this gap, the term social justice has acquired considerable baggage. For some people, it encapsulates the highest aspirations of everything that is right, but for others it embodies their darkest fears. Progressives often venerate the term, and it animates the core of their policy prescriptions, whereas classical liberals often see it as “inimical to the classical liberal tradition” (as Vincent Geloso and Philip Magness put it in their essay). The latter warn that “social justice” has been fashioned into a cudgel used by those pretending to the higher ground in their militant rent seeking. Thomas Sowell admonished that “social justice” is merely a fig leaf for wrongdoing: “Envy was once considered to be one of the seven deadly sins before it became one of the most admired virtues under its new name, ‘social justice’” (1999, 77).