Concerning Justice

Abstract

A bout a year ago, as we began to take the reins of this journal, masses took to the streets in protest against the police killing of George Floyd. They mobilized for justice for Floyd, of course, but also against the systemic injustice that infiltrates every aspect of life in America. These concerns overwhelmed whatever worries about the virus had kept us socially distant and isolated in our homes. Scholars conventionally parse justice into four types: procedural, retributive, distributive, and restorative. But justice is always a matter of striving for people to get what they deserve and deserve what they get. With the notable exception of John Rawls, whose A Theory of Justice we revisit in this issue, we seem more equipped to identify injustice than to define what justice is or ought to be. Perhaps that is because the line between injustice and misfortune is porous and, ultimately, a political question, and because the powerful have a stake in casting injustices endured by the powerless as merely bad luck or their own responsibility. Even when confronted with what Judith Shklar called the "faces of injustice," we retreat and reduce them to something easily resolved or repaired, rather than tackling the pervasive and deeper structures of inequality and oppression. Misgivings with this pattern of quick, superficial fixes led Alicia Garza, co-founder of Black Lives Matter, to ask, "Are we going to use this moment to tinker with what is or are we going to use this moment to transform toward what can be?" 1 Faces of injustice are everywhere. That George Floyd's killer was found guilty of second-and third-degree murder and manslaughter may approach justice, but we still await his sentencing for this crime and, in the process, inevitably endorse a