Global Distributive Justice

Abstract

A theory of distributive justice explains why certain individuals have particularly stringent claims to certain relative or absolute shares, quantities or amounts of something whose distribution over certain people must be justifiable to them. Alongside distributive justice there is also rectiflcatory justice, and perhaps other kinds. Yet because our concern mostly is with distributive justice, justice refers to distributive justice unless otherwise noted. Among moral prescriptions, it is the demands of justice that are the hardest ones to overrule or suspend. Justice plays its central role in human affairs because it enables persons to present claims of such stringency. “We can’t leave it to insurance companies to deliver justice,” South African writer J. M. Coetzee has the protagonist of his novel Disgrace say (2000, p 137). This is amusing precisely because of the stringency of justice (which renders it rather obvious that, indeed, we cannot leave justice to insurance companies). We speak about justice in the family, at the workplace or in competitions. There is justice as a personal virtue, a constitution of character or disposition to help ensure others have, or are, what they should have or be. Domestic distributive justice is also called “social justice.”