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Freedom is not to be contrasted with justice: a just society is a free society. But a free society is one that provides as much real—not just formal—freedom as possible to all, and not just to a few. There is no a priori reason why either pure capitalism or pure socialism should be optimal according to this conception.

This chapter opens with the problem of how, with the advent of modern democracy, no executive decision ever satisfies everyone. It also discusses the concept of the good society as one that is abstract and subjective, being defined in terms of justice. Essentially, a good society is a just society because the rights of every citizen are secured. The chapter also states how philosophers have defined the good or just society and the different permutations and variations of such definitions, even amounting to stark disagreements. It also discusses collective dreams or awake dreams as part of national character. These dreams are Liberty, Equality, Efficiency, and Community, making up the four “great themes of political argument”. The purpose of this book is to overcome the value conflicts resulting from different people having different dreams.

This chapter discusses, in the context of institutional law reform and direct social justice advocacy, why law students should become involved in law reform, arguing that law schools should do more than equip their students to be good legal technicians. Law schools should also instil in their students an understanding of, as well as a commitment to, what the law should be in a just society. In particular, the chapter consider two law reform oriented projects that adopt elements of the clinical method to inculcate in law students a broader understanding of the role practicing lawyers can play to achieve systemic justice: the internship program at the Australian Law Reform Commission, and the Social Justice Advocacy Project housed within the University of New South Wales Law Faculty.

This chapter explores the use of legal literacy projects and their role in the clinical legal education movement in India. It explains how legal literacy is particularly important in India because the effective implementation of laws and regulations aimed at securing a just and fair society remain incomplete as long as the common population does not have adequate information about them, and that good governance is linked to legal literacy because the state's mandate to ensure justice and equity means little in practice due to a lack of effective implementation. The chapter includes a description of law school-based legal literacy clinics as they have existed in India for many years, as well as a description of a novel legal literacy project aimed at empowering villagers in rural areas to work toward good governance. It argues that law schools have a great potential to steer legal literacy projects, and that clinical programs can play a critical role in shaping legal literacy projects to achieve their desired goals.

This chapter provides a commentary that interprets the original text and assesses its historical accuracy. It assesses the fifth book of Plato's Republic, which is one of the major transitions in the unfolding design of the Republic books. It also explains how the fifth book marks a turning-point that led the conversation in the direction of new and startlingly radical proposals for the social structure of the just society. The chapter prompts the cardinal suggestion of the need for philosopher-rulers, which in turn generated the expression of a visionary metaphysics. It discusses how the fifth book takes on a dramatic character comparable to the openings of many Platonic works, which refers to the larger group of listeners and conveys a lively sense of the participants' personal engagement in the occasion.

Chapter 5 completes the argument on honorable business by specifying a “hierarchy of moral value” linking the individual businessperson’s activities to the purpose of a firm within a properly functioning market economy that is itself part of a just and humane society. If these relationships have been correctly described, the individual businessperson should be able to give an account of his or her professional activities that connects them all the way up the chain of moral purpose to the kind of society in which we should all want to live. The chapter also looks at the increase in material prosperity the world has experienced since approximately 1800 and connects that prosperity to the “hierarchy of moral value.” The chapter considers the role of government and regulation in the creation of prosperity and explores the extent to which the present argument connects to ethical theories of deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics.

Accounts of interracialism in white jazz autobiography may best be viewed as works in progress toward a more just society, comparable to the growing movement for gender justice in the contemporary jazz world. Unlike the more unsparing critiques of white appropriation and theft that leave little space for the positive elements of interracialism in popular culture, this book resists the cynicism and despair that come from the belief that individuals are powerless in the face of systemic racism; rather, it proposes a reading of jazz autobiography that stresses the importance of individuals in breaking down the social structures upon which racist laws and institutions depend. Finally, it proposes that the accounts of these autobiographers—from the most embracing to the most virulent—provide rich material for teaching and studying twentieth-century US race history and offer paths for resisting the intolerance of our present time.

In this chapter, Kimberly Jenkins Robinson concludes this volume by highlighting many of the lessons that emerge from the chapters. She acknowledges the consensus among the authors regarding the urgent need for new and impactful reforms that close opportunity and achievement gaps. She highlights the compelling justifications for a renewed federal commitment to equity and excellence given the failure of states to sustain commitments to equity and excellence for all students. She notes that several authors emphasize the importance of federal reforms that move beyond tinkering at the margins of educational opportunity and achievement. The authors in the volume also concur that a just society demands access to a high-quality education. Robinson explains that the collective insights of this volume establish that among the array of potential reforms, a federal right to education warrants serious consideration. She concludes by explaining how to forge a path toward a federal right to education, including building on a recent unprecedented public commitment by state education chiefs to advance educational equity.

This chapter provides a substantive overview of many of the main issues and lines of argument in the book. In doing so, the chapter considers the “Utopia as Dystopia” notion in terms of what would be truly and fully just, given that a fully just society could be a fine place to live. This form of utopian thinking is also analyzed under the principles of full social justice. It defends the simple claim that it is no defect in a theory or conception of social justice if it sets such a high standard that there is little or no chance of its being met, by any society, ever. Such a theory could nevertheless be true. Following this is a discussion about unrealistically high standards or principles of full social justice.

In an attempt to broaden the discussion about the intellectual goals and methodological approaches that define the field of criminology, this chapter presents the case for including the notion of social justice — both theoretically and as a matter of praxis — for consideration in the future directions that the discipline of criminology might take. This is done as a way to challenge the epistemological tendency to bifurcate the understanding of what criminology is where, on the one hand, a community of scholars advocate that criminology should be understood principally as a theoretical discipline concerned primarily with generating ideas about the social context of the law and the philosophical meanings associated with social contracts, norm violations, and other matters related to rights, privileges, and obligations; while on the other hand, an esteemed cohort of criminologists focus on producing applied or policy- oriented research that explores solutions to the problems of crime. The goal of this chapter is neither to engage in this debate nor to expose the problems associated with the existence of fractions in the field; rather, it argues that scholars, policy-makers, interventionists, and activists, regardless of their orientation to the primary function of criminology, should prioritize the intellectual work in the discipline that contributes to the creation of a more just society.

This concluding chapter considers how to provide free time, asking how much free time citizens are entitled and how citizens' claims to free time are to be guaranteed. For citizens to possess their fair share of free time, they must both have their fair amount of free time, and have it under fair conditions to make effective use of it. Recognizing citizens' claims to free time provides grounds to bolster and adjudicate a range of contested employment and welfare policies and distinctive labor regulations. Recognizing free time as a resource that is valuable to citizens in the same way as the resources of income and wealth also provides grounds to challenge the presumption in favor of unceasing economic growth as a social goal. The chapter concludes with the suggestion that in the just society all citizens would have their fair shares of free time.

Chapter 2 provides a conceptual rationale for public administration to play a proactive role in the pursuit of social justice objectives. It firstly situates the administrative function within a broader set of perspectives on the role of state, its size and its role in the delivery of supports and services to citizens, perspectives that clearly impact on the shape of the administrative system. In the same vein, it promotes the public administration system as a basic institution of democracy, one that has a consequent responsibility to create the conditions for a socially just state. Seen in this way, public administration is challenged to play a role in leading and facilitating citizens to establish the basis for fair co-operation and ‘a well-ordered society’. Recognising that not all perspectives on public administration assume such a starting point Chapter 2 also explores the war of ideas that exist between the more social justice oriented ideas of New Public Administration and the more efficiency oriented views associated with New Public Management.

This book examines policy interventions driven or influenced by human development or human security concerns and how a capability approach can be implemented to achieve more just societies and foster equal opportunities for individuals and groups across the social and class spectrum. It also analyses the discrepancies and obstacles that actual policies present to what a capability approach could mean in social policy practice. The primary goal of the capability approach is to advance democracy at the community, local and national level in ways that promote genuine possibilities for agency to enable everyone to actively participate in shaping public policy. The book considers how the capability approach has been conceptualised and operationalised into practice in different parts of the world, including India, Buenos Aires, South Africa, England and New York City.

Chapter 1acquaints readers with Padre David Rodríguez through a fascinating event: the Salvadoran state’s attempt to arrest him for a murder he did not commit. Sánchez next raises three key questions that govern the book’s development: (1) Why and when will a priest or peasant rebel; (2) why did traditional Catholicism become politically engaged and how did this choice affect the church; and (3) did the actions of progressive priests and nuns, like Rodríguez, help to produce a more just society in El Salvador? Here, Sánchez introduces the most salient argument of the book: that religious leaders were essential agents in the rise of El Salvador’s popular movement that began in the early 1970s. These religious leaders, however, did not organize the poor until new ideas emerged from the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), which called the church to side with the poor (the preferential option). This call was taken up by the 1968 Conference of Latin American Bishops, at Medellín, Colombia, and spread throughout all of Latin America soon thereafter.

Through the use of the integrated framework, practitioner–researchers can promote stakeholder inclusion within reflective praxis, ethics, and rigorous designs to support advancing an equitable society. At the core of practitioner–researchers’ writing and practice as evaluators, educators, and action researchers is the view of evaluation and action research as modes of inquiries that facilitate processes of transformation and change. This chapter addresses the need to implement (utilize) and share the results of inquiry for the improvement of practice, reminding readers of main points discussed throughout the text. It also addresses the philosophical nature of the improvement of contexts and societies. The chapter provides support for imagining societies that value continuous improvement and value learning leaders and organizations that seek to improve organizations using data and new knowledge to support sustainable change.