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.[12] 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.[13][14][15]
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.[16][17][18] The use of the term was early on subject to accusations of redundancy and of rhetorical flourish, perhaps but not necessarily related to amplifying one view of distributive justice.[19] In the coining and definition of the term in the natural law social scientific treatise of Luigi Taparelli, in the early 1840s,[20] 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.[21] After the Revolutions of 1848, the term was popularized generically through the writings of Antonio Rosmini-Serbati.[22][23]
^John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (1971) 4, "the principles of social justice: they provide a way of assigning rights and duties in the basic institutions of society and they define the appropriate distribution of benefits and burdens of social co-operation."
^J. Zajda, S. Majhanovich, V. Rust, Education and Social Justice, 2006, ISBN1-4020-4721-5
^Clark, Mary T. (2015). "Augustine on Justice," a Chapter in Augustine and Social Justice. Lexington Books. pp. 3–10. ISBN978-1-4985-0918-3.
^Paine, Thomas. Agrarian Justice. Printed by R. Folwell, for Benjamin Franklin Bache.
^Behr, Thomas. Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought (Washington DC: Catholic University of American Press, December 2019).
^Luigi Taparelli, SJ, Saggio teoretico di dritto naturale appogiato sul fatto (Palermo: Antonio Muratori, 1840-43), Sections 341-364.
^Behr, Thomas. Social Justice and Subsidiarity: Luigi Taparelli and the Origins of Modern Catholic Social Thought(Washington DC: Catholic University of American Press, December 2019), pp. 149-154.
^Rosmini-Serbati, The Constitution under Social Justice. trans. A. Mingardi (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2007).
^Pérez-Garzón, Carlos Andrés (14 January 2018). "Unveiling the Meaning of Social Justice in Colombia". Mexican Law Review. 10 (2): 27–66. ISSN2448-5306. Archived from the original on 29 March 2018. Retrieved 28 March 2018.