Social justice and social work are inextricably linked, but the relationship between the two is decidedly uneasy, fraught with tension, contradiction and conflict at both the ideological, conceptual and theoretical levels as well the levels of policy and practice. Three conceptions of social justice can be distinguished: legal justice, which often involves debates about retribution versus restitution; commutative justice that relates to interpersonal equity issues; and, distributive justice, which concerns the allocation of resources. In turn, we can identify three contrasting perspectives of distributive justice: libertarian, utilitarian and egalitarian. The libertarian view, which was particularly fashionable in new right political circles in the 1980s, is concerned with ensuring that individuals are free from coercion to share what they have rightfully acquired in the free market economy; it opposes welfare rights and the redistribution of resources by government. Whereas libertarians emphasize rights, the utilitarian view focuses on determining that which maximizes the greatest good for the greatest number; this approach has been used to justify both the redistribution and the unequal distribution of resources in the interest of the common good. The egalitarian perspective rejects the utilitarian notion that inequalities may be justified by reference to a greater common good, and regards the redistribution of resources as a moral obligation. Of the three perspectives, egalitarianism is most consistent with a social work and social justice agenda (Van Soest, 1995, p. 1811). The American Philosopher, John Rawls (1972), developed two egalitarian principles of justice: first, that basic liberties must be equal because citizens of a just society must have the same basic rights; second, that there should be a fair equality of opportunity and inequalities in power, wealth, income and other resources must not exist unless they benefit the worst-off. More recently, the Commission on Social Justice in the United Kingdom rejected the new right view that human beings are merely selfish individuals, for whom there is ‘no such thing as society’. The commission argued that ‘people are essentially social creatures, dependent on one another for the fulfillment of their needs and potential, and willing to recognize their respons