Justice Claims Research Articles

Bringing a justice lens to ocean access

AbstractMaritime spaces have transformed rapidly the last decades. Open waters and beaches have become restricted and sometimes privatized enclosures. Different forms of extractivism have led to biodiversity loss and in particular to declining fish populations. Additionally, large-scale coastal and marine infrastructure projects, such as deepening and widening of shipping channels, have destroyed important habitats. These profound socio-ecological transformations have had an impact on geographies of resource access and control and consequently on the ability of actors to access, use and benefit from coastal and marine space. Moreover, changes in the lending policies of local banks have posed additional and severe challenges for fishers’ ability to fish. Such processes effect in particular the livelihoods of coastal and small-scale fisher communities and consequently increase existing inequalities and injustices. We suggest to bring the literature on ocean justice and access and property into dialogue and develop a heuristic for analysing inequalities and justice claims. Based on qualitative case studies focussing on the Sicily (Italy), the Elbe estuary (Germany) and the Lofoten (Norway), we show that investigating access relations facilitates the identification of unequal societal relationships with nature. Our cases illustrate that power relations in which privatization processes and access relations are embedded, determine whether injustices can be translated into justice claims and how successful these claims are. Moreover, unequal socio-ecological relations are also influenced by what we call translocal justice. Translocal justice is often lost in processes of commodification, privatization and in the rescaling of political authority and power, as local ties and confidential relationships vanish.

Vigilantism and criminal governance

What do vigilantism and criminal governance have in common and different? Both build a political-social order at the local level with sanctions against breaking that order, establish a repertoire of lethal and non-lethal violence as part of those sanctions, sometimes build legitimacy, and develop within the framework of a low level of Rule of law. Between vigilantism and criminal governance there is an air of family, but the claims of justice that frame vigilantism make them like distant relatives.

Sustainable Sufficientarianism: Combining ‘Enough for all’ with Eco-Sufficiency

ABSTRACT Sufficientarianism is a theory of social justice that determines individual entitlements by setting a threshold of what is enough for a decent life. Sufficientarianism therefore seems to be a suitable ally for theories of climate justice, because it restricts claims of justice to a minimum. Furthermore, the notion of sufficiency has been theorized in ecological discourse, so there is pertinent conceptual overlap between the two perspectives. In this paper, I aim to combine sufficientarianism with eco-sufficiency. I will use a framework of needs to highlight different normative urgencies involved in practices that involve carbon emissions. However, as I will argue, the normative urgency of needs might cause problems for restricting emissions to levels that are compatible with planetary limits. In brief, the very aim of achieving sufficientarian justice might clash with the aim of eco-sufficiency. Sufficientarians should therefore critically engage with needs satisfiers as well, which are the means provided to satisfy needs. This step in my argument will be achieved through complementing sufficientarianism with an element of comparative justice, that is, interpersonal and diachronic considerations that help to determine the comparative urgency of claims. The overarching aim of sustainable sufficientarianism is to provide enough for everyone to live a decent life over time.

The Weight of Numbers: Counting Border Crossing Deaths and Policy Intent

Executive Summary This article explores how undocumented border crosser (UBC) deaths are counted as well as mis- and under-counted across the US southwest, and proposes a suite of policy remediations to standardize this process. An accurate count of UBC recovered remains is vital to understanding the scope of fatalities associated with border crossing, providing evidence accounting for the reciprocal relationship between US border enforcement and the incidence of migration-related death. To meaningfully intervene, it is insufficient to advocate only for more robust individual death investigations, though this is pivotal to forensically identify UBC decedents and unite them with their loved ones. Though identification and reunification of UBCs are the elements of forensic care most commonly attributed as humanitarian, the relationship between forensic investigation and international humanitarian principles is equally about accumulating primary evidence for policy intervention and justice claims on behalf of those who wrongfully die. Even if existing counting mechanisms do not provide the means for establishing this attribution between border-crossing deaths and border enforcement policy, this article lays out an argument for why they must do so and it makes recommendations for how this can take place. Necessarily, this article begins with a critique of existing mechanisms for counting UBC deaths, from the federal observation of such deaths by Customs and Border Protection, to the bureaucratic mechanisms for the collection of vital statistics authored at the local level. It then suggests means for improving accurate counting using the US Standard Certificate of Death. It particularly explores two aspects of the certificate, Manner of Death reporting and a section that asks death filers to describe how the death occurred, sections 37 and 43 respectively. Finally, it explores historical precedent for altering the standard death form at local and then national levels, positing that select amendments to the existing death certificate would be useful for standardizing how medicolegal death filers across the border and beyond can more accurately enumerate and characterize UBC deaths. Policy recommendations include the following, in order of immediacy: ● Jurisdictions across the US southwest must adopt standardized criteria for counting fatalities believed to be associated with undocumented border crossing. ● Despite some local formalization of UBC counting, current means of representing UBC status in vital records remains ad hoc across the US southwest and existing mechanisms for counting elude wider scale national recognition in vital statistics. The most straightforward and reliable method of standardization to ensure systematic representation of UBC deaths across the borderlands would be a UBC checkbox on the death certificate. This would require cooperation with state-level public health departments and legislatures. Precedent exists for changing the death form at the state level, facilitating, in some cases, for eventual inclusion of new components of the death certificate to be adopted on the US Standard Certificate of Death. This is recommended as a longer-term goal. ● Finally, there must be a means to characterize the deadly relationship between UBC fatalities and US border enforcement policy and practice in vital records where UBC Manners of Death are most often characterized as “Natural” or “Accidental.” Both are inaccurate. Unilaterally ensuring an accurate count leaves room for a trend already well underway in which agencies associated with border enforcement have cast UBC deaths as simply due to unfortunate heat-related accidents, resulting in legislation aimed to mitigate deaths that fails to address the role of border policy in causing deaths. This paper recommends that a new Manner of Death category could be useful beyond the border to represent non-capital crimes enforced by leveraging bodily harm.

Negotiating educational equities: Chinese middle-class parents’ distributive justice claims to school choice reform

Negotiating educational equities: Chinese middle-class parents’ distributive justice claims to school choice reform

Ideals versus realities of learning poverty and human rights

PurposeThis paper will identify and further explore the ideals versus realities of learning poverty and the consequential effects on our moral obligations and responsibilities. The wealthy nations are now under further pressure to recognise and realise their moral obligations to enabling social justice in the context of access, and distribution, of vaccines for the poorer nations. Learning poverty has always been a feature of our global economic, and institutional order, and has become an increasingly important factor in achieving justice.Design/methodology/approachThe study focusses on a human rights approach to learning poverty and the ideals versus the realities of what we are beginning to see in the times of a global pandemic. The major challenges to justice is inherent to the recognition that wealthy nations continue to have a pivotal role in the reduction of poverty. The identified major challenges in the context of learning poverty are: “nation states and the global pandemic”, “international interactions and learning poverty” and “global institutions and learning inequalities”. In particular, the authors explore the concept of ideals versus realities through three “challenges”, which continues to challenge any semblance of justice in the current global vaccine distribution. Nation states and borders, international interactions and global institutions remain barriers in overcoming what is becoming a reality of learning poverty.FindingsThis paper seeks to look beyond the economics of vaccine trade and seek a way to accept a moral claim of justice for all. The authors consider how wealthy nations are active participants in the emergence of learning poverty for many nations.Originality/valueBy exploring the ideals versus realities of learning poverty, and human rights, the authors highlight some of the challenges, and wealthy nations moral obligations, through the emergence of a new dimensional indicator of poverty, learning poverty.

The Hero, the White Savior, and the Smuggler: Criminalized Figures in the Landscape of Solidarity Toward Migrants

One recent shift in the ever-expanding crackdown on migration and implementation of a hostile environment for migrants in the EU has been the criminalization of migrant solidarity. Using various legal tools, EU governments have been trying to hinder solidarity actions from civil society. In particular, a narrative depicting civilians helping migrants as criminals has been elaborated by European organizations and strengthened by far-right groups and dominant press outlets. In reaction, a counter-narrative has been constructed and spread by pro-migrant groups and liberal media, which presents criminalized activists as criminalized heroes and their actions as humanitarian. Based on a critical discourse analysis of academic texts, press articles, and empirical research with pro-migrant activists, this article examines two criminal figures from the civilian search and rescue field: the “activist associated with smugglers” and its counterpart, the “criminalized hero.” Through the lens of figuration of crime and social justice, the article brings a new understanding of the de- and repoliticization processes that occur in the field of humanitarian help and migration. By analyzing these two figures, the paper also contributes to a better understanding of the competing moral orders underpinning criminal and social justice claims in the field of solidarity toward migrants. On the one hand, the figure of the activist associated with smuggler is part of a criminal justice narrative depicting migration as a threat to political, social, and economic stability. On the other hand, the criminalized hero figure includes a counter-narrative to this moral order based on the defense of a social justice frame of solidarity and the protection of human rights. Within the pro-migrant activist’s scene, the criminalized hero and its social justice frame are criticized for reproducing racist and post-colonial practices of humanitarianism.

Justice in the Practice of International Criminal Tribunals, in the Context of the Tasks of Contemporary International Humanitarian Law

Transitional justice, which today has become a widespread and very useful concept, which allows the transition from an authoritarian system to the rule of law, which aims to establish a democratic regime that respects human rights - and what is important not at the level of declarations and applicable methods, but, first of all, this must become the philosophical basis of his daily life. The purpose of transitional justice is to restore the dignity of the victims, to establish mutual trust between the antagonistic groups, to favor the institutional exchange necessary for a new relationship within the population that will allow the establishment of a state of law, including through an effective control of the practice of total or partial impunity. The various constitutive elements of transitional justice generally combine reparative measures of restorative justice (Truth and Reconciliation Commissions), meanwhile establishing parallel mechanisms of punitive justice (especially in relation to the main responsible or direct executors of the most serious crimes).2 On the other hand, transitional justice claims to reform the institutional system, restoring the primacy of law and ensuring the functioning of judicial institutions for the future, fighting in the meantime against impunity for the crimes committed during the previous period. In this sense, transitional justice pursues a multiple goal within the framework of an end to a conflict, in which other imperatives are imposed on government officials - the disarmament of combatant forces, the restoration of citizens' security, the compensation of victims and the restoration of the economy of devastated societies. After being neglected for a long time, the victim is at the center of current political concerns and is the object of a constantly growing interest, mainly in the criminal field and not in social discourses.3 But this phenomenon, positive from some aspects, is not without problems and arouses controversial debates among researchers and actors of the criminal world. This imposition of the victim seems to exist not only in the criminal system, but also in the current socio-political terrain. This predominance is observed in many Western states, lately becoming dominant to some extent both in international criminal law and in international humanitarian law, being taken into consideration the burden of victims in the status granted to them in armed conflicts. The participation of victims in the criminal procedure is generally a recent phenomenon, which seems to be far from being accepted. Victims played and play a secondary role in the tribunals previously established by the International Criminal Court (ICC).4 They were considered only as a means in the de facto absence of a participation or compensation system. Under the influence of strong pressures, the tendency to take into account the opinions and concerns of the victims, including admission in the criminal procedure, became visible in national and international law, and with the involvement of non-governmental organizations and states, the basis of a system was laid that provides for a relatively broad participation of victims in ICC trials. Even if its modalities are still the subject of harsh discussions, it is generally recognized that it is an important and useful tool that would allow victims of serious violations of human rights and international humanitarian law to be heard and to hope for possible reconciliation.5 The evolution of the process of increasing interest in victims is the result of political, social and legal tensions that started in the 1960s, with the implementation of state policies regarding victim compensation and the development of victim defense associations, being influenced by the social movement that opted for civil and women's rights. We find that taking the victim into consideration in social and penal policies has progressed in a meteorological manner. National and international investigations allowed taking into account the victims' dissatisfaction with the criminal system, which led to a genuine experience of secondary victimization, which has as a general consequence the tendency of a weak denunciation of the criminal acts to which they were subjected. They also emphasized the diversity and extent of trauma suffered by some victims, especially after going through interpersonal violence, such as rape or family violence. In addition, towards 1950, a new discipline had developed, a component of criminology, but which very quickly became autonomous - victimology. This field of research focuses on the study of the victim, on his psychological and physical reactions to the sustained achievement, but also on his experience of relying on the act of justice and society in general. These various findings gave rise to state structures to help victims, which have spread throughout the world. The victim thus became a political stake.

“Women Teachers’ Lobby”: Justice, Gender, and Politics in the Equal Pay Fight of the New York City Interborough Association of Women Teachers, 1906-1911

AbstractThis paper explores the movement of the New York City Interborough Association of Women Teachers (IAWT) for “equal pay for equal work” in teaching salaries, which it won in 1911. The IAWT’s success sheds light on the possibilities and limits of women teachers advocating for change within a feminized profession. Leading the movement were of a group of women teachers, organizing before woman’s suffrage and in an era of sex-differentiated work and pay, who convinced the city’s public and state’s legislators that they deserved pay equal to what men teachers received. They did so by strategic maneuvering in city and state politics and making equal pay look reasonable. And they did so by narrowly defining their goals and leaning on their identities as women to push a theoretically sex-neutral claim of justice. Their success, though limited, was nonetheless a victory in shifting ideas about women’s societal and professional status in New York City and the state.

Framing just transition: The case of sustainable food system transition in Finland

AbstractJustice in sustainability transitions requires states to design transition policies that ‘leave no‐one behind’. Emphasising fairness, however, may entail slowing or scaling down the impetus of sustainability transition. To examine this risk empirically, we analysed how stakeholders frame justice in deliberating policy measures needed to support just transition in agricultural land use and dietary changes, the cornerstones of building healthier and climate friendlier food systems in Finland. The results show that justice frames focus on the potential impacts of transition, largely ignore global scale, and prioritise social justice claims at the cost of environmental ambition. To create just and environmentally effective policies, policymakers need to consider justice at the level of policy‐mixes combining environmental and social policies. Furthermore, they need to acknowledge systemic injustices present in existing systems while striving towards just transition.

“A game show at the end of the world” The currency of youth in UN climate summitry

ABSTRACT What do the lived experiences of young people tell us about the currency of youth in United Nations (UN) climate summitry, at a time in which youth is endowed with symbolic capital? Initially, self-representing as ‘youth’ in and around UN climate summits appears to open doors for young people, particularly since the creation of additional youth engagement mechanisms that followed the 2019 Fridays for Future protests. Based on four years of fieldwork, this article shows that youth can be both a limited and limiting currency in global climate politics. Indeed, the currency is finite, leading different youth groups to compete for speaking slots and visibility. Further, an increasing amount of young people have come to realize that youth is a limiting currency to advocate for environmental justice claims. These findings, which would not have been possible without an ethnographic and collaborative approach, contribute to existing calls challenging the ways that theory, research, and practice are oriented toward young people in climate politics.

Claudio Zulian’s Sin miedo: Film as Action and Memory

This study analyzes the collective pursuit of justice and memory in Sin miedo [Without Fear] (Zulian, 2017). The documentary is a grassroots implementation of a 2012 Inter-American Court of Human Rights judgement. The relatives of desaparecidos/as during the Guatemalan military dictatorship were the catalysts for the film’s creation. This study focuses on a filmic analysis of techniques, research on the history of the internal armed conflict in Guatemala, and relevant information on the family members’ hunt for justice, such as the detailing and connection of common crimes to politically motivated ones. A continued climate of impunity in Guatemala is challenged by the protagonists as they utilize the collection of testimonials and evidence to break cultures of enforced silence and fear. Zulian’s documentary claims new ground as it provides the relatives with the means to fulfill the court mandate and to actively construct and position their forcibly disappeared family members’ stories and their own within Guatemala’s historical narrative. Through their dynamic involvement in Sin miedo (2017), the relatives participate in the conversion of film into action and memory. These findings support grassroots movements in (re)shaping dominant narratives through media like film; they are also a reminder of the power of silenced voices and of the varied forms that claims for justice can take, from court mandates to documentaries.

Indigenous and traditional communities’ ways of knowing and being in planetary justice

ABSTRACT This article contributes to the recent discussion on planetary justice by analyzing two environmental justice struggles around mining projects that impact indigenous peoples and traditional communities in Brazil and South Africa. Though locally based, these ecological distribution conflicts are connected to global chains, impacting the whole planet. We focus on peoples’ demands and to what extent their ways of knowing and being were considered in public consultation and litigation. Moreover, we reflect on what we can learn from these struggles. Our argument goes beyond distributive or procedural justice claims as these peoples are resisting the ontological erasure of their worlds, demanding to be consulted and participate in their own terms. These cases teach us that a deeper understanding of planetary justice entails diverse considerations of time, space, and the relations between human and non-humans. Assessing these struggles offer concrete ways to reimagine just relations, for many worlds in one planet.

The Resilience of Borders: Law and Migration in Contemporary Performances

Legal philosopher Hans Lindahl argues that the regulation of immigration is, above all moral considerations, a political issue. When one tries to assess the problem of territorial boundaries – and their transgression – as a question of distributive justice, political philosophers easily mix, not even surreptitiously, moral arguments with political and legal considerations. Lindahl refers to Michael Walzer, who asserts the primacy of the community and consequently bounded justice, and to Jürgen Habermas, who’s idea of boundless justice makes the notion of a nation-state irrelevant: one world polity has, by definition, no boundaries and thus no immigration issues. But Lindahl replies that law, and immigration law in particular, is forced to create boundaries by its very nature. After all, law structurally defines diverse groups of interest, and the actions of individuals – belonging or not belonging to one group or another – are always placed or misplaced, i.e. situated inside or outside the realm of the law. Even a world legislature and a universal jurisdiction would have to decide who can claim her/his rights, or who cannot. But since law is also, by definition, contingent – it can be changed in any direction – the claim of distributive justice, as a form of moral pressure, cannot be discarded easily. It shouldn’t be discarded, to be sure, it should be politicized. In recent performances about immigration, the moral indignation has clearly had the upper hand, sometimes with a touch of cynicism. In Necropolis, Arkadi Zaides creates a fictitious city of the dead, where only those who died in their attempt to reach Europe are allowed. From a massive collection of data about the victims of Fortress Europe, his performance transforms into a horrifying portrait of their ‘human remains’. Het Salomonsoordeel, a documentary, participatory monologue by Ilay den Boer involves the audience in the moral dilemmas of the ‘decider’ of the Dutch immigration and asylum agency, where den Boer worked as an intern. In The Voice of Fingers, Thomas Bellinck confronts his friendship with asylum seeker Said Reza Adib with the harsh reality of migrants as ‘data subjects’, identified by their fingerprints. The question arises of whether artistic representations of immigration issues sufficiently tackle the political challenges of global mobility – in this collapsing world of (civil) wars, climate disasters, and economical inequalities – and the challenges it poses for the affluent societies we are living in. Is it possible, or even meaningful, for theater-makers to try to relate their compassion – as a moral sentiment – to the frameworks of contingent policies and, subsequently, to the strict taxonomies of legislation?

Troubling the spatial politics of Green New Deals: Towards a Youngian approach to global justice

As a whole, the Green New Deal (GND) is discussed as one of the most promising political projects to address social justice targets together with climate goals. Yet, as most individual GNDs focus on the national level, concerns about global justice have largely remained absent from early debates, leading some to conclude that the GND reproduces neocolonial and extractivist schemes. To analyse programs for a GND in relation to issues of global justice requires an analytical framework able to evaluate justice claims in extended geographies. Drawing on the later work of political theorist Iris Marion Young, we develop a framework that foregrounds three principles: shared responsibilities for environmental harm of global reach, self-determination for those effected by these harms, and a forward-looking political responsibility to address the structures producing and sustaining injustice. We employ this framework to conduct a qualitative content analysis of four selected GND proposals from the UK, the EU and the US. This analysis indicates that all selected GNDs acknowledge in principle the global reach of responsibilities and formulate (limited) proposals to address these in different fields. However, they do not think of global justice in terms of a forward-looking notion of political responsibility that acknowledges the need of structural reforms and the self-determination of those experiencing harm. Instead, when addressing justice beyond the level of the nation state, these GNDs fall back on a notion of distributive justice. Based on the work of Young, we conclude with a set of propositions for global democratic structures that would support the outlined principles of global justice.

Informal social group and Lok Sangharsh Samiti (LSS): informal collaboration of Dalits for resistance and ‘land rights’

ABSTRACT Dalits, as ex-untouchable caste groups, are at the bottom of India’s hierarchical social structure and are on the margin in the social, educational, cultural, political, and economic spheres of society. Land is one of the vital resources which does not merely determine one’s socio-economic condition but also regulates social position in society. The historical marginalization and exclusion of Dalits denied them land ownership, which affects their socio-economic well-being. Therefore, the denial of Dalits from access to land ownership is not merely visible in their measurable socio-economic condition but also in their social position in society. However, over the period, the social and political mobilization of Dalits has emerged as a tool against structural discrimination and social exclusion, which contributed to their social and economic well-being. Therefore, drawing upon the experience of Lok Sangharsh Samiti (LSS) – an informal social group of Dalit community which was formed in 2002 for land rights in the District of West Champaran, Bihar, the article argues that collective struggle, informal collaboration, and social mobilization of Dalits contributed enormously to their land rights; and thus, Dalits are making a claim for social justice.

Caring feminist states? Paternalistic feminist foreign policies and the silencing of Indigenous justice claims in Sweden and Canada

ABSTRACT The self-identification of Sweden and Canada as exceptionally caring and ethical states committed to the goal of global gender justice has been reinforced through their adoption of feminist foreign policies (FFPs). However, despite the enthusiasm surrounding the potential of feminism as an ethical approach to foreign policy making, critics have drawn attention to the many failings of FFPs that hamper their ability to bring about transformative change. This article posits that the shortcomings of Swedish and Canadian FFPs are rooted in an unacknowledged legacy of colonial power relations. It is from within this history of violence that Swedish and Canadian practices of feminism both “at home” and “abroad” can be seen as a re-articulation of colonialism. Through two illustrative narrative readings of reconciliation efforts, the article examines state provisions of hierarchically imposed, paternalistic expressions of care that silence Indigenous “articulations of self-care.” As such, it addresses a significant gap in the literature on FFPs by highlighting the risk of self-proclaimed “caring” feminist states reproducing colonial power relations within and beyond borders.

Authoritarian middle powers and the liberal order: Turkey's contestation of the EU

Abstract The conventional expectation that middle powers support the liberal international order (LIO) is now increasingly being questioned. This article seeks to explore why and how emerging authoritarian middle powers contest the LIO through a study of Turkey's contestation of the EU. By conceptualizing contestations of the LIO as claims to global justice, the article examines the justice claims that underlie Turkey's contestation; with regard to discourse, it does so through a qualitative content analysis of President Erdoğan's speeches, and with regard to practice, through a survey of Turkey's contestatory foreign policy practices. The article shows that middle powers can discursively attack the legitimacy of the LIO by underlining its constituents' failures in upholding their moral duties towards citizens extending beyond their borders (impartiality) and to those who suffer from structural inequalities in the international order (mutual recognition). It demonstrates that their contestatory practices, however, are made with a view to pursue the sovereign interests of the state, with minimal regard for impartiality and mutual recognition. The article unpacks this inconsistency and finds that authoritarian middle powers' contestation of the LIO is mainly driven by concerns for regime security, where the centrality of an issue area to the government's survival prospects is the key factor which determines whether contestation will occur.

No name in the street: Unknowability, Black women, and missing geographies

Renisha McBride, who was killed by a white homeowner while seeking help after a car crash, made national headlines due to her murderer’s stand your ground defense failing to absolve him of manslaughter charges. This article argues that a key factor in McBride’s justice claims were the unknown characteristics of her encounter with the murderer that allowed family members to advocate on her behalf. Using the Black Feminist concept of unknowability, I look at how news media discourses about McBride’s unknown space and time prior to her encounter made her invisible while facilitating the continuous questioning of the events that night. Through an analysis of McBride’s negative portrayals in news media and court proceedings along with family members’ testimonies, I consider the ways unknowability affords Black women the ability to move from geographies of invisibility to visibility through a constant questioning of Black women’s relationship to space. I argue that unknowability allowed McBride to obtain some form of juridical justice.

Revisiting the energy justice framework: Doing justice to normative uncertainties

Energy justice is often approached through the four tenets of procedural, distributive, restorative and recognition justice. Though these tenets are important placeholders for addressing what type of justice issues are involved, they require further normative substantiations. These are achieved by using principles of justice to specify why – normatively speaking – something is just or unjust within each category or tenet of justice. In addressing the principles of justice, it is important to acknowledge normative uncertainties, or the fact that different (incompatible) conceptions of justice might be morally defensible, leading to different normative conclusions or policy recommendations. This paper reviews the definitions of tenets in energy justice scholarship, the occurrence of normative claims, and how these claims are justified. The review shows that the scholarship ignores to a large extent normative uncertainties. In response, we propose a revisited energy justice framework, focusing on four aspects that help us to articulate the normative uncertainties in both the principles and the tenets of energy justice. These aspects are (i) the scale of justice (i.e. whether justice is considered at a local, national, regional, multinational or global scale), (ii) the subject of justice, (iii) the body of knowledge that is assumed and (iv) the time frame in which justice issues are being considered. We hope to provide a conceptual framework that make explicit the different types of normative assumptions underlying claims of justice, which will ultimately improve the quality and legitimacy of normative conclusions such as policy recommendations that follow.