Social justice is the application of the concept of justice on a social scale. The term appeared before the 1800s,[1] including in the Federalist Papers and Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The idea was elaborated by the moral theologian John A. Ryan, who initiated the concept of a living wage. Father Coughlin also used the term in his publications in the 1930s and the 1940s. The concept was further expanded upon by John Rawls beginning in the 1960s. It is a part of Catholic social teaching and is one of the Four Pillars of the Green Party upheld by green parties worldwide. Some tenets of social justice have been adopted by those on the left of the political spectrum.
Social justice is also a concept that some use to describe the movement towards a socially just world. In this context, social justice is based on the concepts of human rights and equality and involves a greater degree of economic egalitarianism through progressive taxation, income redistribution, or even property redistribution. These policies aim to achieve what developmental economists refer to as more equality of opportunity and equality of outcome than may currently exist in some societies.
