By the mid-twentieth century, the concept of social justice had become central to the ideologies and programmes of virtually all the leftist and centrist political parties around the world, and few dared to oppose it directly. Social justice represented the essence and the raison d’être of the social democrat doctrine and left its mark in the decades following the Second World War...
The application of social justice requires a geographical, sociological, political
and cultural framework within which relations between individuals and groups can
be understood, assessed, and characterized as just or unjust. In modern times, this
framework has been the nation-State. The country typically represents the context
in which various aspects of social justice, such as the distribution of income in a
population, are observed and measured; this benchmark is used not only by national
Governments but also by international organizations and supranational entities such
as the European Union...
In the contemporary context, social justice is typically taken to mean distributive
justice. The terms are generally understood to be synonymous and interchangeable
in both common parlance and the language of international relations. The concept
of social/distributive justice is implied in various academic and theoretical works and
in many international legal or quasi-legal texts (such as the Charter and Universal
Declaration) that may only include broad references to “justice”...
Equity in living conditions for all individuals and households. This concept is understood to reflect a contextually determined “acceptable” range of inequalities in income, wealth and other aspects of life in society, with the presumption of general agreement with regard to what is just or fair (or “equitable”) at any given time in any particular community, or in the world as a whole if universal norms are applied...
The pre-Marxist ideal—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his works”—would need to be applied, and for a very long time, within post-revolutionary societies. The truly egalitarian Marxist principle—“from each according to his capacities, to each according to his
needs” —would only prevail (with any success) in the distant and quasi-utopian
“end of history” referred to in communist theory. In short, equity is the most
logical reference point in determining what is just and what is unjust with regard
to living conditions and related matters within society...
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/documents/ifsd/SocialJustice.pdf
