Interesting questions raised here at The Study of 'Social Justice' in a Law School
I find this part interesting and well it is pretty true (law school or not). On the teaching of Catholic Social Justice thought
How ought the term "Social Justice" be taken? This is a particularly scorching topic. Social Justice -- usually embodied in legal clinics and other good-works activities -- has been the welcome object of particular emphasis at CUA, thanks to the special attentions of Dean Miles and many of the devoted CUA faculty. Yet in a course about ideas (and I am assuming that the course must be one in ideas) Social Justice can carry with it certain ideological presuppositions and valences. How ought one to "study" Social Justice? How ought one to handle the issue of ideological tilt that seems to drench the subject? Should one ignore it? Spell it out?
- Related to the previous thought, Social Justice seems to accommodate a multiplicity of contested and internally incompatible ideas, moods, and predispositions. In fact, it seems to me to be an excellent example of what Jeremy Waldron (following W.B. Gallie) has called an "essentially contested concept" -- a concept that is "present to us only in the form of contestation about what the ideal really is." The idea of Social Justice is not only "hotly contested" -- with varying conceptions challenging one another for supremacy. It is, as Waldron has said, "contestation at the core." Should one take only one of these conceptions as the focus of a course like this, or many? Should one be self-conscious about the choice made with one's students? Should one try to promote or advance a favored conception? If so, should one do so explicitly? Does the course cease to be one in ideas if it is a course promoting a single idea?
Tip of the Hat to Mirrors of Justice
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