Concepts of justice and practical injustices

This chapter takes up the question of what is meant by ‘practical justice’ and how it relates to current philosophical approaches to justice. After a brief examination of contemporary conceptions of distributive, historical and relational or recognitive justice, it argues that practical justice should not be considered another conception of justice alongside these. Rather, we should think of practical justice as referring to an open-ended assortment of policies, practices and practical maxims that arise when we move beyond the simplifying assumptions of ‘ideal’ theory and attempt to apply a given conception of justice in real-world conditions.