What is social justice? What are human rights?

The concept of social justice seeks to establish what is socially just in a society.  Some would argue that social justice is the distribution of the good and bad in life to members of a society. If we are to state something is socially unjust, we are implying that a person or group of persons enjoys fewer advantages than they normally should. Advantages encompass a range of things such as money, commodities, jobs, education, public transportation, and personal security. Disadvantages focus on things that happen in life such as an individual’s normal personal burdens that are not the result of a "punishment" at the hands of government entity such as the judiciary. Essentially, they are just the bad things that happen to any given person. Social justice is a bigger elaboration of distributive justice with the addition of moral judgement. By adding a moral perspective, one can ponder if what is happening to a given people is morally right. Why are these people living like this? Why is this acceptable? Questions like this lead to action being taken in order to define what is socially just. In order for social justice to take place in a given society, the society itself must have an institutional body that represents and effects the daily lives of each individual member. Together, this body must have agencies that are capable of enacting reform for the sake of fairness. Social justice is the measurement of the good and bad that is distributed among people on the assumption that these happen on their own accord. If something is out of balance and doesn’t follow the natural order, one can begin to see that there is a lack of social justice in that given society.

​Human Rights encompasses aspects of social justice by giving humanity as a whole certain rights and opportunities that cannot be infringed upon. Human rights deal with a universal framework that attempts to establish a global understanding of every living person’s inalienable rights. Some of these fundamental rights include: the right to life, liberty, security, freedom from bondage/slavery, and the freedom to express one's thoughts and opinions. Human rights are more than just a utopian ideal. Human rights attempt to gain universalism by the belief that these social issues can be addressed, discussed, and practiced by other nation-states. Human rights only began to take its modern form from long series of conflicts and resolutions that took place throughout history. It is important to note that human rights are constantly changing as new global crises emerge. It wasn’t until WWII that human rights were addressed on a global perspective. The horrors of the war and the gruesome horror of the Holocaust led to the creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was signed in December 1948 and supported by a unanimous vote of nations, 48-0, with 8 abstentions.  This declaration outlined the rights and privileges common to every human being. The concept of human rights transcends national borders by appealing to the larger concept of humanity. Not only that, human rights ignore racial, class, religious, ethnic and other differences on the idea that these rights are innately possessed by all human beings. Although we all have basic human rights, it is sometimes hard to address human rights issues until someone has them infringed upon. Overall, human rights is a universal concept but can usually only be adjudicated and/or applied on a local level.