Responding to Injustice

In her book The Faces of Injustice, Judith Shklar drew attention to our tendency to view injustice as “a prelude to or a rejection and breakdown of justice, as if injustice were a surprising abnormality” and reminded us that “[m]ost injustices occur continuously within the framework of an established polity with an operative system of law, in normal times.” Injustice is ubiquitous. But how should we respond to it?

This conference will bring together theorists from multiple disciplines to explore this question in Australian and other contexts. From various perspectives, the participants will focus on the following issues:

• different responses to injustice, such as democratic reform, litigation, protest, violence, civil disobedience, conscientious refusal, revolution, boycotts, military intervention, acceptance
• the impact of injustice on the moral obligation to obey the law
• judges’ and other officials’ responses to unjust laws and violations of the rule of law
• transitional justice (and transitional injustice)
• responses to the unjust treatment of Indigenous peoples
• the relationship between beliefs in a just world and responses to injustice

The conference will take place on 8-9 December 2022 and will be hosted by the Julius Stone Institute of Jurisprudence at the University of Sydney.

The conference will take the format of a workshop. Papers will be distributed in advance and, at the conference, rather than being presented by the author, will be introduced and discussed by a commentator, to whom the author will have an opportunity to respond, before being discussed by all participants. The organizers intend that the papers will subsequently be published in a collection of new essays.

Please contact Dr Kevin Walton ([email protected]) with enquiries about the conference.