Liberal Interpretations of Social Justice for Social Work

Abstract

Social justice has been called a defining value for social work (Wakefield, 1988). For clinical social workers this link has been seen as tenuous. Current interpretations of the meaning of social justice for social work trace their roots to John Rawls and his treatise “A theory of justice”. Rawls’s political theory is a liberal one aimed at the “basic structure of society” and how certain primary goods are distributed so as to respect the basic worth and dignity of all people. This article examines Rawls’s justice as fairness and contrasts it with a modern liberal feminist interpretation provided by Nussbaum. Nussbaum’s “capability approach” rejects the notion of justice as the distribution of resources and instead advances a claim for justice that secures for each individual the opportunity to function in a “truly human” way. She articulates a universal list of human capabilities that all societies and governments must embrace in their pursuit of social justice. The implications of a liberal perspective on social justice for social work and particularly clinical work are explored.