Essential Questions

1. Essential Questions • What is justice? • How do we distinguish between what is just and what is unjust? • What’s the difference between unfair and unjust?

2. Understanding Key Terms • What is justice? • Just behavior or treatment – quality of being fair and reasonable • What is social justice? • Justice exercised within a society, particularly as it is exercised by and among the various social classes of that society • What does it mean for something to be “just?” • Based on or behaving according to what is morally right • What is social INjustice? • An inequality which could be remedied if our social institutions were different

3. Inherent inequalities we face • What are they? • Wealth • Physical appearance • Opportunities • Health • $$ • Can we do anything to overcome these? • Are these inequalities unjust?

4. An example Scenario: Unfair or Unjust? • A child is born with a physical disability • A child is born with a physical disability whose mother had a lack of access to good prenatal medical care. • Unjust AND unfair • There are a lack of curb cuts in sidewalks. • Unjust – something can be done about this. • There is a lack of affordable prosthetic limbs. • Unjust – something can be done about this.

5. Letter from a Birmingham Jail • Martin Luther King, Jr. was confined in the city jail after being arrested for his part in the Birmingham campaign • Planned non-violent protest against racial segregation • Editor at NY Times magazine asked MLK to write this letter for publication in his magazine • The Times chose not to publish it • Wrote the letter on margins of a newspaper, the only paper available to him