Torp, Cornelius --- "Social Justice in the Welfare State from the Perspective of the Comparative History of Institutions" [2011] ELECD 675; in Micklitz, Hans-W. (ed), "The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2011)

Book Title: The Many Concepts of Social Justice in European Private Law

Editor(s): Micklitz, Hans-W.

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849802604

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Social Justice in the Welfare State from the Perspective of the Comparative History of Institutions

Author(s): Torp, Cornelius

Number of pages: 23

Extract:

10. Social justice in the welfare state
from the perspective of the
comparative history of institutions
Cornelius Torp

1 INTRODUCTION
Justice is one of the central norms of modern, democratic welfare states. As
the welfare state was invented by humans, it is therefore in need of legitima-
tion, unlike nature, which cannot be made to answer for its distribution of
strengths and weaknesses, but like the market, the other important agency of
distribution in modern times.1 The modern state's reason for being and its
legitimacy are to a large degree based on the just distribution or redistribution
of the burdens, demands and benefits in society. `Justice', wrote John Rawls,
arguably the most important theoretician of justice in the twentieth century, `is
the first virtue of social institutions as truth is of systems of thought.'2 This is
true especially for the institutions of the welfare state. And it applies particu-
larly during the period of the restructuring of the welfare state since the mid-
1970s, when justice as one of the central normative categories of the welfare
state gained even more importance in public opinion.3 In the decades before,
when the welfare state was expanding, social and political injustice were expe-
rienced less strongly, as presumably those who benefited less were still able to
get a piece of an ever larger pie; often, new, compensating social measures
defused upcoming tensions. Today, in contrast, public support, or at the very
least public acceptance, of cutbacks and burdens can ...