Lacking much historical information and assuming (1) that victims of injustice generally do worse than they otherwise would and (2) that those from the least well-off group in the society have the highest probabilities of being the (descendants of) victims of the most serious injustice who are owed compensation by those who benefited from the injustices, ... then a rough rule of thumb for rectifying injustices might seem to be the following: organize society so as to maximize the position of whatever group ends up least well-off in the society.

Can injustice one way be corrected without the interim reaction that tries to impose injustice the other way?

What moves us, reasonably enough, is not the realization that the world falls short of being completely just – which few of us expect – but that there are clearly remediable injustices around us which we want to eliminate.

Histories that that show past injustices or crimes can be used to argue for redress in the present.

The answer to injustice is not to silence the critic, but to end the injustice.

Via legislation, administrative measures and public policies with a rights-based perspective, we can reverse situations of inequity. The work is monumental, urgent and difficult because we are dealing with people who are in highly vulnerable situations. The work, however, is worth it because it brings us closer to having better democracies and better societies.

The more progress that has been made toward eradicating social injustices, the more intolerable the remaining injustices seem, and thus the moral imperative to mobilizing to correct them.

Man has the right not to accept an injustice − major or minor − from men, but he does not have the right not to accept it as a trial coming from God. He has the right − for it is human − to suffer from an injustice insofar as he cannot rise above it, but he must make an effort to do so; in no case has he the right to plunge himself into a pit of bitterness, for such an attitude leads to hell. Man has no interest, primarily, in overcoming an injustice; he has an interest primarily in saving his soul and in winning Heaven. Thus it would be a bad bargain to obtain justice at the price of our ultimate interests, to win on the side of the temporal and to lose on the side of the eternal, which is what man seriously risks when concern for his rights deteriorates his character or reinforces its faults.

Injustice ... regardless to whomever acted upon or performed against, is still injustice. The unjust person is never relieved of the responsibility of these acts under the pretext that the injustice is done against a heterodox and not to a believer. As our Lord Jesus Christ in the Gospels said do not oppress or accuse anyone falsely; do not make any distinction or give room to the believers to injure those of another belief.

If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go; perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.

There are certain injustices in this life you’ve got to do something about. You can’t just say that you can’t fight it, or it’s too much trouble, or that you don’t have the time or the effort, or that you can’t win. Forget all that. Fight them all!

All social inequalities which have ceased to be considered expedient, assume the character not of simple inexpediency, but of injustice, and appear so tyrannical, that people are apt to wonder how they ever could have been tolerated; forgetful that they themselves perhaps tolerate other inequalities under an equally mistaken notion of expediency, the correction of which would make that which they approve seem quite as monstrous as what they have at last learnt to condemn. The entire history of social improvement has been a series of transitions, by which one custom or institution after another, from being a supposed primary necessity of social existence, has passed into the rank of a universally stigmatised injustice and tyranny. So it has been with the distinctions of slaves and freemen, nobles and serfs, patricians and plebeians; and so it will be, and in part already is, with the aristocracies of colour, race, and sex.

You find that the injustice that created a wound is no longer true, right now, in this moment.

These issues are very complex and are best left to a full treatment of the principle of rectification. In the absence of such a treatment applied to a particular society, one cannot use the analysis and theory presented here to condemn any particular scheme of transfer payments, unless it is clear that no considerations of rectification of injustice could apply to justify it. Although to introduce socialism as the punishment for our sins would be to go too far, past injustices might seem to be so great as to make necessary in the short run a more extensive state in order to rectify them.