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Applied Ethics · Chapter 12

Case Files: Sorting Environmental Injustice

Three distinct claims travel under one label, and separating them is what turns outrage into analysis. Take a real case, read each fact from the file, and decide whether it is a distributive, procedural or recognition injustice. Every answer explains itself. Then walk your finished file into court and find where United States law stops it.
1 · Open a case file
2 · File each fact under a dimension
Distributive justice
Who bears the burden and who gets the benefit? Who breathes the emissions, and who uses the product?
Procedural justice
Who was in the room? Were hearings held at times working people could attend, in languages they read, with the technical help needed to read a permit?
Recognition justice
Whose knowledge and whose way of life is treated as legitimate at all? Whose account of their own street counts as evidence?
Why bother separating them? Because the remedies differ. A distributive finding argues for cleanup and compensation, a procedural finding argues for changing how permits are granted, and a recognition finding argues for who is allowed to testify at all. A case analysed as only one of the three gets only one of the three fixes.
3 · Now take the file to court