Appendix Legal, Moral and Structural Actions, Injustices and Responsibilities
| Forms of duty or responsibility | Legal responsibility (liability-based duty to follow the law) | Moral responsibility (liability-based duty to existing moral norms) | Political responsibility (discretionary, not a duty) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Model of responsibility | Liability model | Social connection model | |
| Forms of injustice | Legal injustices (traceable acts of illegality) | Moral injustices (traceable transgressions of societal norms) | Structural injustices (the untraceable consequences of the actions of masses of individuals, groups and institutions) |
| Perpetrators of injustice | Any individual, group or institution | Any individual, group or institution | Any individual, group or institution |
| Injustice grounded in… | Wrongdoing/fault/guilt/liability (direct or indirect) | Wrongdoing/fault/guilt/liability (direct or indirect) | Social connection to background conditions of structural injustice |
| Responsibility to address injustice grounded in … | Wrongdoing/fault/guilt/liability (direct or indirect); regulated by state or other legal institutions | Wrongdoing/fault/guilt/liability (direct or indirect); regulated by societal norms and moral institutions | Social connection to background conditions of structural injustice acted on with discretion at the level of civil society |
| Direction of responsibility focus | Backward-facing | Backward-facing | Forward-facing (with an eye to the past) |
| Political responsibility | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subsets of political responsibility: | Legal responsibility (liability/fault-based duty to abide by the law) | Moral responsibility (liability/fault-based duty to abide by existing moral norms) | Discretionary structural responsibility (structural speculation on the untraceable structural actions that contribute to the background conditions of structural injustice) | ||
| Forms of injustice | Legal injustices (traceable acts of illegality) | Moral injustices (traceable transgressions of societal norms) | Structural injustices (consequence of mass untraceable structural actions) | ||
| Perpetrators of injustice | Any individual, group or institution which breaks the law | Any individual, group or institution which transgresses social norms | Any individual, group or institution contributing to the background conditions of macro-level structural injustice | ||
| Injustice grounded in … | Legal acts of wrongdoing/ fault/guilt/liability (direct or indirect) | Moral acts of wrongdoing/fault/ guilt/liability (direct or indirect) | Structural actions The ‘legitimate’ pursuits of private interest in a given time and space (actions, expressed beliefs and habits) that we might speculate contribute to the background conditions of a particular structural injustice | ||
| Responsibility to address injustice grounded in… | Abidance by the law to address legal acts of wrongdoing/fault/ guilt/liability (direct or indirect); regulated by state, legal and other institutions/civil society/individuals | Abidance by moral codes to address moral acts of wrongdoing/fault/ guilt/liability (direct or indirect); regulated by societal norms and moral institutions/civil society/individuals | Structural actions potentially connected to structural injustice – considered through imperfect political (structural) responsibility enacted by state, legal and other institutions/civil society/individuals | ||
| Direction of responsibility focus | Backward-facing (with an eye to the future) | Backward-facing (with an eye to the future) | Forward-facing (with an eye to the past) | ||
| Potential direction of transition between different forms of injustice depending on new epistemologies | (→) (possibility that traceable legal injustice reverts back to traceable moral injustice) | ← (when traceable moral injustice becomes traceable legal injustice) | ← (when untraceable structural injustice becomes traceable moral injustice) | ||
