What is injustice? In truth, even after a year of reading philosophy, I do not know how to clearly define justice and injustice. More often than not, justice is an ideal concept that moral philosophers use to justify their arguments instead of a concept that they seek to clearly define. Yet, it is often very easy to discriminate between justice and injustice in everyday life. Roughly, I think we often think of justice in daily life as doing what is deserved and injustice as doing what is not deserved or at least refusing to give someone what they deserve. For example, it is unjust for me to toture an innocent person to death because they didn’t do anything to deserve such treatment.

When we encounter such injustices, is there anything within our power to change it? Some may suggest that this depends on context. If you have power over those who are committing the injustice or if you could, without dealing with those committing the injustice, intervene to mitigate the situation. Others may suggest that we have a power to prevent injustice every time we encounter it because we can always do simple things such as calling out such injustice or even refuse to participate in perpetuating such injustice. However, this claim does not seem to hold up to scrutiny. There are many cases where refusing to participate or advocacy do not result in meaningful prevention of injustice. In these cases, it does not seem like there is much within our power to change it. 

What responsibility flows from having this power? I would argue that this depends on the setup of this injustice. It reminds me about the different ways we conceptualize our obligations to others. Firstly, we can think about whether we are facing a perfect or imperfect obligation. When we face a perfect obligation, one where the person on the receiving end of this obligation has a corresponding right, we have a responsibility to act to actively prevent injustice. For instance, if your child is not being fed by your estranged partner, you may have a responsibility to intervene in this injustice. This is because the child has a right to be given food by their parents. Meanwhile, a child starving in a developing country does not have a corresponding right to being given food by you even if this is unjust. Given this imperfect obligation, you may not have a responsibility to feed them. In this sense, responsibility does not always flow from your power to prevent injustice.