Doing Justice Intelligently in Civil Society

Empirically, justice might be immanently holistic—with procedural, distributive, restorative, and social justice positively correlated. Restorative justice may be about creating spaces where the various imperfectly correlated facets of holistic justice might cohere. State institutions of justice (such as criminal courts) with deeply embedded traditions of narrowing the meaning of justice (to proportional punishment, for example) are less fertile soil for holistic justice than civil society. Beyond a move to holism and to civil society, the contributions to this special issue imply a move to what Sherman calls “emotionally intelligent justice.” This means nurturing the expression of vulnerable emotions and trying to avert the provocation of aggressive or stigmatizing emotions.