First of all, thanks for such a cogent essay on what can be a tortuous subject. If I may, I thought you might find interesting my take on justice. I’ve been developing it over many years, in Academia and outside it. It has very concrete implications for human conduct, as individuals and as societies.

My studies have taught me that the ethic of justice must be mutual respect (of a basic kind--taking one another into account). A requirement of mutual respect follows from a belief in human moral equality. For that reason, it is present — explicitly or implicitly — in all Liberal thinkers' accounts of justice (as well as the moral teachings of many who are not Liberals).

A requirement of mutual respect also follows from the observation within material existence that human beings have no choice but to effect choices (which I got from Warren J. Samuels). I call that 'real justice' because it involves no beliefs; its determiners and its referents are located within material existence. That makes justice its own category within ethics, apart from morality as opposed to existing within it. It also makes that ethic of justice universal, since in fact no human being does have any choice but to effect choices — nor does any human society.