ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the distribution of benefits and burdens is the core concern of justice, even in situations not usually seen as 'distributive'. Rawls's focus was on the distribution of 'primary goods' such as liberties, opportunities, rights and wealth. Young makes something of a parallel argument in her work on restrictive social structures which she sees as creating pre-existing mal-distributions of benefits and burdens. Indeed, Feeley recognizes that much of the actual burden suffered by a wrongdoer is simply those practical and mundane consequences that flow from involvement in the legal justice process. The two sets of elements namely vindication and reparation constitute the 'harm-related benefits and burdens' seen as needing to flow in responses to wrongdoing. A person who is the victim of injustice suffers not merely a determinate form of natural harm, but also the injustice of it, which is a separate and irreducible cause of his torment.
