David A. Wallace examines social justice in historical and contemporary perspective and offers perspectives from multiple disciplines and practical politics to unpack, frame, and understand social justice and injustice before offering a definition of social justice. He then provides a systematic review of the archival literature from the 1980s up through 2017 to chart the rise of archival social justice research and summarises the many arenas it touches upon. Wallace concludes with an examination of the debates over archival ethics and the adoption of a social justice mandate.