Go back to part I, if you want to get the background.
Back to roots
So, it didn’t come from what some in Christianity think of as “social justice” – meaning the Church taking care of people in need in the Name of Christ. That Christian version is in opposition to the social justice movement and now I think I am understanding why.
Socialist regimes, according to Wikipedia, started making use of the term in their constitutions throughout the 20^thcentury.

John Rawls’ name kept creeping into website conversations of the topic, so I searched him next.
He is certainly the father of modern social justice.  His concepts are based on the idea that what is most important about a society is the condition of the worst-off.  “Justice” is about the condition of the lowest in society.

His basic principles for justice:

The Liberty principle – each person is entitled to the same liberties – he had strong opinions as to which liberties would be included in this list.

The Difference principle – What is best for everyone – inequalities are only justify if they still offer the best for the worst-off.   Any other inequality is unjust.

In other words, justice (at least generally) is another word for fairness or equity.
“Justice” isn’t something to be had equally or to have access to equally, in this ethic.  It IS equality in the social justice movement.

It is a basic premise of justice based on the willingness to be anyone in society.  No matter who you are, would you want to be part of this society?  What concepts of justice would come from a group of people behind the veil of ignorance?

Now I was beginning to understand and also to see why everyone is so confused and convoluted about the current situation with Judge Kavanaugh and many other issues in the last 50 years!

Social Justice is a philosophy of justice that is in opposition to, or at least competition, with “individual justice” – which has been the traditional view of justice for most of history.

Traditional views of justice are about the rightness or lawfulness of the actions of an individual:

In a “just” society, guilty people are found guilty and punished appropriately.  Innocent people are treated as innocent.  Someone is guilty if they have done something that is unlawful or wrong, as defined by the laws of that society.

A just society is one that treats individuals a certain way based on what they have actually done.  If someone has committed rape, a just society has figured out a way to find them out, arrest, convict and punish them for rape.  If someone has not committed rape, the just society has found out ways to keep them, the individual, free from being found guilty of committing rape.

This is NOT the same measurement with social justice.

One of the things that still splits our nation philosophically is this:
Typically, conservatives support the ethic of individual justice.  The view that justice is about the guilt or innocence of the individual and how society treats them.

I don’t think most liberals know this.  So, they are confused at how rabid we can be about knowing whether someone committed a crime or not before ascribing guilt.

Typically, now, liberals support the ethic of social justice.  The view that the just society is the one concerned with groups of people who are in some way or have in some way, been treated unfairly.  (Remember that unfair, inequitable and unjust are the same concept in social justice!). So guilt is determined NOT on the actions of the individual, but what that individual’s role in the justice level of society is!=

I honestly think this will really help conservatives and liberals understand each other, or at least why there is disagreement here.

Consider this:  Teddy Kennedy is a social justice hero.
This creates complete confusion for people with an individual justice mindset!

He had a legacy of sexual indiscretions and even may have left a woman in a submerged car to drown.  From the individual justice perspective, this is no hero.  His personal behavior makes him guilty of some heinous crimes.  Put in this category also people like Bill Clinton.
However, consider this from the social justice perspective.

Teddy Kennedy (Bill Clinton and others), regardless of personal, individual guilt, were instrumental in (from the perspective of the liberal or social justice perspective) moving American culture toward more equity.  More fairness.

Hence, more justice.

This also explains why a members of an otherwise repressed population, when gaining or given authority by conservatives, are NOT evidence of justice and are NOT social justice heroes.  From the social justice perspective, they are NOT increasing the degree to which the populations they might otherwise represent are gaining equality.

This is also super confusing to those defending the individual justice perspective.

Also, consider the rash of police acts and other acts of violence in the recent past. Trayvon Martin, Alton Sterling, Delrawn Small, Keith Scott, Tyre King, and many others.
Do you understand well enough to see the train wreck coming?

Individual justice thinkers want to know what happened at the individual case level.  Did the officers or shooter or whoever, do anything illegal or immoral?  If so, punish them.  That is (or at least should be) the stance.  Race should have no role in individual justice.   Granted, it certainly has in the past and surely sometimes does in the present.

But in the mind of the person dedicated to individual justice, injustice created because of bigotry or bias would be exactly that:  INJUSTICE.

It would be injustice at the same individual level of the judge or jury or whoever was the agent of injustice.

However, again, consider from the perspective of social justice.  Did either Martin or Zimmerman (his shooter) do anything wrong? Illegal?  Unlawful?

That isn’t the main point.  The individual justice defenders demanding each of these cases treated as completely independent cases is baffling to the social justice movement!

In social justice, the question is:  what is the condition of the downtrodden?  The race of the people involved is essential to the conversation!  Is either party a representative of those repressed in an unjust society?

The individual guilt is LESS the issue (or maybe NOT the issue) in social justice. The social condition of the repressed persons in the situation is what matters. Trayvon was part of a oppressed population.  He is the one who was in need of justice, whether he was committing a crime at the time of his death are (almost) irrelevant to the conversation for the social justice champion.

In fact, in social justice, as espoused by Rawls and others, it isn’t the job of the individual to create justice, social or otherwise.   Remember that thought experiment about the veil of ignorance?  Who can make the conclusions of that thought experiment come into reality, according to the theory?

Government is who makes this happen.  The redistribution of money, possibilities, liberties, etc. is the job of the government. The individual is not morally responsible to create the just society – it is the society as moved by government and taxation.

The individual is morally responsible to try to create the type of society they would want – selfishly – IF they didn’t know what role in society they would play.

I am trying not to make a value statement, though certainly my intuition is to think of justice as, to quote Shapiro, something that needs no modifiers.

However, how can you understand the argument coming from people who DO put a modifier on it?  I am not making a right or wrong case here yet.  I am seeking to make clear WHY there is such disagreement over these cases as they come up.

So, In this current situation, did Kavanaugh commit sexual assault?  According to the traditional view of justice, If he did, he should be appropriately punished under the law!  But first, we need to know if he did this thing.  In the conservative (or at least “individual justice”) mindset, there can be no JUST consequences UNTIL we establish innocence or guilt.  This is the mindset of individual justice.  Traditional justice.

But, in the mindset of social justice, there is a different measurement.  Does someone in the case represent a repressed population?  Does someone represent an oppressive population? Those answers are more important to social justice than personal, individual guilt or innocence.

Notice how many on the left have determined to believe the woman before hearing any evidence?  Imagine how that drives people seeking individual justice crazy!  That is a foreign language to them.

But, they believe her because she represents people who are repressed – and repressed people have not been given the benefit of the doubt – and what would be fair? To start believing them now!  It is time.  It would move our culture toward social justice.  It is overdue.  It would show the proper concern (remember Rawls?) for the downtrodden.  Believe her?  That isn’t individual question in social justice .  It is:  believe THEM.

Believe her? Sure, because she represents all those women who have been abused in the past.  But a better understanding of social justice isn’t about believing her, but believing IN THEM!

That is social justice.

There is something to that… but I am not convinced we should file that under “justice” … and it is clear that calling it a form of “justice” has created confusion.

Of course, it is considered a correction against traditional justice; given that, I am not sure what else THEY should have done.  I just personally think that equity is equity.  Fairness is fairness.  Neither is another word for justice.  Justice is something to be applied in an equitable way, but it isn’t just another word for “equitable.”
Equal Justice.

And this is in need of renovation in America.  And I am on board for any efforts to make our justice more equal.

But I am not at a place in which I can see how justice and equity are the same thing.  They would be possible modifiers of each other, but they don’t have the same meaning.

Some of us follow an ethic of individual justice.  Traditional and founded in laws.  As a Christian, I believe that justice is certainly an individual concern.  Did I sin or not?  If I did, I deserve consequences.    I need a savior to create that salvation for me.

Obviously (I hope it is obvious), any ways in which societal justice can be created and individual justice maintained, we should allow them to partner (I disagree with the UN on that note).  However, like with Postmodern Metaphysics, though there are ways that it can overlap with the Christian worldview, there are also ways in which is cannot.

Also, repressed people need to be given freedom and liberty and a hand up.  Being a blessing to the world – salt, light, a spring, etc. – is a big part of our identity!  But in our worldview, we are doing this according to truth and a transcendent concept (from God) of virtue and justice.  What we are seeking may ALSO be a form of social justice, but it is successful based on the measurements of our King, not any measurement of the world.
Christians ought to fight for justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God regardless of the ethics of the world around us.

Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it completely.Proverbs 28:5

“Social Justice in an Open World: The Role of the United Nations”, The International Forum for Social Development, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Development, ST/ESA/305″ (PDF). New York: United Nations. 2006. Archived(PDF) from the original on 29 August 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhVByiXBxi4interview with Jonathan Wolff.