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Justice is exertion of power in order to safeguard the quality of society.
In addition, Sustainable Justice also addresses underlying problems and promotes better relationships between stakeholders.
Next to Ecological and Economic Sustainability we can also mention Social Sustainability. Its aim is to protect society in a sustainable way against disintegrating forces and to strengthen mutual relationships.
The Center believes that Social Sustainability deserves recognition as a basic legal principle, like Good Faith, and Fairness and Reasonableness.
Sustainable Justice can be regarded as a counterpart to what Corporate Social Responsibility is for business.
Sustainable Justice serves the same purpose as Socially Effective Justice [SEJ] (Maatschappelijk Effectieve Rechtspraak), which has a top priority in the Dutch judiciary since 2017. In fact, Sustainable Justice is SEJ-avant-la-lettre.
The Center prefers to use the ’Sustainable Justice’ as ’sustainable’ expresses better the constructive and future-oriented focus than ’socially effective’ does.
In 2015, the Center published the Sustainable Justice Charter summarizing the basic principles of Sustainable Justice. The English, Dutch and French versions of the Charter and information on the initial subscribers can be found here.
The justice system is exemplary in society. It strongly influences the way in which affiliated sectors such as the legal profession and the field of extrajudicial conflict resolution operate.
Our definition of Sustainable Justice (see our Homepage) also applies to sectors affiliated to justice. By replacing the term ‘Justice’ with a term suitable for the sector, definitions of Sustainable Advocacy, Sustainable Prosecution, Sustainable Policing, Sustainable Probation, Sustainable Mediation, and so on, are generated.
Examples of Sustainable Justice can be found under Examples on this website. How problems can be solved sustainably can be found under Conflict Resolution.