Conceptions of Justice from Below : Distributive Justice as a Means to Address Local Conflicts in European Law and Policy

The impact of European Union (EU) law and policy on social groups has been examined in important scholarly work on European Law. Mainstream European legal scholarship, however, makes seldom use of a ‘law and society’ methodology, committed to an understanding of law, its internal logic and its practice yet influenced by external political and social forces. By means of two different theoretical perspectives, American legal realism and Amartya Sen’s idea of comparative justice, this chapter focuses on the impact of European decision-making on social groups and local actors embracing different conceptions of justice from below. Lawyers, judges and policy-makers in the EU appear more concerned with institutional demands of justice rather its social realization as revealed by local actors with conflicting visions of justice. The chapter uses distributive justice as a means to reconcile such different visions of the good life