From the time of Plato and Aristotle, the balance between justice and order in organized political communities has provided a framework within which the claims of power and moral principle have sought their tentative and often uneasy compromises. Toward the end of World War II, Reinhold Niebuhr emphasized the primary importance of developing some kind of stable order upon which leaders could build in the years to come. As Niebuhr noted in The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness, “Order precedes justice in the strategy of government; but … only an order which implicates justice can achieve a stable peace. An unjust order quickly invites the resentment and rebellion which lead to its undoing.” Today, getting the balance right is no easier. The growth of modern international organizations and transnational linkages in the second half of the twentieth century has been accompanied by new religious, ethnic, and economic divisions that defy the traditional prerogatives of sovereignty as much as the geographic boundaries of nations and empires. The clash of civilizations often points to a world seemingly lacking both order and justice. In addition, the normative connection between justice and order beyond borders has sometimes been obscured within academic circles by theoretical and methodological jousting that leaves little room for treating moral discourse as something other than a measurable artifact.
