# Reparative Justice **Domain:** Justice / Institutional Design / Political Economy **Doc Type:** Canonical Justice Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Reparative justice** addresses historical and structural harm through material repair, institutional transformation, restored agency and safeguards against recurrence. It differs from punishment-focused justice and from redistribution that ignores how the underlying injury was produced. The relevant unit may be a person, community, institution, jurisdiction, ecosystem or intergenerational relationship. Legitimate responsibility should begin with traceable assets, policies, institutions and causal pathways rather than assigning personal guilt by ancestry. ## Climate and Systems Context [[articles/Climate Justice and Reparative Equity|Climate Justice and Reparative Equity]], [[articles/Climate Justice as a Form of Reparative Equity|Climate Justice as a Form of Reparative Equity]] and [[articles/Climate Justice and Global Reparative Systems|Climate Justice and Global Reparative Systems]] treat ecological exposure as measurable structural load. The technical stack includes measurement, provenance, identity continuity, allocation, auditability, appealability and feedback. Technology does not make the result just. [[wiki/Corrective Intelligence|Corrective Intelligence]] requires the system to connect perceived exposure to obligation and effective repair. ## Algorithmic Boundary A reparative model can become another extraction system if it totalizes identity, conceals its assumptions or bypasses affected communities. [[wiki/Score Separability|Score Separability]], [[wiki/Model Contestability|Model Contestability]], [[wiki/Fiduciary Governance|Fiduciary Governance]], [[wiki/Programmable Reciprocity|Programmable Reciprocity]] and [[wiki/Algorithmic Constitutionalism|Algorithmic Constitutionalism]] are therefore constitutive rather than optional. ## Equilibrium Context [[wiki/Nash Equilibrium|Nash Equilibrium]] does not establish justice. [[wiki/Equilibrium Engineering|Equilibrium Engineering]] can help make repair stable by changing incentives and reducing profitable defection, but rights constrain which equilibria are admissible. ## Key Insight **Reparative justice converts inherited harm from a permanent social load into an obligation to restore capability, agency and durable non-recurrence.** ## See Also [[wiki/Reparative Equity|Reparative Equity]], [[wiki/Global Justice|Global Justice]], [[wiki/Structural Redress|Structural Redress]], [[wiki/Historical Responsibility|Historical Responsibility]], [[wiki/Rights|Rights]]