Towards a Theory & Practice of Relational Justice in Veterans’ Mediation

Mediation Program Design within an Ethic of Care Framework

“A mediation program that is not well calibrated to a coherent theory and practice of justice may be little more than a platform for care-less deal-making.”

This Week’s Challenge

Working within an ethic of care framework, our design challenge this week has been to conceptualise a theory and practice of justice — and fairness — that is attentive, responsible, competent, and responsive to the needs of veterans, who find themselves in conflict or dispute in post-service life.

These disputes are not always interest-based, nor amenable to easy compromise. And the counterparties are often the very institutions and individuals positioned as care providers.

What we’re beginning to recognise is that the model of justice shaping our work may have been present from the beginning — not as a doctrine or a formula, but as an intuited ethic, quietly guiding our design choices.

As we’ve built out the structure — the timing, the processes, the kinds of outcomes we support — we’ve begun to see how these elements are held together by something deeper:

A theory and practice of relational justice, grounded in care, clarity, and moral integrity.

It did not arrive fully formed. But as we’ve worked over the past few weeks, it has become more visible — not imposed, but revealed. And now, perhaps for the first time, it can be named.

Four Foundations

Our emerging theory and practice of relational justice appears to rest, at present, on four interwoven foundations:

• The precepts of an ethic of care, as developed by Joan Tronto and Berenice Fisher, which orient us to the moral dimensions of attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness, and solidarity or “caring with”.

• The promise of insight mediation, as developed by Cheryl Picard and further refined with Marilyn Jull, understands conflict not as a clash of interests or personalities, but as a pattern of defensive behaviours that emerge in response to perceived threat.
  These threats may involve practical interests, but often centre on concerns about fairness, justice, dignity, or moral standing.

• Trauma-informed practice, drawing on Jonathan Shay’s work on moral injury, and Helgi Maki’s contributions to trauma-informed law, which guide us in holding space for grief, moral injury, and moral repair.

• The perceptions and testimonies of veterans, surfaced through the work of the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, which ground our work in lived experience and continually test its adequacy.

These four foundations do more than support the model we are creating— they call it into being.

Relational justice does not arise as an abstract theory imposed on the work. It is summoned by the convergence of these four elements: by the ethical demands of care, the meaning-making process of insight, the healing imperative of trauma-informed practice, and the lived truths carried in the voices of veterans.

In response, relational justice offers not a fix, but a form of moral presence — one that can hold pain without diminishing it, and hope without trivialising it.

Insights

Relational Justice Is Not Restorative Justice

We have made a deliberate decision to distinguish our theory of justice from restorative justice models. Whilst both theories share similar foundations, many restorative processes rely on the possibility of returning to a prior state of wholeness or trust. But … for many veterans:

• There is no civilian status quo ante to return to;

• Military service has intentionally broken and reshaped their identity, perception, and agency;

• Transition has often broken them again—often without reshaping or re-formation.

To ask for restoration may, in some cases, be to ask for a third breaking. Instead, we offer relational justice: not a return, but a recognition; not reconciliation, but responsiveness; not closure, but accompaniment.

Moral Injury and Institutional Courage

We acknowledge the presence of moral injury, as described by Jonathan Shay, where veterans experience the betrayal of "what's right" by those in authority. And we recognise the related concept of institutional betrayal, articulated by Jennifer Freyd: the experience of being harmed by the very institutions meant to protect.

Relational justice, in our model, invites and requires institutional courage. As Helgi Maki writes in Trauma-Informed Law, "the salve for institutional betrayal is institutional courage." This courage is not rhetorical. It is shown through action:

• Acknowledging harm;

• Responding ethically and practically;

• Upholding the institution's core values, even in the absence of formal (legal) liability.

Our model, which we have provisionally called Accord Mediation, creates early opportunities for this courage to be exercised. Before parties become entrenched, before grievances harden, Accord Mediation allows institutions (including ESOs and the RSL) to do justice - to act with principle, humility, and presence.

Material Fairness Is a Test of Ethical Competence

Veterans have made clear — through testimony, lived experience, and their own language — that fairness must be material, not symbolic.

Four Indicators of Critical Failure

We have identified four indicators that alert us to the likelihood that the requirements of ethical competence have not been met.

1. Recognition without resourcing — or recourse — is experienced not as care, but as nullification.

2. Justice that fails to improve conditions may be lawful, but it is not just.

3. Recognition without redistribution is hollow.

4. Systems that protect without providing simply preserve injustice under the appearance of order.

And Who Is Talking about Distributive Justice

There is plenty of talk about military justice, criminal justice and procedural justice — as one might expect. But the near-silence around distributive justice in veterans’ systems is disturbing. Perhaps it is not accidental.

It may reflect a deeper discomfort with naming justice as relational, economic, and structural — not just punitive, procedural or symbolic.

But for veterans, the stakes are not theoretical. They are tangible, cumulative, and deeply relational.

In Accord Mediation, we do not separate recognition from material response. We acknowledge that justice includes access to the conditions of wellbeing — not as optional supports, but as rightful claims grounded in service, sacrifice, and dignity.

Where formal systems default to technical justice, we support relational and distributive justice —where care, contribution, and consequence are held in ethical balance.

Justice Within an Ethic of Care Framework

In all of this, we return to the quiet mandate drawn from Tronto and Fisher: to maintain, continue, and repair the world so that we may live in it as well as possible. And from veterans themselves, we are reminded that fairness is not a theory. It is a lived condition.

Justice, in our model, is not done to others. It is done with them.

This is where Tronto's ethic of care sharpens our focus:

• Competence is more than well-meaningness; it is the delivery of support that is effective and adequate

• Responsiveness is not procedural flexibility; it is the felt experience of fairness care-fully delivered and received.

Conclusion: “We Are Not Afraid …”

We offer this not as a finished system, but as a working model. One still emerging as we listen, learn, map, and make. One called forth by the realities it seeks to meet.

We are not building a procedural toolkit. We are building a way of being with — of carrying hope as a risk taken together, of holding disappointment without harm, of walking forward without demanding that everything be mended.

We are not afraid — though the enormity of what we are taking on may leave us quaking.