Should the Injustice Done to Her be the Law’s Concern? The Case of Cinderella

Abstract

In this paper I draw on the fairy tale Cinderella to examine the distinction articulated in analytical jurisprudence between harm and injustice. I argue that the wrong done to Cinderella is an injustice, not a harm. While law is increasingly concerned with harms to children, it is persistently unconcerned with the injustices they suffer. This, I argue, is a mistake informed by a deeply gendered understanding of the distinction between the public and private realms. From Cinderella’s case, I turn to the US Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education and the settlement of the residential schools claims of Indigenous children in Canada to argue that the law ought not to take the view that injustice to children is not legally cognizable unless and until it can be conceptually transposed into harm. Injustice to children ought particularly to engage the law’s concern where (as in both school segregation in the US and the residential schools in Canada) state action is directly responsible for the injustice in question.