Justice
An Essay
Published by Diogenes as Gerechtigkeit
Original Title: Gerechtigkeit

Everyone wants justice – always for themselves, sometimes for others, rarely for everyone. But what is justice, and how is it obtained? Bernhard Schlink offers neither an ideal concept nor a general formula. His objective is more modest. His emphasis lies on the process, on how we must continually renew our search for fair solutions and how we can find them.

This is work, and this text is a guide on that path.

Nonfiction, Contemporary Literature, Philosophy, Bestseller
208 pages
2026

978-3-257-07372-0
Bernhard
Schlink

Bernhard Schlink, born in 1944, was a Professor of Public Law and Legal Philosophy and a former judge at the Constitutional Court of North Rhine-Westphalia. His first novel, Self's Justice, was published in 1987; his 1995 novel The Reader, translated into more than fifty languages and adapted by Stephen Daldry into a film starring Kate Winslet, established his worldwide renown. He has been awarded with national and international prizes like the German ›Bundesverdienstkreuz (Order of Merit) 1st Class‹, the French ›Chevalier dans l’Ordre de la Legion d’Honneur‹ and the Italian ›Grinzane Cavour Prize‹. His latest novel is The Late Life.

Photo: Gaby Gerster / © Diogenes Verlag

Quotes

Martina Läubli
NZZ, Zurich

»With his concise, cleanly reasoned, and fairly unpretentious text, Schlink delivers a conceptual framework that enables one's own reasoning about justice.«

Gustav Seibt
Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich

»The book encompasses both legal systematics and casuistry. It is written in a crystalline and concise manner.«

Thomas Groß
Mannheimer Morgen

»It illuminates the view on an important and continuously topical matter in a remarkable manner.«

Christian Ruf
Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten

»Schlink refuses simple answers, he prefers careful deliberation when it comes to just solutions in politics and everyday life.«

Dresdner Morgenpost

»Bernhard Schlink presents [...] the pointed considerations of a lawyer and author who understands justice not as a rigid system but as an animate moral duty.«

Denis Scheck
Tagesspiegel, Berlin

»Highly recommended.«