The presence of laws is not enough to guarantee the presence of morality in law. Common examples of the legalisation of injustice include Nazi Germany's systematic imprisonment and destruction of millions of people during WWII, or South Africa's Apartheid government before its democratization in 1991. The "peculiar institution" of the American Slave Economy, and the following eras of Reconstruction and Jim Crow, also bring to mind the power of state institutions to legalize immoral and unjust acts.

Following the Second World War, the United Nations became the optimal space to engage and direct the new historical reality of a "culturally inclusive, representative, pluralistic world community." Access to sovereignty and independence became synonymous with justice, as erstwhile subject-peoples began the process of forming nation-states out of colonial territories.