First published in 1945, in the wake of potent suffering, injustice, and the social and international upheaval of World War II, Justice and Social Order is Emil Brunner's impassioned assessment of Protestant Christianity's irresoluteness on various social issues, including the social order, politics, law, and international law. Brunner argues that the totalitarian State was the inevitable result of the slow disintegration and dissolution of the idea of justice in the Western World, which left Western humanity in its own wreckage in the twentieth century.

Part one, 'Principles', presents the principles of justice, such as law, equality, and justice, proceeding with a description of the essential nature of these principles and where justice lies with the sphere of ethics. In the second part, 'Practice', Brunner explains the application of the principles described in part one to the practice of justice. In Justice and Social Order, Brunner elucidates his belief that it is the duty of theologians, philosophers, and jurists to comprehend and clarify the idea of justice to reconstruct just institutions and cure humanity's 'chronic disease': the absence of the intention of justice.