Recently, social justice received a shot in the arm in the Philippines, when the Supreme Court issued a decision last month directing the Hacienda Luisita, Inc. (HLI) to directly distribute 4,916 hectares of farmland to the original 6,296 original farm worker beneficiaries and to pay PhP 1.3 billion (US$30.2 million) to the laborers as their share in the proceeds from a previous transaction where HLI sold 580 hectares of the hacienda.