wondering about justice

I just finished watching an episode of Justice, a program on PBS that is a televised series of lectures from Harvard University. The episode centered on two topics: military recruitment and surrogate motherhood. The general question that permeated both open class discussions was: are these practices unjust? The format for discussion was open for students to respond and engage with questions posed both by the professor and also by their peers. It was interesting how the conversations took shape and seemed to end with students realizing that their initial answers to that question of justice contradicted their later answers (based on general consensus polls).

Basically, it got me to thinking...How do you interrogate issues of justice without a moral center?

I'm really curious as to how that works. I mean, certainly, that is the case in law schools across the nation. Law schools are inherently secular in that they teach, promote and refer to a legal system of a non-religious allegiance. Yet the issues so often prove to be moral ones for so many people. How does a a group of people pondering law then dig into and tackle these issues without a common ground for morality. I'm sure any student of law would likely be able to help me understand the pretext and context for how this works.

My understanding of the answer to my original question is that justice in this nation functions with no necessity of morality. Indeed, the concept of morality is one that, while it may overlap with notions of what is just, does not have as much credence in a court of law, as say, the law itself. On the other hand of course, laws do point to a general sense of morality, such as it is generally immoral to kill another person, but the priorities of law do not require morality as a prerequisite for justice. Therefore there comes a point in secular law when just does not equal moral. So, again...how do you conceive of justice without a moral center? What, then, does justice even mean?