This paper explores the role of school leaders in facilitating Social Justice (SJ) leadership practice in schools. Ethical, Transformational and Distributed leadership theories together with School Leadership Development initiatives are examined. What emerges is that leaders need to bring SJ to the centre in their work and actively lead from an ethical value base towards equity and excellence across diverse contexts. Furthermore, School Leadership Development initiatives need to focus not only on Distributed Leadership, the current dominant leadership theory, but also on both Transformational and Ethical Leadership theories with a view to enabling school leaders to commit to SJ aims.