When the demand for justice comes from grief-stricken mothers of murdered children, it carries a potent effective weight that demands public concern and urgent action. Citizens of most nations are now routinely confronted with such images of suffering and vengeful crime victims who demand justice. What can be considered justice in the face of such suffering? Two photographs of grieving mothers of murdered children are presented and analyzed as the authors ponder whether the images permit a “Levinasian ethical reflex” to stir the viewer; such a reflex may a priori preclude the possibility of justice. Levinas’ concept of the “face of the other” is considered, although the reflections of the two photographs present a stark test to his theory of the face. The current analysis casts doubt onto the assumption that there is a self-evident just response to these “faces of the other.” The possibility of an unconditional ethical response to the face of the other is considered within a larger analysis of the aporetic passage from ethics to justice. How can the passage from ethics to justice be negotiated in the face of the mother of a murdered child? Figures, notes, references