The phrase "an effort to justify" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used when discussing attempts to provide reasons or explanations for a particular action, decision, or belief.
Example: "The committee made an effort to justify their decision to increase the budget by presenting detailed financial reports."
Alternatives: "an attempt to explain" or "a bid to rationalize".
It was official policy, an effort to justify the escalating expense of the shuttles.
"It's an effort to justify an increased United States role in the region".
Obviously, Schlossberg, in an effort to justify the whole bagel-cookie thing, had created a "subway guy" identity for Arkin.] MAY.
The commission's bias shows itself most obviously in an economic analysis that exaggerates the problems facing Social Security in an effort to justify a quick move toward privatization.
In what looks like an effort to justify injecting more religion into government, it voted to require students to examine why the founding fathers protected religious freedom — and how that approach contrasts with "separation of church and state".
"Nazanin's case is part of a wider pattern: a number of dual nationals have been taken in an effort to justify the fiction that there is a plot of infiltration," Ratcliffe said.
Galton made an honest effort to justify his belief in nature over nurture with hard evidence.
His op-ed is more appropriately characterized as an apologetic effort to justify his country's stripping the citizenship of hundreds of thousands.
March, Walsh and Gaffney have all been accused of filing false police reports after the shooting exaggerating the threat posed by McDonald in an apparent effort to justify Van Dyke's use of fatal force.
On June 5 , 1996 Clinger announced that the committee's investigations had discovered that the White House had requested access to Billy Dale's FBI background check report seven months after the terminations, in what Clinger said was an improper effort to justify the firings.
Dick Morris, in a limp effort to justify how he wrongly predicted a landslide for Romney, explained that he "... predicted a Romney landslide and, instead, we ended up with an Obama squeaker".
