Justice - Dr Jonathan Floyd PDF

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Dr Jonathan Floyd...

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Monday, 3 May y Justice- Should justice be our political priority?

Lecture 1- Justice ?What is justice • Emperor Justinian- everybody getting their due

• 1) criminal corrective justice- who gets punished for what and how? distributive/social justice- how are goods and opportunities (2 distributed in society - focusing on this one • To demand justice, as an ideal, is to demand that people get the goods and opportunities they should have.

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• Justice tells us which equalities and liberties are required - challenge is which liberties and equalities, goods and opportunities justice requires, given competing considerations. • Commission on Social Justice 1944- not all inequalities are cases of injustice • Problem of conflicting liberties- which ones, goods and opportunities does justice require • Amartya Sen- 3 children are arguing over a flute • A says she is the only one who can play it, B has no toys and the others do, Carla says that she provided some of the wood • Considering desert (normative concept- a number of unsettled issues regarding the concept of desert itself and its relevance to justice), we might back A • Considering equality or need we might back Bob • Considering entitlement we might back Carla - There is a tension, no obvious answer when it comes to tension - Perhaps we need a process for deciding such things

What is justice pt2 • Justice is done when what people have is the result of a fair process? • Justice might be a matter of desert, entitlement equality, need or fairness/process • If justice is giving people their due= that might mean distributing goods and opportunities so that - Everybody gets what they need - What they get is a result of a fair process (e.g equality of opportunity is ensured but whatever results from those opportunities is fine) - People get what they deserve (a distribution according to the real worth of peoples contributions) - People are entitled to things- (what the market decides, regardless of inequality)

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• Will take the form of a principle or set of principles What is justice pt3 • Justice takes a form of Principe or set of principles • A concept is an idea denoted by a word, such as table or planet. • Justice is a value (something we aspire to or appreciate) but is also a principle (it takes the form of a general rule that tells us how things should be distributed and who gets what- according to need, fairness, desert etc) - Don’t lie is a principle and equality is a value while to distribute equality is a principle . - Golden rule of morality is a principle- only treat others as you would like to be treated - Two principles for allocating healthcare resources- 1) maximise lifeexpectancy 2) minimise pain • It takes the form of a rule or set of rules that tell us how goods and opportunities should be distributed, and thus which liberties and equalities ought to be provided.

- John Rawls, A theory of justice • Egalitarian • We agree that we need to know what justice is because of we can’t agree o rules of cooperation as a society- rules that decide who gets what- and don’t operate…then we will all be considerably poorer - Why do we need justice? Because we need to agree on how we distribute stuff in society based on rules, need to recognise we are better off with some rules rather than no rules- without rules no civilisation no quality of life • Yet we disagree how distribution should take place- what process? • Why do we disagree? - Because we are ignorant - Selfish - think of ourselves - Prejudiced - WE DO AGREE.. that the rules we base our society on should not be based on those factors ignorance, prejudice and selfishness • The original position pt1 - We should imagine what kind of politic economic system we would choose if we didn’t know certain facts about ourselves - our race, wealth, talents, health, religion, age, sex and our conception of the goods (our preferred way of life) - Means choosing behind the veil of ignorance- ORIGINAL POSITION • OG position Pt2 - You don’t know your conception of the good - You have to choose a principle or set of principles of justice to govern society 2

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- You don’t know which person you will be • What Rawls thinks you wouldn’t choose - Utilitarian order- what you do is maximise happiness in the world - Perfect equality- lack of incentives to produce things would mean people don’t work hard enough - Desert- couldn’t agree on who is more deserving - Entitlement - incase you are on the wrong side of lucky or inheritance • Rawls think you would choose two principles of justice behind a veil of ignorance- JUSTICE AS FAIRNESS 1. Equal basic liberties (most important) - ‘a fully adequate scheme of equal basic liberties, which scheme is compatible with the same scheme of liberties for all’ 2. Fair equality of opportunity- offices and positions open to all an equal access to education, employment, culture etc 3. The difference principle- wealth inequality is permitted but it is arranged to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society • Why?

- Prioritise basic and equal liberties, as these are things that would be

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valuable for you whatever you wanted in life…equal basic liberties because yTHEY ARE VALUABLE TO YOU WHOEVER/WHATEVER YOU ARE Ensure fair equality of opportunity because.. you jsut dont know Restrict such equality by stopping it from interfering with the basic liberties

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- Permit inequalities that maximise the position of the worst-off, via the difference principle in case you are one of those people. • Conclusion

- Been concerned about which freedoms and equalities to pursue, Rawls gives those answers. - Rawls vision of justice - Attraction to freedom is catered to via the basic liberties Rawls theory protests - Attraction to equality and desert are catered for via far equality of opportunity - Attraction to need and utility are catered via the difference principle • NEW LABOUR INFLUENCED BY RAWLS- Now comfortable with inequality provided that everyone benefits • Rich can get richer if the bottom rise • Two gripes- 1) the squeezed middle on which Rawls is silent and 2) unequal opportunity due to inequality of wealth which Rawls prohibits

- Robert ck, Anarchy, State and Utopia •

- Some problems facing those theories Lecture 2- Justice

- Justice- everybody getting the goods and opportunities they should get - Particular liberties and equalities we should get - Rawls- a just society is one in which we • Enjoy equal basic liberties e.g thought, speech • Fair equality of opportunities • Only permit inequalities that benefit society’s worst off • We would choose these principles if we didn’t know certain facts about ourselves

- Robert Nozick- libertarian alternative • What matters is how people come to be rich and poor - If they came to be rich and poor in a way that nobody’s individual -

rights were violated then there’s nothing unjust about the resulting inequality Means less tax, a smaller state, something of a free market smaller state than we have at the moment- neoliberalism

• Resources are not manna from heaven - Why do we talk of distribution and redistribution as if we have a central pot of money that need to be portion out?? 4

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- Things already belong to people - People have rights which means you can’t do certain things to themsteal from them or tax them fro the benefit of others without violating those rights • PT2 - Instead of thinking of justice in terms of distribution or redistribution, we should talk about justice in holdings or entitlement - Justice occurs not when things are being distrusted out in a central system BUT… - when the goods of people have occurred in a just way, conducted through millions of decisions • PT3 - World would be wholly just- just transfers or just acquisitions - Just acquisitions • Made or developed or claimed something in an acceptable way - Just transfers • You have come to own something that someone else owned first in an acceptable manner- you bought it or it was given to you. • PT 4 - What makes an acquisition just, nobody has been made worse off - Stems from John Locke- regarding the appropriation of un-owned land or common land, and thus justification of private property, according to which It was fine provided that enough and as good has been left in common areas • Pt 5 - Surely common land analogy doesn’t work anymore? - Nozick admits this- are people in general made worse-off by a system that allows people to acquire things in certain ways? e.g private property system - If the answer is no, due to efficiency, incentives, creativity, competition and stability… then we need not worry and aquissitons made under the system are calm • PT 6 - Just transfers • Exchanges or gifts • If things are not stolen and no fraud takes place then there is no injustice when this occurs. • e.g Wilt Chamberlin, a basketball player, if everybody happily gives an extra 25 cent in addition to their main ticket price and 1 million people go to see him play and he gets all the money- then is it unjust that he is now much richer than anybody else? • Should he not keep it all?

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• PT8 - If what people had was acquired in a just way - Or transferred to them in a just way- if you buy a house at an agreed price and then rented it out. - Then whatever pattern of wealth and income you end up with in society of the justness of the process involved • PT 9 - From each as they choose, to each as they are chosen - theory of justice captured by this slogan - Theory of justice is historical (how people came to own thingsnot patterned- and backward not forward looking• P10 - Justice is not a particular spread of goods and opportunities, but rather a particular kind of procedure about whether the spread of goods and opportunities results is perfectly just - Role of the state- minimal or night watchman state (neo-liberal) they simply ensure justice in acquisitions and trades/regulates

- Problematic processes PT1 • Imagine the Russian state hands over shares in national resources e.g gas and iron to individuals who can make no use of them • Was that a just acquisition or where people made worse off? • And If those individuals then sell those shares for a pittance to a small group of individuals with the means to benefit from them- creating a new class of oligarchs- was that fraud because its unfair?

- Problematic processes PT2 • Taken off shore and spent on Chelsea football club, rather than invested back into Russia- are acquisition and transfer still both just? • Or is it now unjust because the Russians are now worse off than they might have been • Thus also making the transfer unjust given it was akin to an unfair trade in goods

- Problematic processes PT3 • Consider how athletes who dope are unentilied to their success - Called Chelsea’s Russian money ‘financial doping’ • Rules in sports are always being revised so as to ensure a fair process and thus the right result

• Formula 1- rules trade restrictions or Football- financial fair play

- Nozick and Rectification • Libertarianism might turn into egalitarianism in practice • Also has a third principle of justice- rectification- if the things people trade today were once acquired in an unjust way then some form of rectification should be offered. - CONTINUOUS, STILL IMPORTANT 6

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• Toady’s riches based on yesterdays robberies? • Consider the European poor whose lands were appropriated by feudal Lords the subjects and citizens of oil-rich dictatorships and those who have experienced slavery and consider a particularly unfamiliar case ‘the Barbary slave trade’ - Pirates operating out of costal north African cities in the 17th century went on raids in order to capture slaves from places like Cornwall. - Might have been as high as 1.25 million people taken over 250 years - Should money be disturbed therefore from the people of contemporary Tunis, to the people of Cornwall?

• One problem is that people on both sides are dead- so who if

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anyone should pay for and receive rectification and what should be paid • Are jewish relatives and descendants of Holocaust victims entitled to Israel? • What about descendants of slavery and enforced poverty? • Some would say it’s complicated and it goes too far back- but often the answer is yes- if there was a continuous entity, a verifiable wrong, and identifiable descendants of the victims • Why should we tax taxpayers today rather than those who descended from slave trade owners? Rectification should be taken seriously- easier way to do this Is to Best way of rectification of all past injustices in the world is to deliver as close as possible to perfect equality of condition and opportunity today or at least as close as you can get without making society’s worst off even poorer than they are....