Introduction: the idea of distributive justice

2007

Abstract: In general, I shall focus on justice as what we morally owe each other. I shall therefore briefly elaborate on this concept of justice. As long as rights are understood very broadly as—perhaps pro tanto and highly conditional—constraints protecting the right-holder's interests and/or will, justice as what we owe each other is compatible with a broad range of theories. Rights, in this very weak sense, need not be absolute or even trumps over other moral considerations.

Social Justice Research, 1987

The concept o f distributive justice and the theoretical and empirical work conducted on it during the past two decades are examined. Three questions provide the structure for this examination: (i) What are fundamental conceptual dimensions o f distributive justice and the specific substantive issues to which they are related? (ii) What central questions has recent work on distributive justice addressed? and (iii) What are the most important emerging issues on which work in the near-term future should focus? Much o f the theory and research examined in the paper is sociat psychologicat in nature, but reference is made to related work in related disciplines, particularly sociology and philosophy.

2012

2009

The question of whether “justice” has a universal meaning or it has different meanings in various social schemes has been answered by some philosophers in opposite directions. Michael Walzer is among those who argue that principles of justice vary from one society to another in accordance with different meanings of primary goods, arising from particular historical background conditions. There is no single set of primary goods such as money, political power, social posts, and honors, whose meanings are shared across all cultures; nor are there universally shared principles of distributive justice for him. In this paper, I argue that Walzer’s claim that whether distribution of social goods is just or unjust depends on the cultural meanings of the goods is untenable and indeed inherently flawed. I shall also suggest that one may adopt a pluralistic approach to principles of distributive justice without being committed to Walzer’s relativism.

I argue that there are two concepts of distributive justice in play in debates on whether principles of distributive justice apply to the global sphere. Critics of the idea that the scope of distributive justice is restricted assume, without argument, a particular conception of justice in which justice-based evaluations apply to basic-structural institutional actions only instrumentally, whilst applying intrinsically to distributive outcomes for people. I call these outcomes-focused views. I show that at least one view in the literature on global justice, the agency argument, appeals to a distinct concept of social distributive justice where the descriptors 'justice' and 'injustice', intrinsically apply to the actions of certain types of institutional agents, and only derivatively to the description of states of affairs such as distributive outcomes. This alternative view is treatment-focused and deontological. It focuses on special goods that are only available as a matter of how one is treated by political institutions: relational-goods. It is also sensitive to considerations of fairness in practical reason in ways that outcomes-focused views are not. I show why, on this agency-focused approach, the scope of principles of distributive justice is restricted to how people who are subject to special institutional authority are treated. My main aim in this paper is to demonstrate that on a competitor approach to justice the anti-scope restriction arguments fail, and that the competitor approach is not obviously incoherent. Thus criticising scope restriction by assuming an outcomes-focused approach to distributive justice begs the question against agency-focused arguments. This shows the real dispute is at a more fundamental level.

Responsibility and Distributive Justice, edited by Carl Knight and Zofia Stemplowska. Oxford University Press, 2011

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the recent debate about responsibility and distributive justice. It traces the recent philosophical focus on distributive justice to John Rawls and examines two arguments in his work which might be taken to contain the seeds of the focus on responsibility in later theories of distributive justice. It examines Ronald Dworkin's ‘equality of resources’, the ‘luck egalitarianism’ of Richard Arneson and G. A. Cohen, as well as the criticisms of their work put forward by Elizabeth Anderson, Marc Fleurbaey, Susan Hurley, and Jonathan Wolff. Key concepts such as responsibility (individual and collective), luck (thin and thick; brute and option), control, desert, and equality of opportunity are delineated, and the implementation of responsibility-sensitive accounts of justice is considered. The chapters of this book are positioned in relation to the wider literature on responsibility and distributive justice, and a brief outline of the chapters is provided.

Theoretical progress is essential to the viability of any scientific subdiscipline. Ever since a growth spurt in the 1980s, however, and despite a very active research enterprise, distributive justice theory has developed very little. Our approach is first to discuss the role that theory plays in disciplinary growth. After noting the indicators of stagnation in distributive justice areas, we identify key problems with the way distributive justice theories are constructed and evaluated. Specifically, little attention is paid to the clear definition and consistent use of theoretical terms, or to the construction of explicit logical arguments from which empirical hypotheses may be derived. Weaknesses in these areas all but prohibit the evolution of improved theories over time. We conclude with a set of evaluative criteria that, if applied collectively by members of the field, would optimize the chances for theoretical progress. Ultimately this also would lead to more efficient empirical tests and better-informed practical applications of distributive justice theories.

(Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, uncorrected proofs) To most philosophers, unmet claims based on distributive justice imply a political injustice—some have a complaint of justice against their political system. This article explores a variety of views about how this connection may be grounded or qualified: political institutions may be one tool among others to realize an independent good, distributive principles might regulate the distributive activities of political institutions, or distributive principles might apply in light of a special relation of a political institution and its members. We also consider a view prevalent in the social contract tradition that, in light of reasonable disagreement, one cannot demand that shared political institutions conform to one’s own contentious distributive theory: members must seek terms with which all can live, even though such terms may not be anyone’s most preferred possibility.

From S. Olsaretti (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Distributive Justice, Oxford University Press, 2018)