Desert And Justice

Does justice require that individuals get what they deserve? Serena Olsaretti brings together new essays by leading moral and political philosophers examining the relation between desert and justice; they also illuminate the nature of distributive justice, and the relationship between desert and other values, such as equality and responsibility.

Distributive justice has come to the fore in political philosophy: how should we arrange our social and economic institutions so as to distribute benefits and burdens fairly? Thirty-eight leading figures from philosophy and political theory present specially written critical assessments of the key issues in this flourishing area of research.

Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Research suggests that people of all demographics have nuanced and sophisticated notions of justice. Intuitions of Justice and the Utility of Desert sketches the contours of a wide range of lay judgments of justice, touching many if not most of the issues that penal code drafters or policy makers must face.

Like American politics, the academic debate over justice is polarized, with almost all theories of justice falling within one of two traditions: egalitarianism and libertarianism. This book provides an alternative to the partisan standoff by focusing not on equality or liberty, but on the idea that we should give people the things that they deserve. Mulligan sets forth a theory of economic justice—meritocracy—which rests upon a desert principle and is distinctive from existing work in two ways. First, meritocracy is grounded in empirical research on how human beings think, intuitively, about justice. Research in social psychology and experimental economics reveals that people simply don’t think that social goods should be distributed equally, nor do they dismiss the idea of social justice. Across ideological and cultural lines, people believe that rewards should reflect merit. Second, the book discusses hot-button political issues and makes concrete policy recommendations. These issues include anti-meritocratic bias against women and racial minorities and the United States’ widening economic inequality. Justice and the Meritocratic State offers a new theory of justice and provides solutions to our most vexing social and economic problems. It will be of keen interest to philosophers, economists, and political theorists.

Much of contemporary social and political theory has reduced the concept of desert to a minor role. The work of John Rawls is the prime example. Recently some philosophers have argued that the notion merits a more central place in social and political theory. This reader brings togetheropposing positions and arguments, thus stimulating debate over the meaning and significance of desert in contemporary thought. The book includes eight classical and twenty-two contemporary readings on the concept.

During the last half of the twentieth century, legal philosophy (or legal theory or jurisprudence) has grown significantly. It is no longer the domain of a few isolated scholars in law and philosophy. Hundreds of scholars from diverse fields attend international meetings on the subject. In some universities, large lecture courses of five hundred students or more study it. The primary aim of the Law and Philosophy Library is to present some of the best original work on legal philosophy from both the Anglo-American and European traditions. Not only does it help make some of the best work avail able to an international audience, but it also encourages increased awareness of, and interaction between, the two major traditions. The primary focus is on full-length scholarly monographs, although some edited volumes of original papers are also included. The Library editors are assisted by an Editorial Advisory Board of internationally renowed scholars. Legal philosophy should not be considered a narrowly circumscribed field.

This book presents and defends a novel theory of distributive justice, according to which political economic distributive justice reigns in a state if the government of that state ensures that citizens receive the benefits and burdens they deserve from it. The book starts with a more precise characterization of the target of this inquiry - political economic distributive justice. It then proceeds to explicate the concept of desert, evaluate proposed ways of justifying desert claims, formulate a number of desertist theories of justice, and draw out the special features of the version defended here. Once the proposed form of desertism has been stated, its implications are compared to those of egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, sufficientism, the difference principle, libertarianism, and prioritarianism, with the aim of showing that desertism yields more attractive results in cases that prove difficult for other theories currently being discussed in the literature. Arguments - especially arguments deriving from Rawls — against desertism are explained and shown to be ineffective. There is discussion of the distinction between comparative and non-comparative justice. Emphasis is placed on the distinction between (a) theories about the moral rightness of distributions, (b) theories about the intrinsic value of distributions, and (c) theories specifically about the justice of distributions. There is discussion of the unfortunate results of confusion of these different sorts of theory. The views of Rawls, Nozick, Parfit, Frankfurt, Feinberg and others are discussed. A version of the method of reflective equilibrium is explained and defended. The book concludes with a series of admissions concerning puzzles that remain unsolved.