I am legally entitled to certain accommodations for my visual impairment that I do not always need. Affording me these rights is required by justice even on those rare occasions in which they are not necessary to give me an equal opportunity to fully participate in all aspects of society. I sometimes wonder whether I am nonetheless “gaming the system,” “exploiting a loophole,” or otherwise acting unjustly or unfairly by using disability accommodations in such circumstances. The essay aims to (...) explore this apparent paradox by considering whether it is sometimes wrong, as a matter of justice, for disabled people to use accommodations we are justly owed. My conclusion is that, although it is not unjust for disabled people to use accommodations we are entitled to as a matter of justice, an ideally just person would sometimes forgo them for the sake of her commitment to justice itself. (shrink)

This commentary on Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Climate of History initially frames the work in the context of the ongoing transdisciplinary project of creating synergies or more precisely “consilience” between the sciences and humanities. When this project is engaged in on the premises of the humanities (and the social sciences), we end up with the Earth system and the planetary as the basic lifeblood of human society—what foregrounds existence in common. That this realization is already bringing forth new justificatory principles for governance (...) in a planetary age is then related through a history of ecological justice concerns. (shrink)

Liberal theories of justice have been rightly criticized for two things by care theorists. First, they have failed to deal with private care relations’ inherent (inter)dependency, asymmetry and particularity. Second, they have been shown unable properly to address the asymmetry and dependency constitutive of care workers’ and care-receivers’ systemic conditions. I apply Kant’s theory of right to show that current care theories unfortunately reproduce similar problems because they also argue on the assumption that good care requires only virtuous (...) private individuals. Giving up this assumption enables us to solve the problems regarding both private care relations and systemic injustice. (shrink)

Kant’s concept of the highest good proportionately unites virtue and happiness—the supreme goods of, respectively, the systems of freedom and of nature. A middle path between theological and secular interpretations of Kant’s highest good is possible if we disentangle two distinct roles played by God: a causal role in promoting the real unity of the highest good, i.e., its actualization; and a conceptual role in modeling its conceptual unity. The highest good is theological in the first case, but neutral—neither directly (...) theological nor secular—in the second. Reconstructing how Kant envisioned the conceptual unity of the highest good requires taking seriously his repeated reference to God as the highest original good, and to the best world as the highest derived good. If, as Kant thought, a moral God forms a triadic unity comprised of holiness, goodness, and divine justice, perhaps he assumed that the conceptual unity of the derived good is likewise triadic, comprised of virtue, happiness, and a form of justice that is not directly divine but “systemic,” designating the unity of the systems of nature and of freedom. Divine justice, in contrast, constitutes the real unity of the highest good. (shrink)

Why is American punishment so cruel? While in continental Europe great efforts are made to guarantee that prisoners are treated humanely, in America sentences have gotten longer and rehabilitation programs have fallen by the wayside. Western Europe attempts to prepare its criminals for life after prison, whereas many American prisons today leave their inhabitants reduced and debased. In the last quarter of a century, Europe has worked to ensure that the baser human inclination toward vengeance is not reflected by state (...) policy, yet America has shown a systemic drive toward ever increasing levels of harshness in its criminal policies. Why is America so short on mercy? In this deeply researched, comparative work, James Q. Whitman reaches back to the 17th and 18th centuries to trace how and why American and European practices came to diverge. Eschewing the usual historical imprisonment narratives, Whitman focuses instead on intriguing differences in the development of punishment in the age of Western democracy. European traditions of social hierarchy and state power, so consciously rejected by the American colonies, nevertheless supported a more merciful and dignified treatment of offenders. The hierarchical class system on the continent kept alive a tradition of less-degrading "high-status" punishments that eventually became applied across the board in Europe. The distinctly American, draconian regime, on the other hand, grows, Whitman argues, out of America's longstanding distrust of state power and its peculiar, broad-brush sense of egalitarianism. Low-status punishments were evenly meted out to all offenders, regardless of class or standing. America's unrelentingly harsh treatment of trangressors--this "equal opportunity degradation"-- is, in a very real sense, the dark side of the nation's much vaunted individualism. A sobering look at the growing rift between the United States and Europe, Harsh Justice exposes the deep cultural roots of America's degrading punishment practices. (shrink)

If someone assaults you, should they get a milder penalty if they are rich than if they are poor? We wouldn't dream of passing a law that formalized such an arrangement. But the design of our legal systems in the US, UK, and elsewhere, which permits people with sufficient money to pay for better lawyers, means that wealth often does make a difference to legal outcomes. Justice, then, depends not only on the substance of the laws we pass, but (...) on the design of the system that administers and enforces them. Philosophers and legal theorists, however, have paid relatively little attention to what justice demands of the general design and structure of the legal system. Equal Justice argues among other things that market principles should not determine access to legal resources. If, for example, a large corporation sues a small startup, either the corporation has to use a law firm of the quality that the startup can afford or--which would be preferable, given the corporation's in-house lawyers--the startup would be given a subsidy to afford a top firm. The author builds on this core idea of equal access to resources to work out how the court system and the legal profession should be structured in order to ensure a generally just legal system. (shrink)

Pursuing Justice, Second Edition, examines the issue of justice by considering the origins of the idea, formal systems of justice, current global issues of justice, and ways in which justice might be achieved by individuals, organizations, and the global community. Part 1 demonstrates how the idea of justice has emerged over time, starting with religion and philosophy, then moving to the justice as a concern of the state, and finally to the concept of (...) social justice. Part 2 outlines the very different mechanisms used by various nations for achieving state justice, including systems based on common law, civil law, and Islamic law, with a separate discussion of the US justice system. Part 3 focuses on four contemporary issues of justice: war, genocide, slavery, and the environment. Finally, Part 4 shows how individuals and organizations can go about pursuing justice, and describes the rise of global justice. This updated timely book helps students understand the complexities and nuances of a society's pursuit of justice. It provides students with the foundations of global justice systems, integrating Greek philosophies and major religious perspectives into a justice perspective, and contributes to undergraduate understanding of international justice bodies, NGOs, and institutions. New edition is completely updated and revised to achieve relevance for today's students Covers concepts of justice as well as ideas for pursuing and achieving justice Examines how our modern laws began, and traces their evolution to today's laws Presents concepts and issues in justice studies as well as a comparison of several systems of law Teaching resources include discussion questions and real-world examples. (shrink)

This essay is concerned with the question of what kind of economic system would be needed in order to realize Rawls’s principles of social justice. Hitherto, debates about ‘property-owning democracy’ and ‘liberal socialism’ have been overly schematic, in various respects, and have therefore missed some of the most important issues regarding the relationships between social justice and economic institutions and systems. What is at stake between broadly capitalist or socialist economic systems is not in fact a simple choice (...) in a single dimension, but rather a range of choices across a range of different dimensions. This essay, then, has a dual objective: first, it aims to provide a richer account of this normative territory, while showing how issues of economic democracy, decommodification and the limits of markets, and the role of democratic economic planning, all raise questions of justice that are not well captured by focusing only on questions of ownership. Second, it aims to show how the case for democratic socialism can be developed from Rawlsian foundations, in a way that is sensitive to the normative affinities between Rawlsian liberal egalitarianism and democratic socialism, and which attends carefully to the different kinds of institutional elements which a stable, just, and democratic society would require. Taking these aims together, the hope is that we can move onward to a richer debate about the ways in which the realization of democratic socialist institutions may be seen as a requirement of social justice. (shrink)

This paper develops a domination-based practice-dependent approach to justice, according to which it is practices of systemic domination which can be said to ground demands from justice. The domination-based approach developed overcomes the two most important objections levelled to alternative practice-dependent approaches. First, it eschews conservative implications and hence is immune to the status quo objection. Second, it is immune to the redundancy objection, which doubts whether empirical facts and practices can really play an irreducible role in (...) grounding justice. In theorising dominating practices in terms of practices of social power, a domination-based approach makes justice dependent on factual information in three ways: First, the principle of non-domination is indeterminate and can only be spelled out by taking into view particular contexts of domination. Second, the principle of non-domination is conditional on the existence of practices of social power. Third, social power possesses a structural ontology – to know whether A has social power over B we need to turn to social rules distributing agents' higher order status of normative authority towards each other. This explains in what way practices of social power – and of domination – are both factual and normative practices and hence how such practices are non-redundant in grounding justice. (shrink)

Scholarship focusing on how international research can contribute to justice in global health has primarily explored requirements for the conduct of clinical trials. Yet health systems research in low- and middle-income countries has increasingly been identified as vital to the reduction of health disparities between and within countries. This paper expands an existing ethical framework based on the health capability paradigm – research for health justice – to externally-funded health systems research in LMICs. It argues that a specific (...) form of health systems research in LMICs is required if the enterprise is to advance global health equity. “Research for health justice” requirements for priority setting, research capacity strengthening, and post-study benefits in health systems research are derived in light of the field's distinctive characteristics. Specific obligations are established for external research actors, including governments, funders, sponsors, and investigators. How these framework requirements differ from those for international clinical research is discussed. (shrink)

Equal Justice: Fair Legal Systems in an Unfair World, by Wilmot-SmithFrederick. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019. Pp. 256.

Management control systems include justice implicitly, as they believe that the market provides what is just or not through the market value. Psychological literature has deemed that people can perceive which procedures and decisions are just or not. In this paper, we argue that management control systems need to include justice criteria explicitly, beyond mere market value, in both their design (formal justice) and use (informal justice). This will increase the probability that organizational members will collaborate (...) to achieve organizational goals. (shrink)

This book focuses on justice and its demands in the way of providing people with medical care. Building on recent insights on the nature of moral perceptions and motivations from the neurosciences, it makes a case for the traditional medical ethic and examines its financial feasibility. The book starts out by giving an account of the concept of justice and tracing it back to the practices and tenets of Hippocrates and his followers, while taking into account findings from (...) the neurosciences. Next, it considers whether the claim that it is just to limit medical care for everyone to some basic minimum is justifiable. The book then addresses finances and expenditures of the US health care system and shows that the growth of expenditures and the percentage of the gross national product spent on health care make for an unsustainable trajectory. In light of the question what should be changed, the book suggests that overdiagnosis and medicalizing normal behavior lead to harmful, costly and unnecessary interventions and are the result of unethical behavior on the part of the pharmaceutical industry and extensive ethical failures of the FDA. The book ends with suggestions about what can be done to put the U.S. health care system on the path to sustainability, better medical care, and compliance with the demands of justice. (shrink)

Systemic financial risk is one of the most significant collective action problems facing societies. The Great Recession brought attention to a tragedy of the commons in capital markets, in which market participants, from the first-time homebuyer to Wall Street financiers, acted in ways beneficial to themselves individually, but which together caused substantial collective harm. Two kinds of risk are at play in complex chains of transactions in financial markets: ordinary market risk and systemic risk. Two moral questions are (...) relevant in such cases. First, from the standpoint of interactional morality, does a person have a moral duty to avoid risk of harm to others if their financial transactions contribute in some way, however small, to the loss or harm? This article identifies the conditions in which persons are morally responsible in such cases. Second, from the standpoint of institutional morality, how should society distribute the risk of harm associated with massively complex financial markets? This question is considered in the context of the home mortgage credit market. Luck egalitarianism, in particular a Dworkinian insurance scheme to allocate risks and resources relating to mortgage credit and private home ownership, offers substantial promise. (shrink)

Management control systems include justice implicitly, as they believe that the market provides what is just or not through the market value. Psychological literature has deemed that people can perceive which procedures and decisions are just or not. In this paper, we argue that management control systems need to include justice criteria explicitly, beyond mere market value, in both their design (formal justice) and use (informal justice). This will increase the probability that organizational members will collaborate (...) to achieve organizational goals. (shrink)

This paper discusses a non-state justice system (Sistema Comunitario de Seguridad, Justicia y Reeducación, hereafter: SCSJR) applied by some of the Afromexican and Indigenous communities of the Guerrero state in Mexico as an example of a maximalist restorative justice system. Restorative justice is presented here as an alternative to criminal justice. While it responds to similar moral concerns as retributive justifications do, it offers more adequate mechanisms of dealing with certain crimes and aims to reduce coerciveness (...) of justice when dealing with lawbreaking. Restorative justice is also an approach that should be perceived as more legitimate when handling cases where the state lacks the moral standing to prosecute offenders. The SCSJR is used as an example to demonstrate the possibility of a justice system based on restorative principles to be effective in handling the entirety of lawbreaking in a community. In the case of the SCSJR this approach to justice has been proved to be effective even in the wake of high levels of criminal activity in the region. This paper discusses the SCSJR’s institutions and attitude toward lawbreaking and argues that they demonstrate an example of a justice system based on restorative justice. (shrink)

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free-Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health insurance and, (...) in the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested , and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. (shrink)

The case for U.S. health system reform aimed at achieving wider insurance coverage in the population and disciplining the growth of costs is fundamentally a moral case, grounded in two principles: (1) a principle of social justice, the Just Sharing of the costs of illness, and (2) a related principle of fairness, the Prevention of Free‐Riding. These principles generate an argument for universal access to basic care when applied to two existing facts: the phenomenon of “market failure” in health (...) insurance and, in the U.S., the existing legal guarantee of access to emergency care. The principles are widely shared in U.S. moral culture by conservatives and liberals alike. Similarly, across the political spectrum, the fact of market failure is not contested (though it is sometimes ignored), and the guarantee of access to emergency care is rarely challenged. The conclusion generated by the principles is not only that insurance for a basic minimum of care should be mandatory but that the scope of that care should be lean, efficient, and constrained in its cost. -/- . (shrink)

‘Justice’ is spoken of in two ways: the lawful and the fair. The law is a human construct that is devoted to the advantage of all, or to the advantage of the best, or to the advantage of those in power or to the advantage of those representing it – let it be the politician, the media, the TV presenter, the filmmaker. Thus, the law serves the production or the preservation of happiness within politics and business. The law commands (...) us to act according to the mean. A well-written law follows the mean well and a poorly written law does not. On the other hand, fairness is a principle sometimes materialised through the law and the given justice system. Fairness is the ultimate value pursued by both the common law and civil law traditions. However, its distribution through the law and the representation of this delivery varies. Does this mean that a different kind of justice is distributed? Through the teachings of Aristotle, this essay aims to deconstruct the notion of justice, by breaking down its two ingredients, the lawful and the fair, and by analysing the effect of their representation in modern European society. The relativity attached to the notion of justice is not a modern phenomenon, but a philosophical matter that can be analysed and indeed explained through the teachings of Aristotle and its contemporary students. The analysis will be developed in the context of convergent Europe, focusing on the role of the media and courts especially in relation to criminal justice. (shrink)

Justice system reform is being implemented in Japan. The number of attorneys ( bengoshi ) has substantially increased and concerns have been raised about the impact on the profession's quality and ethics. The profession has called for a slowdown in the increase. Does the increase really adversely affect legal ethics in Japan? Should the pace of the reform be slowed down, from the perspective of maintaining legal ethics? This paper begins to answer these questions through empirical analysis of (1) (...) whether there is an increase in cases of ethical concerns; and (2) whether such an increase (if any) is caused by the increase in bengoshi . The paper then investigates whether there is an over-supply of bengoshi . It concludes with a discussion of the negative impact that a slowdown of the increase may have on access to justice and the bengoshi profession's (ethical) responsibilities. (shrink)

The education system is faced with many demands of justice. What these demands imply and how they are justified is, however, disputed. In this book, international contributors present cutting edge research to discuss the relationship between educational justice and the value of education. By combining reflections on educational justice with reflections on the human good and the aims of education, the book reveals that it is not enough to assess certain patterns of distribution; the value of what (...) is to be distributed must also be clarified. In this respect, deliberations about the value of education have to play an integral part in giving an account of educational justice. Questions addressed in the volume include: - In what sense should justice, fairness and equality be realised in the education system? - How is educational equality related to equality of opportunity? - Is the main concern that everyone should be educated equally well – or just well enough? Education, Justice and the Human Good discusses the positional value of education and its relation to educational justice, emphasising that education is valuable not only for competitive reasons, but in its contribution to human flourishing. The book will appeal to those from the field of the philosophy of education as well as applied political philosophy, from undergraduates to professional academics. (shrink)

An ‘ideal’ health care system would be unencumbered by economic considerations and provide an ample supply of well-paid health care professionals who would supply culturally appropriate optimal health care to the level desired by patients. An ‘ideal’ health care system presupposes an ‘ideal’ society in which resources for all social goods are unlimited. Changes within health care systems occur both because of changes within the system and because of changes or demands in and by the ‘exterior environment’. Social systems must (...) be in a homeostatic balance. If one component fails to accommodate itself to other forces, needs and interests within the system, the system is imperiled. It is difficult to create a just health care system in an unjust society, just as it is difficult to practise truly ethical medicine in an ethically corrupt system. (shrink)

An ‘ideal’ health care system would be unencumbered by economic considerations and provide an ample supply of well-paid health care professionals who would supply culturally appropriate optimal health care to the level desired by patients. An ‘ideal’ health care system presupposes an ‘ideal’ society in which resources for all social goods are unlimited. Changes within health care systems occur both because of changes within the system and because of changes or demands in and by the ‘exterior environment’. Social systems must (...) be in a homeostatic balance. If one component fails to accommodate itself to other forces, needs and interests within the system, the system is imperiled. It is difficult to create a just health care system in an unjust society, just as it is difficult to practise truly ethical medicine in an ethically corrupt system. (shrink)

Martin Wrights original ground-breaking and influential analysis of the defects of the adversarial system of justice, plus the arguments in favour of a more ...

Medical residency—specialty training after the completion of medical school—is an essential component of medical education and is required in order to be a licensed, independent medical practitioner in most jurisdictions. As things currently stand in the United States, the match between medical school graduates and residency programs is governed by a match between rank-order lists prepared by candidates and residencies alike. An applicant picks a number of residency programs and ranks them according to order of interest. The residency program prepares (...) a similar list, ranking the candidates it most wants in its program. A computer program compares the rankings and makes assignments according to a certain algorithm. Using these lists, the match system assigns approximately 24,000 applicants to approximately 21,000 training positions in pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, internal medicine, and the rest. These assignments are then announced to all parties on specific days. The system has been in place since 1952 and is overseen by the National Residency Match Program, a nonprofit organization. This system has several advantages. First of all, it standardizes the timetable for decisions, and applicants are in no position to tie up offers while waiting to hear from other institutions. Institutions are not held captive, either, in making assignments while waiting to hear from particular parties. (shrink)

Climate change governance is extremely challenging because of both the intrinsic difficulty of the issues at stake and the plurality of values and worldviews. For these reasons, the ethical concerns that characterise climate change should also be meaningfully addressed through a specific version of procedural justice. Accordingly, in this article we adopt an impure notion of procedural justice. On this theoretical basis, we define relevant fairness criteria and contextualise them for climate governance systems. Then, we empirically justify fairness (...) criteria against a critical and divisive element for the future governance of the Green Climate Fund, i.e., the no-objection procedure. The article concludes with some considerations prompted by the analysis. (shrink)

Despite much popular interest in food issues, there remains a lack of social justice in the American agrifood system, as evidenced by prevalent hunger and obesity in low-income populations and exploitation of farmworkers. While many consumers and alternative agrifood organizations express interest in and support social justice goals, the incorporation of these goals into on-the-ground alternatives is often tenuous. Academics have an important role in calling out social justice issues and developing the critical thinking skills that can (...) redress inequality in the agrifood system. Academics can challenge ideological categories of inquiry and problem definition, include justice factors in defining research problems, and develop participatory, problem-solving research within social justice movements. In addition, scholars can educate students about the power of epistemologies, discourse, and ideology, thereby expanding the limits and boundaries of what is possible in transforming the agrifood system. In these ways, the academy can be a key player in the creation of a diverse agrifood movement that embraces the discourse of social justice. (shrink)

Recent scholarship has considered what, if anything, rich people owe to poor people to achieve justice in global health and the implications of this for international research. Yet this work has primarily focused on international clinical research. Health systems research is increasingly being performed in low and middle income countries and is essential to reducing global health disparities. This paper provides an initial description of the ethical issues related to priority setting, capacity-building, and the provision of post-study benefits that (...) arise during the conduct of such research. It presents a selection of issues discussed in the health systems research literature and argues that they constitute ethical concerns based on their being inconsistent with a particular theory of global justice (the health capability paradigm). Issues identified include the fact that priority setting for health systems research at the global level is often not driven by national priorities and that capacity-building efforts frequently utilize one-size-fits-all approaches. (shrink)

In the digital age, the use of advanced technology is becoming a new paradigm in police work, criminal justice, and the penal system. Algorithms promise to predict delinquent behaviour, identify potentially dangerous persons, and support crime investigation. Algorithm-based applications are often deployed in this context, laying the groundwork for a ‘smart criminal justice’. In this qualitative study based on 32 interviews with criminal justice and police officials, we explore the reasons why and extent to which such a (...) smart criminal justice system has already been established in Switzerland, and the benefits perceived by users. Drawing upon this research, we address the spread, application, technical background, institutional implementation, and psychological aspects of the use of algorithms in the criminal justice system. We find that the Swiss criminal justice system is already significantly shaped by algorithms, a change motivated by political expectations and demands for efficiency. Until now, algorithms have only been used at a low level of automation and technical complexity and the levels of benefit perceived vary. This study also identifies the need for critical evaluation and research-based optimization of the implementation of advanced technology. Societal implications, as well as the legal foundations of the use of algorithms, are often insufficiently taken into account. By discussing the main challenges to and issues with algorithm use in this field, this work lays the foundation for further research and debate regarding how to guarantee that ‘smart’ criminal justice is actually carried out smartly. (shrink)

It has been suggested that neuroenhancements could be used to improve the abilities of criminal justice authorities. Judges could be made more able to make adequately informed and unbiased decisions, for example. Yet, while such a prospect appears appealing, the views of neuroenhanced criminal justice authorities could also be alien to the unenhanced public. This could compromise the legitimacy and functioning of the criminal justice system. In this article, I assess possible solutions to this problem. I maintain (...) that none of them qualifies as a satisfactory general solution to it, a solution that could reasonably be taken to solve the problem or to suffice for dealing with it in at least most cases. Yet I also suggest that, depending on contingent empirical circumstances, the responses – either singly or together – can sometimes amount to a sufficient answer to it. (shrink)

The American criminal justice system creates incentives for false conviction. For example, many public crime labs are funded in part per conviction. We show that the number of false convictions per year in the American criminal justice system should be considered ?high.? We examine the incentives of police, forensic scientists, prosecutors, and public defenders in the U.S. Police, prosecutors, and forensic scientists often have an incentive to garner convictions with little incentive to convict the right person. These incentives (...) create what economists call a ?multitask problem? that seems to be resulting in a needlessly high rate of false convictions. Public defenders lack the resources and incentives needed to provide a vigorous defense for their clients. Corrective measures are discussed, along with a call for more research. (shrink)

This collection examines questions of medical accountability and ethics. It analyses how the criminal justice system regulates health care practice, and to what extent it is appropriate to use it as a tool to resolve ethical conflict in health care.

The state subvention and distribution of health care not only jeopardize the financial sustainability of the state, but also restrict without a conclusive rational basis the freedom of patients to decide how much health care and of what quality is worth what price. The dominant biopolitics of European health care supports a healthcare monopoly in the hands of the state and the medical profession, which health care should be opened to the patient’s authority to deal directly for better basic health (...) care. In a world where it is impossible for all to receive equal access to the best of basic health care, one must critically examine the plausible scope of the authority of the state to limit access to better basic health care. Classical distributive justice affords a basis for re-examining the current European ideology of equality, human dignity, and solidarity that supports healthcare systems with unsustainable egalitarian concerns. (shrink)

Many open networks, distributed computing systems, and infrastructure management systems face a common problem: how to distribute a collectivised set of resources amongst a set of autonomous agents of heterogenous provenance. One approach is for the agents themselves to self-organise the allocation of resources with respect to a set of agreed conventional rules; but given an allocation scheme which maps resources to those agents and a set of rules for determining that allocation scheme, some natural questions arise—Is this allocation fair? (...) Is the allocation method effective? Is it efficient? Are the decision makers accountable? In this paper, we argue that some answers to these questions can be found in the formal characterisation of different aspects of ‘justice’ and that these different aspects need a principled operationalisation as policies for system management. We present a formal model and some experimental results, concluding that the different aspects are all inter-connected and that what is required is a comprehensive research programme in computational justice. (shrink)

This study investigates the relationship between workers'' perceptions of distributive and procedural justice afforded by a grievance system and their more general belief in an underlying moral order in the workplace. Using samples representing five ocupationally distinct groups, the presence of any moderating effects of occupation received only weak support. Consistent with previous work, however, workers'' perceptions of procedural justice (i.e., fairness in the process) were a stronger predictor of workers'' belief in workplace justice than were perceptions (...) of distributive justice (i.e., fairness of outcomes). (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Luhmann’s conception of legal argumentation and justice especially focussing on the aspects of contingency and self-referring operative closure. The aim of his conception is to describe/explain in a disenchanted way—from an external, of “second order” point of view—the work on adjudication, which, rather idealistically, lawyers and judges present as being a matter of reason. As a consequence of some surface similarities with Derrida’s deconstructive philosophy of justice, Teubner proposes integrating the supposed reductive image of formal (...) justice described by Luhmann with the ideal conception of justice presented by Derrida. Here this kind of attempt is rejected as epistemologically wrong. In addition, Luhmann’s theory is argued to have other shortcomings, namely: the failure to understand the pragmatic function of principles, and the incapacity to describe the current legal questions linked with cultures and legal pluralism, which characterise our society. (shrink)

McCullough et al. propose an evolved cognitive revenge system which imposes retaliatory costs on aggressors. They distinguish between this and other forms of punishment (e.g., those administered by judges) which are not underpinned by a specifically designed evolutionary mechanism. Here we outline mechanisms and circumstances through which the revenge system might nonetheless infiltrate decision-making within the criminal justice system.

It has been suggested that neuroenhancements could be used to improve the abilities of criminal justice authorities. Judges could be made more able to make adequately informed and unbiased decisions, for example. Yet, while such a prospect appears appealing, the views of neuroenhanced criminal justice authorities could also be alien to the unenhanced public. This could compromise the legitimacy and functioning of the criminal justice system. In this article, I assess possible solutions to this problem. I maintain (...) that none of them qualifies as a satisfactory general solution to it, a solution that could reasonably be taken to solve the problem or to suffice for dealing with it in at least most cases. Yet I also suggest that, depending on contingent empirical circumstances, the responses – either singly or together – can sometimes amount to a sufficient answer to it. (shrink)

Food is a source of sustenance, a cause for celebration, an inducement to temptation, a vehicle for power, an indicator of well-being, a catalyst for change and, above all, a life good. Along with other life goods such as potable water, clean air, adequate shelter and protective clothing, food is something we cannot live without. The global corporate food system, however, allows 800 million to go hungry, while an even larger number of people grow obese. Based in money-values, this food (...) system promotes accumulation first and foremost, enriching a few while creating economic, social and environmental externalities that are destroying local economies, devastating individuals, families and communities and degrading the planet. What would a food system look like that was based in life-values, centred on the commons and anchored by social justice? This paper will focus on the creation of sustainable food systems, beginning with the crises of the global corporate food system and then moving to the heart of sustainable food systems – the civil commons. (shrink)

Law is a body of rules whether formal, written, informal or unwritten that are used to maintain relative peace and order in any given society. Before the advent of civilization, the Igbo people had their own legal system which though might look different in form from the western law but have the same purpose of guiding man into the state of oughtness. This research paper mirrored the legal and justice system of the Igbo people.