1. Ch 8 - Justice
From Plato to Rawls

2. Plato’s Account of Justice
Conventional View: Helping Friends and Harming Enemies
Cynical View: Might Makes Right
Plato’s View: Harmony, internal and external – inner harmony of faculties of the soul; outer harmony of social classes.

3. John Rawls: Distributive Justice
Egalitarianism: treat everyone as fairly as possible.
The Original Position: A Thought Experiment: act rationally to bring about best interests of the people
Social Contract
Veil of Ignorance: pretend ignorance of your gender, race, ethnicity, age, income, locality. Divide benefits to level playing field.

4. Rawls’s Principles The Difference Principle:
Social and economic inequalities are to be attached to positions and offices open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity
They are to be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.

5. Non-Rawlsian theoris of Distributive Justice
Distribution of Scarce Goods – example of organ transplant
Rawlsian approach: go to the medically most needy and likeliest to succeed.
Egalitarian approach: have a lottery
Welfare or utilitarian approach: those most likely to have a long life should get the kidney
Libertarian or market-based: give it to the highest bidder

6. Justice and the Politics of Difference
Iris Marion Young’s Justice and the Politics of Difference (1990) Views justice in terms of overcoming oppression and domination. Exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperiealism, and violence. Civil Rights Movement, feminism and other political movements.

7. Justice and the Capabilities Approach: Sen and Nussbaum
Amartya Sen: connection of poverty, freedom and justice. Stay close to the ground and look for ways of making things better. Not Rawls’s origianl position where specific cultural heritages are banished but with the concrete and how to improve it.
Martha Nussbaum: capabilities approach: life, bodily health, bodily integrity, freedom of travel, bodily safety, forms of affiliation, play, imagination and concern for other species.

8. Criminal Justice
Retributive Justice: lex talionis, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Inflicting such punishment can itself be debasing or simply impossible.
Compensatory Justice: proportional compensation to the victim
Restorative Justice: set the record straight about what happened during oppression.
Justice as Hozho: Navajo notion of harmony through ceremonial restoration of relationships.
Global Justice: either just solutions to global problems or global conception of justice cutting across national, regional and cultural boundaries.

9. The Just War Tradition
Jus ad bellum: the just conditions for entering into a war
Just cause
Right intention
Publicly declared by a lawful authority
Last resort
Probability of success
Jus in bello: the just conduct of war
Discriminate between combatants and civilians
Principle of proportionality
Use no means that are evil in themselves
Jus post Bellum: A Just Peace
Just cause for termination
Public declaration and legitimate authority
Discrimination
proportionality

10. Environmental Justice
Famine and atmospheric and water pollution transcend national boundaries. Small developing countries may feel the effects of large highly industrialized countries directly through pollution, reduced air and water quality as well as sea level rise from global warming. They may experience the polluting effects of of foreign owned industry.
Spread of disease in an era of international travel.
Is it fair for some nations and their populations to suffer harmful consequences of actions taken by other nations with knowing disregard of their negative consequences.

11. Economic Exploitation
Manufacturing processses cross natinal boundaries. Labor is cheaper and environmental and safety restrictions more lax, natural resources more easily and cheaply available in developing countries.
How achieve economic justice in a world of radical economic disparities?

12. Fundamental Character of Justice
Justice is a fundamental moral concept.
What is the meaning of justice
How do we make the world a just place?
Justice is the foundation of a lasting world peace.