Focus Essay
Margaret Urban Walker, "Restorative Justice and Reparations," Journal of Social Philosophy, Vol. 37 No. 3, Fall 2006, 377--395.
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Commentaries
Trudy Govier commentary
Alice MacLachlan commentary
Elizabeth Spelman commentary
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2 Comments
Ronald Sundstrom
Comment on the Core Ideal within Theories of Restorative Justice
I was struck by MacLachlan's claim that what "lurks in the language of restorative justice" is a "fantasy of a perfect, initial state of harmony." Whatever that ideal is, and what it is is unclear to me, I suspect that there are competing visions of this garden of eden within theories of restorative justice that are each potentially controversial. Additionally, at least initially that any ideal of a harmonious initial state, would fall into a dangerous romance of human homogeneity, unity, and agreement. It would, as Aristotle said of Aristophanes' tale of humans searching for their lost halves in Plato's Symposium, be suffocating to both the individual and polis.
Spelman's discussion of the confounding role of racism for any project of restorative justice in the United States, of course, reflects these worries and is grounded in the stubborn and disturbing racial politics of the United States where the initial state was plainly horrific rather than harmonious.
Walker's, "Restorative Justice and Reparations," does not fall into such dangerous romantic visions. I think it is fair, though, to press her about the telos of the hope that she thinks even piecemeal restorative justice provides. Granted that whatever end state that restorative justice achieves must necessarily be fragile because goodness and justice are fragile and we are fallible, still we may ask, what is the nature of the end state of measures of restorative justice?
In her reply, Walker writes of "promises" and "correct attitudes" toward injured parties. What are these? And specifically, what are these stances and promises beyond what is derived from the literature on autonomy, liberty, distributive justice, and moral obligations? I assume that restorative justice gives us more than what is delivered in standard accounts of liberal or republican theories of justice, and this more is related to an ideal end state, some picture of ideal human relations that is beyond justice.
If it doesn't do this, then is restorative justice only delivering the symbolic? Is restorative justice just the symbolic carrying out of the other categories of justice? I would hope not, and that hope is motivated by my suspicion that behind theories of restorative justice are visions of love, friendship, or civic friendship that is wholly apart from theories of justice.
Ronald Sundstrom
Comment on Moral Baselines and the Black-White Binary
Walker neglects to take up Govier's worries about what she calls the "black/white disjunction and dichotomy." In race theory broadly, and especially in sociology, this dichotomy is sometimes called the black-white binary or paradigm. I take this issue up in a forthcoming piece, and I agree with Govier that the "binary" presents a problem for discussions of reparative justice; indeed, I think it presents a problem on all levels of justice precisely because of the problem with misaligned moral baselines.
I'd like to hear more explanation from Govier about why she thinks that this problem presents a problem to the project of restorative justice.
One element of her critique is that discussions of reparations, as a form of restorative justice, are largely situated in black and white terms and seem to be largely a discussion that concerns blacks and whites. I would argue that this is a limitation of Thomas McCarthy's otherwise excellent discussions of the reparations and discourse ethics. The danger here is that the rest of America seemingly has little reason to listen to this discussion because their relationship to it hasn't been made explicit by the principle interlocutors and they or their interests are not clearly addressed in the discussion.
Another problem, though, is that casting any discussion of repair in simple black-white terms makes the risk of assuming that the perspectives, interests, and commitments of the other relevant parties (non-white immigrants, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos/Hispanicis) are covered by either the "white" or "black" terms. This leads to various lacunea: some topics are discussed and are the proper subjects of repair (typically domestic issues) but others (typically global issues that directly concern non-white immigrants, Native Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos) are neglected or written off entirely as the subjects of restorative justice.
Here the contrast between the U.S. and Canada may be telling: why are the conversations of restorative justice in Canada focused on restoring relationships with First Nation peoples, but in the U.S. the dominant ones are about blacks and whites?