Abstract
Fairness is a central, but under-theorized, notion in moral and political philosophy. This paper makes two contributions. Firstly, it criticizes Broome’s seminal account of fairness in (1990–1991) Proc Aristotelian Soc 91:87–101, showing that there are problems with restricting fairness to a matter of relative satisfaction and holding that it does not itself require the satisfaction of the claims in question. Secondly, it considers the justification of lotteries to resolve cases of ties between competing claims, which Broome claims as support for his theory, and contrasts random procedures to contests of skill, which may also be considered lotteries in a broader sense. I offer no alternative account of fairness of my own, but hope to point the way for future research on the nature of fairness.
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Notes
This has led some to question the importance of the distinction (e.g. see Sen 2009, pp. 72–74). Translators have been forced to adopt various renderings of ‘justice as fairness’—for instance in Spanish it becomes ‘justicia como equidad’ and in Italian ‘giustizia come equità’ (both closer to ‘equity’), while in Swedish it is ‘rättvisa som skälighet’ (with connotations of reasonableness). I thank Yolanda Cuevas, Isabelle Deganis, Murial Kahane, Rasmus Karlsson, Hugh Lazenby, Miriam Ronzoni, and Christian Schemmel for their linguistic expertise.
Compare Stone (2009), p. 398 who insists it is more just to satisfy claims.
I am assuming, as Broome seems to, that the strength of the claim is simply dependent upon the amount of money owed. Matters would be more complicated if one party could have a very strong claim to the £10 that you owed them, while the other had a weaker claim to £20. Then the extent to which each should be satisfied would presumably be a function of the strength of their claim multiplied by what it is a claim to.
I assume it would still be fair if I was to pay them £40 and £20, respectively, thereby giving each twice what they had a claim to, though Broome is not explicit on this point. If we were dividing business profits proportionately to initial investment, this is what we would do, though if I am merely giving my friends a gift on top of repaying what I owe then perhaps I should give each an equal amount extra.
This problem is avoided by the account of Stone (2009), p. 398, which requires only that ‘strong claims are to be satisfied before weak claims,’ though this does not seem to permit all the lotteries that Broome would (specifically, ones where a slightly weaker claim-bearer may nonetheless get the good rather than having her claim ignored).
I prefer the locution ‘claim-bearers’ to Broome’s ‘claimants.’ Claim-bearer implies that the parties do in fact have claims to the good. A claimant may be someone who merely claims the good, though he has no claim to it (though this is surely not Broome’s intended meaning).
Of these rivals, Greely (1977) primarily concerns the constitutionality of lotteries and avoiding improper biases in allocation. Sher (1980) is primarily concerned with what makes a lottery a fair one rather than an unfair one, but suggests lotteries can be used to ensure that no one can allocate a good simply as he wishes. Kornhauser and Sager (1988) justify lotteries only when competing claims are exactly equal.
Stone (2008), pp. 576–580 attributes the necessity of actual consent to Sher (1980). This is not obviously the best way to read Sher’s paper. It is not clear that Sher (1980), pp. 212–214 is intended to allow parties to veto any distributive procedure; perhaps they can only veto a procedure that favours some claim-bearer. If so, they cannot veto a fair coin-toss.
In practice, most luck egalitarians are pluralists, so may admit that all things considered one ought to prefer a Pareto superior outcome, even if unfair.
At least, this is commonly accepted, though it has recently been disputed by Brighouse and Fleurbaey (forthcoming).
Where they test an irrelevant attribute, they may be fair insofar as they are lotteries; but since they involve uncertainty rather than risk they are generally less desirable than random devices (Stone 2008, pp. 585–587).
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Acknowledgments
In addition to those in footnote 1; I thank John Broome and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of this paper.
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Saunders, B. Fairness Between Competing Claims. Res Publica 16, 41–55 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9118-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-010-9118-y