Based on a close reading of the debate between Rawls and Sen on primary goods versus capabilities, I argue that liberal theory cannot adequately respond to Sen’s critique within a conventionally neutralist framework. In support of the capability approach, I explain why and how it defends a more robust conception of opportunity and freedom, along with public debate on substantive questions about well-being and the good life. My aims are: to show that Sen’s capability approach is at odds with Rawls’s (...) political liberal version of neutrality; to carve out a third space in the neutrality debate; and to begin to develop, from Sen’s approach, the idea of public value liberalism as a position that falls within that third space.En me basant sur une lecture attentive du débat entre Rawls et Sen sur les biens premiers versus les capabilités, je soutiendrai que la théorie libérale est incapable, dans un cadre neutraliste conventionnel, de répondre adéquatement à des injustices dans le domaine de la santé. À partir de l’approche des capabilités, j’explique pourquoi et comment cette approche permet de défendre une conception plus robuste de l’opportunité et de la liberté, de même qu’un débat public sur des questions substantielles concernant le bien-être et la vie bonne. Mes objectifs sont : de clarifier le rapport entre le neutralisme de Rawls et sa défense des biens premiers,, de démontrer les implications de la critique des capabilités de Sen, et, d’esquisser une troisième position dans le débat sur la neutralité versus le perfectionnisme – à savoir, celle d’un perfectionnisme motivé par des considérations de légitimité. (shrink)

Justice is about political ideals on how to accommodate differences that are natural among basically heterogeneous human beings. In many ways, justice is remarkably complicated because of the alleged conflict between the demands of equality and the concern that people should have as much liberty available. The author argues in this essay that the ideal of equality and liberty can be reconciled into the liberal ideal of fairness. This compromise view accounts as a justification for coercive institutions and (...) obligations and a tenable basis for a practical definition of rights and justice in general. The author does this by going through the philosophical presuppositions of the different theories of justice. His examination focuses on rendering analytic clarity to the ideal of equality, liberty, and the value of community. (shrink)

This study is concerned with john R0emer’s Equality of Opportunity} I argue that his theory is committed to compatibilism but that one of its central claims is plausible only within a libertarian view on the free-will problem. Thus Roemer’s theory is troubled by a deep structural inco— herence and should be rejected as an account of equality of opportunity? Let me briefly introduce some background to Roemer’s theory. Contemporary egalitarians face two major challenges: first, they need..

Fairness in evaluation processes for women in science and engineering is only one of a set of issues that need to be addressed to reach gender equality. This article uses concepts from Amartya Sen’s work on inequality to frame gender issues in science and technology policy. Programs that focus on increasing the number of women in science and engineering careers have not generally addressed a broader set of circumstances that intersect with gender at various economic levels and stages of (...) life. The agendas in research and innovation policies also need to reflect these issues, and fair allocation of resources within both science and technology needs to be on the agenda. Getting women into high-level positions is not enough. Articulating the full research and innovation agendas for women will require broader participatory processes. (shrink)

Martha Nussbaum has argued for the superiority of her capabilities approach over the language of human rights. In this article it is argued that the capabilities approach is incapable of justifying something crucially important expressed in international human rights law: the requirement that every government treat all people as having equal status. Nussbaum has recently grappled with the role of equality within her approach, but has failed to offer a satisfactory explanation of its importance. The reason is that the (...) value and importance of equal status cannot be fully articulated in the language of capabilities alone. While most philosophical conceptions of human rights also fail to incorporate the importance of equal respect, the limitations of the capability approach are more serious. For the purposes of specifying the duties of governments, capabilities are not the only things that matter. (shrink)

These days almost everyone seems to think it obvious that equality of opportunity is at least part of what constitutes a fair society. At the same time they are so vague about what equality of opportunity actually amounts to that it can begin to look like an empty term, a convenient shorthand for the way jobs should be allocated, whatever that happens to be. Matt Cavanagh offers a highly provocative and original new view, suggesting that the (...) way we think about equality and opportunity should be radically changed. (shrink)

How do we know if people are equal? Contemporary philosophers consider a number of issues when determining if the goals of egalitarian distributive justice have been achieved: defining the metric of equality; determining whether the goal is equality, or simply priority or sufficiency; establishing whether there should be conditions, e.g. bad brute luck, for the amelioration of inequality. In all this, most egalitarians contend that what is to be equalized is not people’s actual shares of the good (...) in question, but rather, the opportunities to have such shares. I counter this view with an ‘egalitarian flourishing’ approach that, in seeking to make people equal in actual well-being, takes exception to the role of opportunity in contemporary argument. The flourishing view means a focus on outcomes, on how people live, in order to enable people to live equally flourishing lives. I argue that if we consider the complex dynamics of choice and circumstance, the role of nonmaterial considerations and the ideal of an egalitarian community, equality of opportunity proves to be an inadequate approach to the realization of the egalitarian ideal. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights always correlate with directed duties (...) and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

All conceptions of equal opportunity draw on some distinction between morally justified and unjustified inequalities. We discuss how this distinction varies across a range of philosophical positions. We find that these positions often advance equality of opportunity in tandem with distributive principles based on merit, desert, consequentialist criteria or individuals' responsibility for outcomes. The result of this amalgam of principles is a festering controversy that unnecessarily diminishes the widespread acceptability of opportunity concerns. We therefore propose to restore the conceptual (...) separation of opportunity principles concerning unjustified inequalities from distributive principles concerning justifiable inequalities. On this view, equal opportunity implies that that morally irrelevant factors should engender no differences in individuals' attainment, while remaining silent on inequalities due to morally relevant factors. We examine this idea by introducing the principle of ‘opportunity dominance' and explore in a simple application to what extent this principle may help us arbitrate between opposing distributive principles. We also compare this principle to the selection rules developed by John Roemer and Dirk Van de Gaer. (shrink)

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality (...) of opportunity for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able (at the onset of adult life) to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one-off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self-respect and responsibility-catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education (for reasons of priority) but with the additional (responsibility-catering) stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

British equality law protections for sex and gender reassignment have grown fraught as activists tussle over legal and social categories of gender, gender transitioning, and sex. This article considers the future of gender-related equality protections in relation to ‘decertification’—an imagined reform that would detach sex and gender from legal personhood. One criticism of decertification is that de-formalising gender membership would undermine equality law protections. This article explores how gender-based equality law could operate in conditions of decertification, (...) drawing on legal thoughtways developed for two other protected characteristics in equality law—religion and belief, and disability—to explore the legal responses and imaginaries that these two grounds make available. Religious equality law focuses on beliefs, communities, and practices, deemed to be stable, multivarious, and subject to deep personal commitment. Disability equality law focuses on embodied disadvantage, approached as social, relational, and fluctuating. While these two equality frameworks have considerable limitations, they offer legal thoughtways for gender oriented to both its hierarchies and its expression, including as disavowal. (shrink)

John Roemer points out that there are two views of equality of opportunity that are widely held today. The first, which he calls the nondiscrimination principle, states that in the competition for positions in society, individuals should be judged only on attributes relevant to the performance of the duties of the position in question. Attributes such as race or sex should not be taken into account. The second states that society should do what it can to level the (...) playing field among persons who compete for positions, especially during their formative years, so that all those who have the relevant potential attributes can be considered. -/- Common to both positions is that at some point the principle of equal opportunity holds individuals accountable for achievements of particular objectives, whether they be education, employment, health, or income. Roemer argues that there is consequently a “before” and an “after” in the notion of equality of opportunity: before the competition starts, opportunities must be equalized, by social intervention if need be; but after it begins, individuals are on their own. The different views of equal opportunity should be judged according to where they place the starting gate which separates “before” from “after.” Roemer works out in a precise way how to determine the location of the starting gate in the different views. (shrink)

This volume brings together a collection of ten original essays which present new analyses of social and relational equality in philosophy and political theory. The essays analyze the nature of social equality and its relationship with justice and with politics.

The principle of global equality of opportunity is an important part of the commitment to global egalitarianism. In this paper I discuss how a principle of global equality of opportunity follows from a commitment to equal respect for the autonomy of all persons, and defend the principle against some of the criticism that it has received. The particular criticisms that I address contend that a moral view based upon dignity and respect cannot take properties of persons—such as their (...) citizenship—as morally arbitrary, that any justification of what counts as equal opportunity sets must be based upon national cultural understandings, that a positive account of equality of opportunity cannot adequately handle the fact of value pluralism across the globe, and that the principle of equality of opportunity is incompatible with national self-determination. In the course of defending the principle of equality of opportunity from these criticisms, I make revisions to my previously published defense of the principle. (shrink)

In 1980, Amartya Sen’s essay ‘Equality of What?’ stimulated a still ongoing discussion on the question: ‘Insofar as one holds that social justice demands rendering people’s condition more nearly equal, what aspects of people’s condition should be equalized?’ (Sen, 1982). In what respects should people be rendered more nearly the same? Prominent responses include resources, fundamental liberties, capabilities, advantages, welfare, and opportunities for welfare.1 There is a more general question in this neighbourhood that should be of (...) interest. We might conceive of social justice as requiring us to maximize some function of some aspect of people’s condition. The relevant aspect might be any of the candidates just listed or some hitherto unnoticed alternative. But it is not obvious in advance of argument that social justice requires equality of any sort. Perhaps the function we should be maximizing requires us to equalize, but it might be ‘maximize the average!’, ‘maximize the aggregate!’, ‘maximin!’, ‘equalize at the highest feasible level!’, ‘maximax!’, ‘prioritize!’, ‘maximize the number above sufficiency!’, or yet another alternative. The more general question about the nature of social justice requirements is ‘Whatever of what?’ There are two issues to resolve, not just one. (shrink)

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality (...) of opportunity for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one‐off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self‐respect and responsibility‐catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education but with the additional stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

If one is an egalitarian, what should one want to equalize? Opportunities or outcomes? Resources or welfare? These positions are usually conceived to be very different. I argue in this paper that the distinction is misconceived: the only coherent conception of resource equality implies welfare equality, in an appropriately abstract description of the problem. In this section, I motivate the program which the rest of the paper carries out.

Fair equality of opportunity, a principle that governs the competition for desirable jobs, can seem irrelevant in our actual world, for two reasons. First, parents have broad liberty to raise their children as they see fit, which seems to undermine the fair equality of opportunity–based commitment to eliminating the effects of social circumstances on that competition. Second, we already have a well-established principle for distributing jobs, namely meritocracy, thereby leaving no theater in which fair equality of opportunity (...) can operate. I argue that we can solve both of these problems by conceding, in contrast to previous fair equality of opportunity defenders, that there’s no unique good associated with the right job, while insisting that there is a unique bad associated with the wrong job and holding that fair equality of opportunity should govern the competition to avoid that bad by attaining the right job. This move enables new responses to the two problems previously mentioned. In response to the meritocracy problem, I propose simply accepting that that principle should guide the distribution of jobs and all the associated goods while maintaining that there is room for a separate, non-consequentialist principle whose function is to ensure a fair distribution of chances to avoid the unique bad just identified. In response to the parental liberty problem, I argue that, for any given person, which job will deliver the unique bad I identify is contingent on her skills, and therefore, the way she is raised determines what would constitute a bad employment outcome for her, but doesn’t affect her chances of avoiding that outcome. (shrink)

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality (...) of opportunity for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able (at the onset of adult life) to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one-off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self-respect and responsibility-catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education (for reasons of priority) but with the additional (responsibility-catering) stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

This essay took one of the “externalities” of education, equality of opportunity, and suggested that the more extensive state intervention argued for by “the left” was not needed for its provision. This was argued by saying that what “the left” wanted from equality of opportunity was not equality as such, but merely “adequate resources” for all. An “adequate” education it was suggested, could be provided without extensive state intervention for the great majority of children. Only for (...) those children who were too poor, or whose parents were too irresponsible, would it be necessary for the state to intervene to ensure the provision of education, and then only to ensure that these children had access to sufficient funds to enable them to share in the educational experiences provided for other children. Several details in this argument need to be worked out in more detail, including the important matter of exactly what an “adequate education” might comprise. However, if these details could be worked out satisfactorily, the argument could serve to challenge the left's anxieties about moves towards a market in educational provision. The argument suggests that such moves need not lead to the sacrifice of those externalities which “the left” holds dear. (shrink)

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. David Miller’s political philosophy of immigration employs two complementary argumentative strategies to challenge open border theories. The first strategy is to defeat the principled case for open borders, such as the global equality of opportunity argument for more lax immigration control. The second strategy is to establish the democratic community’s prima facie right to determine the shape of its future, including membership and the right to exclude. First, I (...) argue that Miller’s conception of global equality of opportunity is overly narrow and that his objections to the principle, to the metric and to what counts as feasible political action misfire against other, more plausible, accounts. Second, I argue that his democratic interpretation of collective self-determination does not solve the pressing question concerning the morally justified scope and content of self-determination and the moral limits of the right to exclude. I conclude by questioning Miller’s general strategy: whether theories of immigration should be engaged in an exercise of shifting the burden of proof between open and closed borders. By contrast, I argue that a more desirable task for the political philosophy of immigration is to find ways in which the joint requirement of global equality of opportunity and collective self-determination can be coherently upheld. (shrink)

The theory of equal opportunity as I have expounded it in Roemer uses a language comprising five words: objective, circumstance, type, effort, and policy. The objective is the kind of outcome or well-being or advantage for whose acquisition one wishes to equalize opportunities, in a given population. Circumstances are the set of environmental influences, beyond the individual’s control, that affect his or her chances of acquiring the objective. A type is the group of individuals in the population with a given (...) set of circumstances. Effort is autonomously chosen action—within the individual’s control—which, if expended in greater amounts, will increase the degree to which the individual acquires the objective. A policy is a social intervention that is used to influence the degree to which individuals acquire the objective. The equal-opportunity policy is the one from the set of feasible policies that will make it the case that the degree to which individuals acquire the objective is independent of their circumstances, and sensitive only to their effort. I propose a way of computing the equal-opportunity policy in any given situation, given the appropriate data, and a decision as to what environmental aspects should be taken to constitute circumstances. This quick summary leaves out many details, which will be focused upon in what follows. (shrink)

ABSTRACT John Wilson argued, in a recent paper, that equality of opportunity is neither coherent nor reasonable. It seems that we can better understand Wilson's points If we distinguish between what one might call perfect equality of opportunity and greater equality of opportunity. Further, the familiar notions of formal opportunity and substantive opportunity still seem crucial to an understanding of the issues.

What kind of equality among Europeans does equal citizenship require, especially regarding education? In particular, is there good reason to insist of equality of education among Europeans—and if so, equality of what? To what extent should the same knowledge base and citizenship norms be taught across state borders and religious and other normative divides? At least three philosophical issues merit attention: (a) The requirements of multiple democratic citizenships beyond the nation state; (b) how to (...) respect diversity while securing such equality and inculcating commitments to justice and norms of citizenship, and (c) The multiple reasons for equality of various kinds among political equals living in a Union as compared to a unitary state. The article responds on the basis of several arguments in favour of certain kinds of equality. All Union citizens must enjoy a high minimum level of education, and all pupils must be informed concerning the various ways of life prevalent in Europe. Furthermore, there must be standards for securing equality of opportunity across the EU, though it is difficult to measure under multiculturalism. Citizens must also be socialised to certain ‘citizenship norms’. This shared basis to be taught in schools should avoid contested religious or philosophical premises as far as possible. Yet the school system should socialise pupils to three commitments: to the just domestic and European institutions and hence the legislation they engender, to principles that justify these institutions; and to a political theory that grounds these principles in a conception of the proper role of individuals, of member states and of the Union. I also argue that equality of result is not a plausible normative requirement among Europeans, while equality of opportunity is. The paper concludes with some comments on the lessons to be drawn for ‘Global’ citizenship. (shrink)

Two central issues for ethical analysis of equality are: (1) Why equality? (2) Equality of what? The two questions are distinct but thoroughly interdependent, We cannot begin to defend or criticize equality without knowing what on earth we are talking about, i,e., equality of what features (e,g., incomes, wealths, opportunities, achievements, freedoms, rights)? We cannot possibly answer the first question without addressing the second, That seems obvious enough.

Adult education has long been the Cinderella of the education system. This is not helped by the fact that there is currently an impasse between employers, government and individuals over who should finance such training. So what, if anything, can philosophers do to help resolve the normative question of who ought to pay, setting aside for the moment the practical question of how this might be put into effect? An important strand of contemporary egalitarian philosophy argues that equality (...) of opportunity for education should be implemented in such a way that children with the same level of talent and the same willingness to make an effort have the same opportunity to attain skills and qualifications such that they are each able (at the onset of adult life) to compete effectively with others for advantageous positions and rewards in society. But what about children or teenagers who drop out of education or make such little effort that they achieve wholly inadequate exam results? Should they be offered second and third chances for free education as adults funded by the state? A case is made for lifelong as opposed to one-off equality of opportunity for education on a number of grounds, including efficiency, utility, the value of choice, the social bases of self-respect and responsibility-catering prioritarianism. This last view supports lifelong access to education (for reasons of priority) but with the additional (responsibility-catering) stipulation that adults should contribute at least some of the costs themselves in so far as they are accountable for not making enough effort the first time around. (shrink)

It is often supposed that the point of equality of opportunity is to create a level playing-field. This is understood in different ways, however. A common proposal is what I call the neutralization view: that people's social circumstances should not differentially affect their life chances in any serious way. I raise problems with this view, before developing an alternative conception of equal opportunity which allows some variations in social circumstances to create differences in life prospects. The meritocratic conception (...) which I defend is grounded in the idea of respect for persons, and provides a less demanding interpretation of fair access to qualifications; it nevertheless places constraints on the behaviour of parents, and has implications for educational provision in schools. (shrink)

If one is an egalitarian, what should one want to equalize? Opportunities or outcomes? Resources or welfare? These positions are usually conceived to be very different. I argue in this paper that the distinction is misconceived: the only coherent conception of resource equality implies welfare equality, in an appropriately abstract description of the problem. In this section, I motivate the program which the rest of the paper carries out.

It is often supposed that the point of equality of opportunity is to create a level playing-field. This is understood in different ways, however. A common proposal is what I call the neutralization view: that people's social circumstances should not differentially affect their life chances in any serious way. I raise problems with this view, before developing an alternative conception of equal opportunity which allows some variations in social circumstances to create differences in life prospects. The meritocratic conception (...) which I defend is grounded in the idea of respect for persons, and provides a less demanding interpretation of fair access to qualifications; it nevertheless places constraints on the behaviour of parents, and has implications for educational provision in schools. (shrink)

Assessing what counts as infertility has practical implications: access to (state-funded) fertility treatment is usually premised on meeting the criteria that constitute the chosen definition of infertility. In this paper, I argue that we should adopt the expression “involuntary childlessness” to discuss the normative dimensions of people’s inability to conceive. Once this conceptualization is adopted, it becomes clear that there exists a mismatch between those who experience involuntary childlessness and those that are currently able to access fertility treatment. My (...) concern in this article is explaining why such a mismatch deserves attention and what reasons can be advanced to justify addressing it. My case rests on a three-part argument: that there are good reasons to address the suffering associated with involuntary childlessness; that people would decide to insure against it; and that involuntary childlessness is characterized by a prima facie exceptional kind of desire. (shrink)

Ronald Dworkin's theory of equality of resources draws heavily on conceptual tools developed in economic theory. His criterion for a just distribution of resources is closely connected with two economic ideas: first, the idea that a distribution of resources reflects a concern for equality if it is envy-free; second, the idea that such an envy-free distribution of resources is attainable as a competitive equilibrium from equal split. The objective of this paper is to show that the criterion of (...) equality of resources has been misinterpreted by normative economics, largely due to Dworkin's own lack of precision, and that it needs to be reformulated in order to be intelligible. The dimensions along which the reformulation is needed concern the nature of the preferences used in what Dworkin calls the ‘envy test’ and the nature of the envy test itself. (shrink)

The principle of fair equality of opportunity is regularly used to justify social policies, both in the philosophical literature and in public discourse. However, too often commentators fail to make explicit just what they take the principle to say. A principle of fair equality of opportunity does not say anything at all until certain variables are filled in. I want to draw attention to two variables, timing and currency. I argue that once we identify the few plausible (...) ways we have at our disposal for filling in those variables, it will become apparent that a reasonable version of the principle will be quite narrow. Its usefulness as a justificatory basis for social policies will be limited to those policies that target the distribution of competitive opportunities among people entering majority. (shrink)

This paper is an engagement with Equality by John Baker, Kathleen Lynch, Judy Walsh and Sara Cantillon. It identifies a dilemma for educational egalitarians, which arises within their theory of equality, arguing that sometimes there may be a conflict between advancing equality of opportunity and providing equality of respect and recognition, and equality of love care and solidarity. It argues that the latter values may have more weight in deciding what to do than traditional (...) educational egalitarians have usually thought. (shrink)

We are often told that we are morally obligated to produce equal opportunity for all. Therefore, it seems we should examine what power we have to produce that desirable state. For it would be nonsense to say we are required to provide what is beyond our power to provide. When we examine this question, we find our power limited by two sets of constraints. One set comprises formal constraints upon the idea itself of equal opportunity. We cannot do (...) the logically impossible. The other set comprises limits upon our ability to produce the directed socio-economic change, getting known outputs for known inputs. I illustrate the formal constraints by outlining the work of Douglas Rae. The constraints upon our abilities I illustrate with evidence from sociology and politics. At the end, we shall discover that our power to make opportunities equal is sharply though not unbearably limited. A critical but unbaised survey will reveal that in the past fifty years we have gone remarkably far towards doing all that we are presently capable of doing to equalize opportunities. Perhaps we shall go even farther when we learn how. The word ‘real’ in the title is opposed to ‘ideal’ or even ‘chimerical'. It may seem an interesting question what equality of opportunity should consist in were we able to produce directed socio-economic change at will. But we are not. Therefore, a more interesting and more important question is what equality of opportunity consists in given the very large number of constraints within which we must work to achieve it. (shrink)

Comparative valuation of different policy interventions often requires interpersonal comparability of benefit. In the field of health economics, the metric commonly used for such comparison, quality adjusted life years (QALYs) gained, has been criticized for failing to respect the equality of all persons’ intrinsic worth, including particularly those with disabilities. A methodology is proposed that interprets ‘full quality of life’ as the best health prospect that is achievable for the particular individual within the relevant budget constraint. This calibration is (...) challenging both conceptually and operationally as it shifts dramatically when technology or budget developments alter what can be achieved for incapacitated individuals. The proposal nevertheless ensures that the maximal achievable satisfaction of one person’s preferences can carry no more intrinsic value than that of another. This approach, which can be applied to other domains of social valuation, thus prevents implicit discrimination against the elderly and those with irremediable incapacities. (shrink)

The theory of equal opportunity as I have expounded it in Roemer uses a language comprising five words: objective, circumstance, type, effort, and policy. The objective is the kind of outcome or well-being or advantage for whose acquisition one wishes to equalize opportunities, in a given population. Circumstances are the set of environmental influences, beyond the individual’s control, that affect his or her chances of acquiring the objective. A type is the group of individuals in the population with a given (...) set of circumstances. Effort is autonomously chosen action—within the individual’s control—which, if expended in greater amounts, will increase the degree to which the individual acquires the objective. A policy is a social intervention that is used to influence the degree to which individuals acquire the objective. The equal-opportunity policy is the one from the set of feasible policies that will make it the case that the degree to which individuals acquire the objective is independent of their circumstances, and sensitive only to their effort. I propose a way of computing the equal-opportunity policy in any given situation, given the appropriate data, and a decision as to what environmental aspects should be taken to constitute circumstances. This quick summary leaves out many details, which will be focused upon in what follows. (shrink)

What kind of equality should we value and why? Current debate centres around whether distributive equality is valuable. However, it is not the only (potentially) morally significant form of equality. David Miller and T. M. Scanlon have emphasised the importance of social equality—a strongly egalitarian notion distinct from distributive equality, and which cannot be reduced to a concern for overall welfare or the welfare of the worst-off. However, as debate tends to focus on distribution, (...) social equality has been neglected and we do not have a clear understanding of what it is and why it might be valuable. This paper aims to address this gap. (shrink)

The formal theory of equality of opportunity emerged as a response – a friendly amendment – to Ronald Dworkin's (1981) characterization of resource egalitarianism, as defined by the allocation that would emerge from insurance contracts arrived at behind a thin veil of ignorance. This article compares several of the prominent versions of this response, put forth in the period 1993–2008. I argue that a generalization of Roemer's (1998) proposal is the most satisfactory approach. Inherent in that generalization is an (...) indeterminism, which reflects a philosophical problem: that we do not know what comprise the ethically correct rewards to effort. The indeterminism should be resolved, I propose, by an ancillary theory which limits the degree of inequality which is acceptable. (shrink)

Contrary to what has been alleged, the moral equivalence of combatants (MEC) is not a doctrine that was expressly developed by the traditional theorists of just war. Working from the axiom that just cause is unilateral, they did not embrace a conception of public war that included MEC. Indeed, MEC was introduced in the early fifteenth century as a challenge to the then reigning just war paradigm. It does not follow, however, that the distinction between private and public war (...) had no place in the traditional teaching. Thomas Aquinas and his successors did not analyse just war by extrapolation from the related idea of self-defense. Rather, they likened just war to a legal proceeding that could solely be undertaken by persons possessed of legitimate authority. For this reason, just war was first and foremost public war. Private war was deemed ?war? only in a secondary and reduced sense of the term. It was accordingly understood that public war should be waged and its morality judged by reference to a set of norms that are not directly reducible to those governing private self (and other)-defense. (shrink)