Justice

Levinas did not present any new ethical theories; he did not even give any normative recommendations. But his phenomenological investigations help us to understand how the idea of ethics emerges and how we try to cope with it. The purpose of this paper is to suggest some implications from a reading of Levinas on how ethical challenges are handled within a management perspective. The paper claims that management, both in theory and in practice, is necessarily egocentric and thus ethically biased. (...) Therefore, ethics, defined as the idea that it is possible to do otherwise than pursue one's own interest, must have its source outside the scope of management. Levinas identifies this source as the call for responsibility from the Other, beyond the reach of managerial control. He also suggests how this idea of ethics is put into practice, especially in economic life: the existence of money makes it both possible and necessary to compare unique and incomparable others. Management tools may be used in the service of always more justice, as it also may be used for the opposite purpose. Instead of trying to draw a normative conclusion from Levinas, we may distinguish between two ways of experiencing reality: one through language and knowledge, covering both descriptive and normative knowledge, including business ethics, and the other through the particular events of encounters, from where this knowledge is continuously questioned through the call for responsibility, and thereby may provide possibilities for continuous improvements towards always more justice. (shrink)

In activist circles feminist political thought is often viewed as abstract because it does not help activists make the kinds of arguments that are generally effective with donors and policy makers. The feminist political philosopher's focus on how we know and what counts as knowledge is a large step away from the terrain in which activists make their arguments to donors. Yet, philosophical reflection on the relations between power and knowledge can make a significant contribution to women's human rights work (...) in the area of evaluation. Feminist political philosophy can offer guidelines for how to evaluate the work of women's human rights organizations and their funders in light of the social, political, and economic conditions that render their work necessary and difficult. This article offers 1) an account of the difficulty in showing the impact of social change activism using conventional modes of measurement, particularly those that focus on first order effects, 2) feminist theoretical insights into the interrelatedness of global gender injustices that may help us develop better benchmarks of evaluation for women's human rights programming, and 3) a sketch of how to approach the evaluation of organizations and donors who seek to support global gender justice. (shrink)

Offers a compelling vision of how to achieve and conduct a liberal but democratic society through the ideal of Neutrality--between people and ideas of the good--and using the tool of Neutral dialogue.

The Kosovo conflict -- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict -- The conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The idea of fairness lies at the heart of the concept of justice proposed by political philosopher John Rawls, a concept that liberals have often invoked to defend the welfare state. In The Limits of Rawlsian Justice political theorist Roberto Alejandro challenges the assumptions that Rawls set out to defend his position. While other opponents of Rawls have attempted to offer an alternative to his concept of justice as fairness, Alejandro instead examines Rawls from within his own writings, testing Rawls's (...) assumptions on the basis of those assumptions themselves. As a result, Alejandro shows that Rawls's idea of justice as fairness is fraught with inner tensions, exposed to utilitarian dangers, and far from being the coherent model Rawls promised. Alejandro concludes that Rawls's notion of justice-as-fairness preserves the status quo, overlooks the realities of inequalities in today's society, and is inherently conservative. As a theoretical paradigm, it is exhausted. He urges that we acknowledge the limits of Rawlsian justice both as a defense of the welfare state and as the basis of a just society. (shrink)

FIRST MERTTENS LECTURE ON WAR AND PEACE JUSTICE AMONG NATIONS BY HORACE G. ALEXANDER, M. A. LECTURER ON INTERNATIONAL LAW AND POLITICS AT WOODBROOKE, SBLLY OAK, ...

Anthony Kronman has argued that libertarians cannot distinguish non-arbitrarily between legitimate and illegitimate advantage-taking in contractual relations except by reference to a liberal, wealth-redistributive standard Kronman calls paretianism. We argue to the contrary that libertarians need not concede that any advantage-taking in contracts is legitimate and thus need not be liberal paretians with respect to advantage-taking.

This paper examines Young’s conception of power, arguing that it is incomplete, in at least two ways. First, Young tends to equate the term power with the narrower notions of ‘ oppression ’ and ‘domination’. Thus, Young lacks a satisfactory analysis of individual and collective empowerment. Second, as Young herself admits, it is not obvious that her analysis of power can be useful in the context of thinking about transnational justice. Allen concludes by considering one way in which Young’s analysis (...) of power needs to be extended or perhaps modified in order to do justice to questions of transnational justice. (shrink)

This article addresses the question whether the model of social criticism as 'connected' or 'loyal' which is advanced by Richard Rorty and Michael Walzer offers an adequate picture of social criticism. Two claims are made. First, it is suggested that loyalty is an internally conflicted concept, with three components: a recognition of situatedness in a particular relationship; an affirmation of that relationship by the loyal agent; a set of values or local principles. Where the third component is prominent, loyalty is (...) more reflective and distanced; where the second component predominates, loyalty slips into unreflective commitment. Second, it is argued that Rorty and Walzer conflate the social critic's recognition of his or her situatedness in contexts of power with the affirmation of that situatedness. It is concluded that the model of loyal social criticism is mislead mg, and that the practice of the critic must be tempered by the operation of the sense of injustice. Key Words: connection • loyalty • Rorty • social criticism • Walzer. (shrink)

Principled discussions of civil rights became inherently less likely as a direct result of the observation by Earl Warren, in Brown v. Board of Education, that, respecting freedmen, “Education of Negroes was almost non-existent, and practically all of the race were illiterate,” and in proportion as that observation increasingly became the foundation of common opinion on the subject. Warren's observation was not true in any meaningful or non-trivial sense. Nevertheless, it served to perpetuate the myth of a backward people needing (...) help to catch up instead of the truth of a people being held back. That is the perspective – the disadvantaged group perspective – that ultimately infected all discussion of civil rights, even after the designation of so-called “disadvantaged groups” had been extended beyond American blacks. To define civil rights, we may well begin with what all mankind would likely recognize. Thus the dictionary definition of “civil rights” stands: “the rights that belong to all individuals in a nation or community touching property, marriage, and the like.” In that definition the term “rights” may be further expanded to mean “legitimate claims,” following the definition of right as law – as “a claim or title or interest in anything whatever that is enforceable by law.” This definition applies with minimal distinction of regimes intruding and, therefore, without the host of recent complications in the United States that create the impression that civil rights have something to do with pluralism. Previously, the generic definition was thought to exhaust the meaning of the term in the United States. (shrink)

In this paper I criticize the standard argument for deontological egalitarianism, understood as the thesis that there is a moral claim to have an equal share of well-being or whatever other good counts. That argument is based on the idea that equals should be treated equally. I connect the debate over egalitarianism with that over comparative justice. A common theme is a general skepticism against comparative claims. I argue (i) that there can be no claim to equality based simply on (...) the fact of equal worth as that fact itself does not have any value for the supposed claim holder; and (ii) intuitions that suggest otherwise can be explained away without appealing to comparative claims. (shrink)

Fairness preferences fundamentally affect individual behavior and play an important role in shaping social and political institutions. However, people differ both with respect to what they view as fair and with respect to how much weight they attach to fairness considerations. In this article, we study the role of family background in explaining these heterogeneities in fairness preferences. In particular, we examine how socioeconomic background relates to fairness views and to how people make trade-offs between fairness and self-interest. To study (...) this, we conducted an economic experiment with a representative sample of 14- to 15-year-old and matched the experimental data to administrative data on parental income and education. The participants made two distributive choices in the experiment. The first choice was to distribute money between themselves and another participant in a situation where there was no difference in merit. The second choice was to distribute money between two other participants with unequal merits. Our main finding is that there is a systematic difference in fairness view between children from low-socioceconomic status families and the rest of the participants; more than 50 percent of the participants from low-SES families are egalitarians, whereas only about 20 percent in the rest of the sample hold this fairness view. In contrast, we find no significant difference in the weight attached to fairness between children from different socioeconomic groups. (shrink)

The dynamics of our globalised world open the way for international trade and transactions between different countries; this may lead to conflicts in laws where transactions and trade may be subject to different legal systems. One of the biggest issues in international commercial law is disputes over the charging of interest, for example with regard to late payment, interest-based loans, or compensation for damages. Interest disputes are considered to be a complex area of law and even more complex in the (...) international field. At the international level, interest claims may be connected to many areas of commerce and thus governed by various laws, which are different from one country to another; moreover, each country has its own interest rate and such rates are changeable according to the nature of law and economics under some jurisdictions. Furthermore, the concept of interest itself is affected by influences such as religious beliefs and economic, political and cultural trends. Interest can be treated as a substantive or a procedural matter. The settlement of these disputes therefore faces difficulties. Arbitration, as a method for settlement of disputes, is characterised by special features that assist in resolving these issues; but it faces some obstructions, especially in international commercial arbitration. The practices of arbitral tribunals and national courts in this regard are different. The results of different interpretations, approaches, and theories with regard to arbitration, at the pre-arbitration, during arbitration and post-arbitration stages, may also differ widely due to the diversity of financial and legal systems such as Common Law, Civil Law and the Islamic legal system – Sharia Law – across different countries. Each legal system has a different methodology and theories, even within an individual country under one legal system, and a state within a federal system has its own laws, which may have different interpretations in this respect. The New York Convention of 1958 on enforcing foreign arbitral awards was established in favour of arbitral awards and for the purpose of unifying international rules of arbitration. This Convention provides some procedural and substantive rules for the enforcement of foreign arbitral awards, but also provides some grounds for refusal. These rules have been affected by different interpretations under different jurisdictions and legal systems, which lead to different perspectives on the matter of charging interest and settlement by arbitration. The outcome of applying the NYC under these interpretations often has the opposite of its intended effect: the rejection of foreign arbitral awards. Due to such ambiguities, courts occasionally intervene in arbitration in all its stages. The interventions of national courts occur in three stages: enforcement of the arbitration agreement, enforcement of the contract under the applicable law to the agreement, and enforcement of the foreign arbitral award. The confusion between substantive and procedural laws also creates confusion with respect to public policy, non-arbitrability and enforceability. In addition, there may be a lack of clarity on the scope of arbitration with respect to the parties’ agreement, whether or not the parties have agreed to the interest rates and periods and whether or not they have agreed to the authority of the arbitrator. These issues affect the enforceability of an arbitration agreement, the law applicable to the disputed contract, the freedom of parties, the authority of the arbitrators and the enforceability of the awarded interest. The thesis studies how arbitral awards containing interest have been interpreted across the three aforementioned legal systems under the NYC 1958 in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, England, France, and the US and the enforceability of such awards. (shrink)