Theories of Distributive Justice

burdens
and benefits? This could include some people, all

people, all
people and all future people, all people and some nonhuman
animals, etc.

2. Shape: What patterns or criteria should be used to determine
who gets benefits? Classic answers are efficiency, equality,
priority, and sufficiency.

3. Currency: What material conditions should be distributed?
Classic answers are resources, welfare, opportunities for
welfare, basic capabilities, and access to advantage.

between the scope, shape, and currency of distributive justice as

follows:

What pattern (shape) should be used to determine who (scope) gets what (currency)?


Preconditions that lead to distributive justice:

1. Scarcity of resources.
2. Technology developments.
3. Normativity: what should be right/wrong or good/bad.

Theory + Cost/Benefit
Analysis
4. John Rawls’ Liberalism
5. Post-Rawlsian Liberalisms
6.

Communitarianism
7. Feminist Approaches
8. Capabilities Approaches

some debate as to which of these is most important.

three principles of justice:

1. Entitlement to what you own—your life,

liberty, and property.
2. Reparations to protect you against nuisance, trespass, fraud, and
force.
3. Property Acquisition (from John Locke): you come to own things
by mixing your labor with them.
Two provisos:
a. One must leave “as much and as good for others.”
b. “’Nothing was made by God for man to spoil or
destroy” (e.g., you can only have as much land as you
can till, plant, improve, cultivate, and use).

basic rights.
2. Is retaliatory and has a monopolistic claim to

the use of force against those who have
violated the rights of others.
3. Should be a minimal state with a police and
military.

are illegitimate.
2. Those that protect people against others are

legitimate.
3. Those that require people to help others
(positive rights) are illegitimate.

can be said to have (and possibly exercise) the right

to life, the right to liberty, and the right to property.

Shape: The rights to life and liberty are based on equality; the right to property is based on priority.

Currency: The three basic rights are distributed across society. These rights provide the foundation for things such as resource acquisition and welfare.

Robert Nozick

Although there is a

separate Libertarian Party in the United States, many republicans are real-life or closet libertarians.

of property
4. Standards for reparations are not well defined
5. Might

be too environmentally stringent to
protect people from things such as pollution

as a theory of distributive justice is really equivalent to

utilitarianism as consequentialist approach to normative ethics.

Two main elements:

1. Principle of Utility: An action or policy is right if it maximizes
good consequences over bad consequences for all beings that
stand to be affected by that action or policy.
2. Egalitarian Principle: Each person (or sentient being) to
count for one and none should count for more than one.

cover all current people; other versions add in future people

and/or all or most nonhuman animals.

Shape: Utilitarianism is based on equality and utility.

Currency: Hedonistic (conscious state) versions of utilitarianism distribute pleasure and pain or happiness and unhappiness; preference (success-based) versions distribute the satisfaction and the thwarting of preferences.

Peter Singer

consequences and
compare them.
2. It is hard to predict

consequences.
3. It might require too much of us.
4. There can be distribution problems—average or
aggregate good or bad consequences.
5. Specific relationships and rights might be overridden.
6. Would a good end justify a bad means?

Smith:

Laissez-Faire Economics
is based on:

1. Efficiency
2. Free Markets (minimal

state)
3. Competition

distributed in class today.

and external, into account and not just some costs and

many benefits.

Historically many environmentalists were fans of full-cost accounting as a vehicle for making industries and governments accountable.

people who can express preferences in market behavior.

Shape: Microeconomics is

based on efficiency using the tool of cost-benefit analysis.

Currency: Microeconomics distributes preference satisfaction within markets.

preferences with beliefs and values—the only thing that counts

is what gets expressed in market behavior.
b. Are all preferences created equal?

2. Treats political questions as consumer questions—category mistake.

3. Who counts? What about people who don’t engage in market behavior,
future generations of people, and people with little money?

4. What counts? What about animals, plants, ecological effects, biodiversity?

5. Indifference to distribution––only goal is efficiency.
Economics is silent about inequalities and injustice.

a. Costs and benefits are not always anticipated.
b. Difficulty/impossibility

of precisely quantifying costs
and benefits.
c. Some costs and benefits might be
incommensurable.
d. Subjects both the means and ends of decisions to
economic analysis. (CBA vs. Cost Effectiveness from handout.)
e. CBA tends to overwhelm or replace other ways of
evaluation—especially moral/political evaluation.

monetary value on everything?
8. Is economics value-neutral?

It might rest on problematic value assumptions.
9. Does economics assume certain features of human
nature? Are we fundamentally rational, preference
maximizers?
10. Is there something wrong with treating the
environment as a scarce resource? This might miss
symbolic, moral, political, etc. ties to nature.
11. Economics might have no ethical basis at all and might
lead to immoral actions.

all people, as represented by heads of households, in liberal

societies. It might cover more than this.

Shape: The equal liberty and equal opportunity principles are based on equality; the difference principle is based on sufficiency.

Currency: The equal liberty principle distributes primary goods, the equal opportunity distributes opportunities for welfare, and the difference principle distributes access to advantage.

Rawls’ principles?
2. Is it rational to follow the maximin rule?
3.

Is the difference principle acceptable?
4. Is the original position really helpful?
5. Do future generations and nonhumans count?
6. Is Rawls simply trying to justify the political system of
the United States?
7. How could Rawls’ system work internationally?
8. Basic problems inherent in social contract approaches.

example:

Luck egalitarians: Because we’re not responsible for much of who

we are and what we get in life (luck), we should redistribute resources as equally as possible.

community can replace the need for principles of
justice.
2.

The community can be the source of principles of
justice.
3. The community can complement liberty and equality to
inform principles of justice.

over good.
Communitarianism enshrines good over right.

Liberalism: neutrality of the state.
Communitarianism:

the state promotes and defends particular conceptions of the good life.

within specific communities.

Shape: Community traditions are based on priority; justice

within communities is based also on priority and some combination of equality and sufficiency.

Currency: Communitarianism distributes community membership; specific communities can determine what to distribute.

accounts of people embedded
within communities instead of viewing

people
fundamentally as autonomous individuals.

2. It might help explain why so many groups want
their own forms of group or state autonomy.

promote and defend particular
conceptions of the good life?

2.

How do we explain separate spheres/domains of
justice for different communities?

3. What’s good about communities? They can be
grounded in problematic traditions.

4. Relativism.

Ethics”

Also see the handout “Ecological Feminism”

of them typically believe that some version of the following

statements is true:

1. Part of the structure of the world has been and still is
patriarchy—a system where groups of men have more power
than groups of women and where groups of men have more
access to what societies esteem.
2. Under patriarchy, sexist oppression (or domination or
subordination) occurs.
3. Sexist oppression is morally wrong.
4. Sexist oppression ought to be ended, and we should work toward
a post-patriarchal (or post-feminist) world.

or subordination) is, how and why it occurs, and how

it should be eliminated.

See the list of different feminisms in the handout “Ecofeminism.”

feminist approaches to ethics:
1. Care-based approaches.
2. Power-based approaches.

Feminist theories of

justice tend to focus more on participatory justice and identity or recognition justice, rather than strictly distributive justice.

capabilities (or functions) are central to human lives and distinctively

make us human.

These approaches involve developing lists of human capabilities and creating social, political, economic, legal, and moral conditions for people to develop and exercise the capabilities.

Elementary functions: “doings” and
“beings” such as having access

to
adequate food and shelter that can be secured by
personal liberty, income, and wealth.
2. Complex functions: “doings” and “beings” such as
having self-respect and being able to take part in
political communities that depend on factors
independent of possessing resources.

to be distributed:
1. Life
2. Bodily health
3. Bodily integrity
4. Senses, imagination,

and thought
5. Emotions
6. Practical reason
7. Affiliation toward other species and as the basis for self-respect
and dignity
8. Other species
9. Play
10. Control over your political and material environment

exercise elementary and complex functions falls short of living a

decent human life; for Nussbaum, a person who lacks capabilities falls short of living a decent life.

Political and economic institutions ought to facilitate and/or provide opportunities for people to exercise functions (Sen) or capabilities (Nussbaum).

all people.

Shape: Capabilities approaches are based on hybrids of equality

and sufficiency.

Currency: Capabilities approaches distribute opportunities to exercise what it fundamentally means to be human (central functions or capabilities).