Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality
TL;DR: Lawler as mentioned in this paper argued that being for the freeze means that one is not for disarmament, which is hardly a rational position in the sense that it is suspect if not immoral, in the eyes of some.
Abstract: that a plurality of the American Catholic bishops endorse a nuclear freeze (p. 4), saying that they are thus "taking their stance with Moscow,55 which is for a freeze, and not with the Vatican, which "is still in favor of disarmament?not a freeze.55 To make any sense at all, Mr. Lawler must mean that being for the freeze means that one is not for disarmament? hardly a rational position. One recalls here the arguments, during the 19305s and 19405s, that being for racial justice in the United States was suspect if not immoral, in the eyes of some, because the communists also favored it.
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an argument against using singular notions of refugee in research, arguing that they fail to identify and recognize certain human sufferings which are constitutive of the refugee condition.
Abstract: This paper presents an argument against using singular notions of refugee in research. By mapping the historical and contemporary relationships between refugeehood and citizenship and by outlining the norms and ontologies underpinning the mainstream academic notions of refugee, I aim to show the deficiencies of singular notions. As an alternative, I propose conceptualizing the refugee based on multiple norms. My overall argument against singular notions of refugee is that they fail to identify and recognize certain human sufferings which are constitutive of the refugee condition. This is also true for the 1951 Geneva Convention’s singular definition of a refugee. The theoretical and ethical shortfalls of singular approaches arise from this failure in spite of the fact that protection of human rights is their earnestly declared goal. More specifically, the problem of singular approaches is that they are primarily derived from particular citizenship ideals, political visions and images of person. The predicament is that different citizenship ideals construe different couplings between citizenship and refugeehood. Sufferings that are recognized as the fundament of the refugee condition vary between paradigms. When refugeehood and citizenship are conceptually tied to each other, human sufferings that constitute the refugee condition are conceived in terms of citizenship ideals’ ontological assumptions rather than actual human sufferings. Defining the refugee in terms of citizenship ideals is, thus, detrimental to social analysis. By tying the notion of refugee to normatively defined citizen ideals, one detaches it from human rights. The coupling between citizenship and refugeehood substantiates aporetic questions such as whether states should prioritize their obligations to their citizens or assume their responsibility for refugees. Only when the refugee is defined in terms of citizenship ideals and ‘as a function of the interstate system’ (Sassen 1999) can such questions be vindicated. However, the foundation of refugee rights is the idea of universal human rights, which predates the emergence of citizenship (Betten and Grieff 1998). The question is not about states’ having to choose between their citizens’ claims and foreigners’ claims; it is about choosing between citizens’ claims for a better life and refugees’ claims for a life at all. This is a choice between citizens’ rights obtained in exchange for their performance of some duties and individuals’ inalienable natural rights which they have by virtue of being humans. Citizenship rights and human rights are thus two substantially different orders of rights which are not comparable, although receiving states’ citizens may perceive the emotional, cultural, social, and economic consequences of protecting refugees as a threat to their own well-being. By conceptualizing the refugee in terms of citizenship, one trivializes and misses this crucial point about the refugee condition. When the question is put as a choice between a better life and a life at all, we are in the domain of individuals’ inalienable human rights.
10 citations
Additional excerpts
...See Miller (2000), Sandel (1998), Taylor (1992), and Walzer (1983)....
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Dissertation•
28 Mar 2013
TL;DR: A qualitative comparative study of homelessness policy in Scotland and Ireland is presented in this article, where the authors consider the impact of rights-based compared with non-rights-based approaches, across four dimensions: meeting housing needs; juridification; minimising the stigma of homelessness; and empowering homeless households.
Abstract: Taking as its starting point persistent debates about the appropriate balance between rights and discretion in the design and delivery of welfare policies, this thesis seeks to illuminate the contribution ‘rights-based approaches’ can make in responding to homelessness. It aims to bring conceptual clarity and empirical evidence to bear on the growing European and wider international focus on ‘rights-based approaches to homelessness’. Integrating classic debates in moral philosophy regarding the nature and status of rights with contemporary ideas about rights in social policy, the thesis distinguishes between various understandings of ‘rights’. Whereas deontological perspectives see rights as moral statements about human beings, consequentialist perspectives direct attention to the efficacy of legal or ‘black letter’ rights as a policy tool for achieving better outcomes for those in housing need.
Focusing on legal rights to housing for homeless households, the thesis asks whether policy approaches founded on such rights deliver what we expect them to in practice. Specifically, it considers the impact of rights-based compared with non-rights based approaches, across four dimensions: meeting housing needs; juridification; minimising the stigma of homelessness; and empowering homeless households. A qualitative comparative study of homelessness policy in Scotland and Ireland forms the empirical core of the thesis. Scotland has attracted international recognition, having developed a strong legal safety net for homeless households, which in effect gives the vast majority of homeless households an individually enforceable legal right to settled housing. In Ireland, homelessness policy has also become a focal point for reform, but a rights-based approach has been rejected in favour of a ‘social partnership’ model, relying on a ‘problem solving approach’ among key stakeholders to build consensus and ‘ratchet up’ standards. The study involved interviews with key national stakeholders in both jurisdictions, and two local case studies in Edinburgh and Dublin, through which the perspectives and experiences of service providers, key local stakeholders and single homeless men were explored.
The findings of the study add empirical weight to the current orthodoxy that rights-based approaches offer progressive solutions to the needs of homeless households. The research points to two key mechanisms through which legal rights help secure positive outcomes for single homeless men. First, legal rights minimise provider discretion, ensuring a focus on meeting the needs of homeless single men and crowing out competing policy objectives. A wider set of goals – including considerations of desert, ‘housing readiness’, social mix and community reactions – influence service provision in Dublin. This led to inertia in the Irish system, stemming flow through temporary accommodation. The comparative success of the Scottish approach in meeting the needs of homeless people, however, has implications for the capacity of other (non-homeless) groups in housing need to access social housing. It is argued, based on the empirical findings of the research, and within a normative framework of value pluralism and ‘tragic-realism’, that the Scottish approach strikes a ‘less worse’ balance between competing objectives than Ireland’s social partnership approach. Support for the Scottish model remains closely tied, however, to the capacity of the statutory system to not entirely crowd out the needs of other non-homeless households. Scotland’s approach remains vulnerable to the criticism that it sharpens perverse incentives for people to manufacture homelessness in order to gain priority in the allocation of social housing. Such a perverse incentive is, however, inherent to any approach to homelessness that prioritises homeless people in social housing allocations, and is present - albeit substantially dulled - in Ireland. This ‘moral hazard’ then, needs to be understood in the context of the choice stakeholders face between homelessness policies that prioritise need and create moral hazard, and approaches that do neither.
Legal rights-based approaches also help secure better outcomes for homeless men through a second mechanism, namely their psycho-social impacts and their effect on discourses on homelessness. The framework of legal rights in Scotland helps construct those who are homeless as ‘entitled rights-holders’, supporting structural understandings of the causes of homelessness. In Ireland, homeless men were instead cast as ‘grateful supplicants’ and explanations of homelessness tended to emphasize personal responsibility and individual pathology. On this basis, it is argued that legal rights both minimise stigma and ‘empower’ homeless people, encouraging a more demanding and assertive set of attitudes, dispositions and expectations among homeless men that help maintain standards of service. According to this analysis, the capacity of legal rights to secure better outcomes does not rely primarily on the pursuit of legal challenges, but on the more subtle impacts of a rights-based policy framework.
Integrating the key normative and empirical findings of the research, the thesis concludes by making three substantive ethical arguments concerning the design of homelessness policy. First, it is argued that in the case of homelessness, legitimate considerations about desert and deservingness in the allocation of social resources ought to be suspended. This argument rests on the empirical insight that Ireland’s ‘desert-sensitive’ approach appears to foster a set of dispositions among homeless men that stifle their progress out of homelessness, and on a normative perspective that seeks to suspend desert in the allocation of social goods that are deemed to be necessities for a ‘well-lived life’. Second, and by extension, it is argued that discretion in the delivery of homelessness policies ought to be minimised. In Ireland, providers’ over-riding discretion - and resulting attempt to balance various objectives, including ‘desert-sensitivity’ - places substantial hurdles in the path of homeless men seeking to access settled housing. The boundaries legal rights cast around provider discretion ‘empower’ homeless men in their interactions with providers, helping maintain a more purely needs-focused response to homelessness. Third and finally, it is argued that homelessness policies that bolster a sense of entitlement among those who are homeless – and recognition among others that this sense of entitlement is legitimate - are desirable. Such a sense of entitlement appears to form part of a wider ‘virtuous circle’ achieved by Scotland’s rights-based approach, which helps maintain pressure for – and achieve - positive outcomes for homeless men.
10 citations
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: The Bosnian War (1992-1995) was described by US assistant secretary of State Richard Holbroke as "the greatest failure of the West since the 1930s" as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Often labeled as the most deadly crisis in Europe since WWII, the Yugoslav Wars (1991-2002) were a series of ethnic conflicts that facilitated the collapse of the fragile Yugoslav federation created under the Soviet model in 1946. One of these conflicts, the Bosnian War (1992-1995), was described by US assistant Secretary of State Richard Holbroke as, “The greatest failure of the West since the 1930s.”(Lamb, 2005) During the conflict in which Bosnian Serbs waged an aggressive campaign of ethnic cleansing targeting Muslim (Bosniak) and Croat populations, many of the estimated 1.4 million Bosnian refugees fled to other former Yugoslav republics, where they were subsequently subjected to more ethnic conflict and violence.(Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Slovenia, 2007) An estimated 650,000 refugees were able to reach European countries beyond the former Yugoslavia and became the first group to acquire “temporary protection” in EU states as well as in states preparing to join the EU, such as Austria which acceded in 1995.(Valenta, 2011, 2)Germany accepted the most refugees out of any European country at 320,000, while Austria admitted the second highest amongst all non-Yugoslavian European countries at 86,500.(Valenta, 2011, 4)The Yugoslav wars, and especially the Bosnian conflict, forced European states confronted with the largest refugee crisis since WWII, to revise their asylum policies, specify their vague regulations on refugees, and attempt to develop a unified policy in response to the pressing issue.
10 citations
Dissertation•
20 Apr 2016
TL;DR: This paper reviews arguments presented in the ethics and health science literatures, and the policies or guidelines proposed by learned societies and journals, in order to explore the link between author contribution and responsibility in multiauthor multidisciplinary health science publications.
Abstract: While there has been significant discussion in the health sciences and ethics literatures about problems associated with publication practices (e.g., ghost and gift-authorship, conflicts of interest), there has been relatively little practical guidance developed to help researchers determine how they should fairly allocate credit for multi-authored publications. Fair allocation of credit requires that participating authors be acknowledged for their contribution and responsibilities, but it is not obvious what contributions should warrant authorship, nor who should be responsible for the quality and content of the scientific research findings presented in a publication. In this paper, we review arguments presented in the ethics and health science literatures, and the policies or guidelines proposed by learned societies and journals, in order to explore the link between author contribution and responsibility in multiauthor multidisciplinary health science publications. We then critically examine the various procedures used in the field to help researchers fairly allocate authorship.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze Guido Calabresi's two arguments for merit goods exposed in The Future of Law & Economics (2016) and suggest that a theory of merit goods would gain from moving away from the emotivist conceptualisation according to which people feel bad about certain goods being traded for money to a conceptualisation of the reasons for allocating specific goods to specific institutions.
Abstract: Guido Calabresi has been one of the first scholars to use the concept of merit goods coined by Richard A. Musgrave in The Theory of Public Finance (1959). Although the concept had a mixed reception in economics, Calabresi detected its fruitfulness for a more realistic theorisation of the allocation of goods. Starting from a study of the tragic choices a society needs to make concerning the value of life, Calabresi provides an original conceptualisation of merit goods which is partly complementary to the classical definitions given by Musgrave. However, Calabresi’s conceptualisation is limited by its cost/benefit welfarist approach. Moreover, it leaves out important strands of justification for merit goods. After some preliminary remarks on Calabresi’s encounter with Musgrave, the paper analyses Calabresi’s two arguments for merit goods exposed in The Future of Law & Economics (2016). It then suggests that a theory of merit goods would gain from moving away from the emotivist conceptualisation according to which people feel bad about certain goods being traded for money to a conceptualisation of the reasons for allocating specific goods to specific institutions.
10 citations