Showing papers on "Economic Justice published in 1981"

A Theory of Good City Form

Abstract: Available in paperback under the title "Good City Form"With the publication of "The Image of the City, " Kevin Lynch embarked on the process of exploration of city form. "A Theory of Good City Form, " his most important book, is both a summation and an extension of his vision, a high point from which he views cities past and possible.The central section of the book develops a new normative theory of city form--an identification of the characteristics that good human settlements "should" possess. This follows an examination of three existing normative theories--those which see the city as a model of the cosmos, as a machine, and as a living organism--which are shown to be finally inadequate and unable to hold up under sustained analysis. In addition, an appendix demonstrates the inadequacies of a number of functional theories--those whose aim is simply to describe "how" settlements work rather than to evaluate how they ought to work. Among these theories are models of cities as ecological systems, as fields of force, as systems of linked decisions, or as areas of class conflict.Lynch puts forth his own theory by searching out the qualities that produce good settlements, qualities that allow "development, within continuity, via openness and connection." He identifies five interrelated dimensions of performance--vitality, sense, fit, access, and control--and two "meta-criteria," efficiency and justice. As in all of Lynch's writing, the theory flows from and leads back to specific examples and everyday realities. The final section of the book is concerned with applications of the theory.

Justice in many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering, and Indigenous Law

Abstract: (1981). Justice in many Rooms: Courts, Private Ordering, and Indigenous Law. The Journal of Legal Pluralism and Unofficial Law: Vol. 13, No. 19, pp. 1-47.

The Economics of Justice

Abstract: Richard A. Posner is probably the leading scholar in the rapidly growing field of the economics of law; he is also an extremely lucid writer. In this book, he applies economic theory to four areas of interest to students of social and legal institutions: the theory of justice, primitive and ancient social and legal institutions, the law and economics of privacy and reputation, and the law and economics of racial discrimination. The book is designed to display the power of economics to organize and illuminate diverse fields in the study of nonmarket behavior and institutions. A central theme is the importance of uncertainty to an understanding of social and legal institutions. Another major theme is that the logic of the law, in many ways but not all, appears to be an economic one: that judges, for example, in interpreting the common law, act as if they were trying to maximize economic welfare. Part I examines the deficiencies of utilitarianism as both a positive and a normative basis of understanding law, ethics, and social institutions, and suggests in its place the economist's concept of "wealth maximization." Part II, an examination of the social and legal institutions of archaic societies, notably that of ancient Greece and primitive societies, argues that economic analysis holds the key to understanding such diverse features of these societies as reciprocal gift-giving, blood guilt, marriage customs, liability rules, and the prestige accorded to generosity. Many topics relevant to modern social and philosophical debate, including the origin of the state and the retributive theory of punishment, are addressed. Parts III and IV deal with more contemporary social andjurisprudential questions. Part III is an economic analysis of privacy and the statutory and common law rules that protect privacy and related interests-rules that include the tort law of privacy, assault and battery, and defamation. Finally, Part IV examines, again from an economic standpoint, the controversial areas of racial and sexual discrimination, with special reference to affirmative action. Both Part III and Part IV develop as a subtheme the issue of proper standards of constitutional adjudication by the Supreme Court.

The Ethics of Organizational Politics

Abstract: Political uses of power demand explicit consideration of ethical restraints, in part because current management theory focuses on the value of outcomes rather than on the value of the means chosen. We have developed a normative model of ethical analysis that can be helpful in determining what these restraints are. The model integrates three kinds of ethical theories: utilitarianism, theories of moral rights, and theories of justice.

Justice: On Relating Private and Public

Abstract: Private and public, it is important to realize, are relative terms. First, something may be public in the sense that it is accessible to all, open to scrutiny by anyone, visible as a focus of attention. Second, something may be public in the sense that it affects all or most of us, public in its consequences and significance. “Society” has “invaded” and “conquered the public realm,” but there is a significant ambiguity about just what this victory means. As long as the animal laborans remains in possession of it there can be no true public realm, but only private activities displayed in the open. In On Revolution, Arendt is franker about the meaning of society’s intrusion on the public, allowing that “the social question” might be spoken of “better and more simply” as “the existence of poverty.” The idea of justice, central for Aristotle, is conspicuously absent from Arendt’s otherwise closely parallel account.

Modern Private Security: Its Growth and Implications

Abstract: On the North American continent, in Europe and elsewhere, the dramatic growth in private security in the past several decades has reshaped the structure and function of modern policing. The development of private security has been facilitated by fundamental shifts in the nature of property relations. These changes have encouraged the development of a preventative mode of policing consistent with the principles and hopes of nineteenth-century police reformers, but they also suggest that we are moving in the direction of a new disciplinary society and raise fundamental questions with respect to sovereignty, justice, and individual liberty now almost entirely unrecognised. In particular, the legal institutions regarding private property operate to enhance the potential threat to individual liberty posed by the development of modern private security.

NCCD Research Review : Wider, Stronger, and Different Nets: the Dialectics of Criminal Justice Reform:

Abstract: Criminal justice reformers often speak of their concern with the widening net of the criminal justice system, but they demonstrate little understanding of this phenomenon. Despite considerable reform activity during the past two decades, the reach of the justice system has remained unchanged or even has been extended. This paper examines the dialectics of reform movements and their intended or unintended consequences in widening, strengthening, or creating different nets of social control.Six major reform movements (diversion, decarceration, due process, decriminalization, deterrence, and just deserts) are reviewed to illustrate how organizational dynamics function to resist, distort, and frustrate the reform's original purposes. The authors also argue that potential reformers cannot ignore the surrounding social, political, economic, and ideological context. Reformers must recog nize that legal, programmatic, and administrative reforms are themselves circum scribed by political and economic forces. Futur...

The Justice motive in social behavior : adapting to times of scarcity and change

Abstract: 1 * Adapting to Scarcity and Change (I): Stating the Problem.- 2 * The Justice Motive in Human Relations: Some Thoughts on What We Know and Need to Know about Justice.- Basic Processes.- 3 * Theoretical Issues in the Development of Social Justice.- 4 * The Development of Justice and Self-Interest during Childhood.- 5 * Morality and the Development of Conceptions of Justice.- 6 * Social Change and the Contexts of Justice Motivation.- 7 * Retributive Justice.- 8 * The Social Psychology of Punishment Reactions.- 9 * Microjustice and Macrojustice.- Institutional Settings.- 10 * The Changing Longevity of Heterosexual Close Relationships: A Commentary and Forecast.- 11 * Giving and Receiving: Social Justice in Close Relationships.- 12 * The Exchange Process in Close Relationships: Microbehavior and Macromotives.- 13 * The Justice of Distributing Scarce and Abundant Resources.- 14 * The Allocation and Acquisition of Resources in Times of Scarcity.- 15 * Justice in "The Crunch".- 16 * The Relationship of Economic Growth to Inequality in the Distribution of Income.- 17 * Justice Motives and Other Psychological Factors in the Development and Resolution of Disputes.- 18 * Down-to-Earth Justice: Pitfalls on the Road to Legal Decentralization.- 19 * Law as a Social Trap: Problems and Possibilities for the Future.- Endnote.- 20 * Adapting to Scarcity and Change (II): Constructive Alternatives.- Author Index.

Their Sisters' Keepers: Women's Prison Reform in America, 1830-1930

Abstract: This study of prison reform adds a new chapter to the history of women's struggle for justice in America

An introduction to modern political theory

Abstract: Part 1 Rules, laws and society: philosophy, social science and political theory - Liberal-rationalism, Marxism law and social control the state authority and power. Part 2 Values: political principles - logical positivism and emotivism, universalizability and ethical pluralism, contractarianism, utilitarianism, individualism, Marxism and collectivism justice - Rawl's theory of justice equality liberty - John Stuart Mill and the value of liberty human rights the public interest and democracy.

The Justice Motive in Human Relations

Abstract: And so, as described in the previous chapter, the attempt to understand how people will react to conditions of scarcity leads directly to the issue of whether they experience their fate and the fates of those they care about as just or unjust. This statement is not at all simple nor obvious in its implications, as we shall see in a moment. After all, identifying the sense of justice as the key issue is equivalent to saying that in order to understand what will happen in our future, collectively and individually, we must solve one of the most enigmatic and complex problems that has preoccupied social analysts throughout the history of Western civilization: How does the theme of justice appear in people’s lives?

The Concept of Corrective Justice in Recent Theories of Tort Law

Abstract: FOR the last 100 years, which is to say since the publication of Holmes's The Common Law,1 most tort scholars have thought that tort doctrines were, and should be, based on utilitarian (or, more recently, economic) concepts.2 This was the view of Holmes, of Ames, and of Terry; of the draftsmen of the first and second Restatement of Torts; and of the legal realists who thought the focus of tort law should be on loss spreading rather than on assessment of fault.3 It is also the view of economic

What is Justice

Abstract: When Jesus of Nazareth, in the hearing before the Roman prefect, confessed to being a king, he said: “I was born and am come into this world to bear witness to the truth”. At which Pilate asked “What is truth?” The sceptical Roman obviously expected no answer to this question, nor did Our Lord give any. For to be witness to the truth was not the essence of his mission as a Messianic king. He was born to bear witness to justice, that justice which he wished to realise in the Kingdom of God. And for this justice he died on the cross.

Giving and Receiving

Abstract: Love and justice are an odd couple, the former presumably all emotional, the latter all rational. They are more closely tied, however, than romantic tradition lets on (e.g., Friedan, 1963). In this chapter, we examine the connecting links between justice in the calculable world of work and money and in the presumably incalculable world of love.

Justice, law, and argument : essays on moral and legal reasoning

Abstract: 1. Concerning Justice.- Five Lectures on Justice.- 2. Justice and Its Problems.- 3. Equity and the Rule of Justice.- 4. On the Justice of Rules.- 5. Justice and Justification.- 6. Justice and Reason.- 7. Justice and Reasoning.- 8. Equality and Justice.- 9. Justice Re-examined.- 10. The Use and Abuse of Confused Notions.- 11. The Justification of Norms.- 12. Law and Morality.- 13. Law and Rhetoric.- 14. Legal Reasoning.- 15. Law, Logic and Epistemology.- 16. Law, Philosophy and Argumentation.- 17. What the Philosopher May Learn from the Study of Law.- Index of Names.- Index of Subjects.

Toward a Critical Theory of Justice

Abstract: Discussion de deux critiques de la theorie de la justice de Rawls: R.P. Wolff, Understanding Rawls (Princeton University Press, 1977) et M. Fisk, "History and Reason in Rawls'Moral Theory" in Reading Rawls (New York: Basic Books, 1976). Proposition d'une theorie de la justice fondee autrement que sur la seule distribution, et developpee a partir de la notion d'Habermas de situation de parole ideale, consideree comme exprimant l'ideal de la justice, en prise sur des situations sociales particulieres et concretes.

Bloc Voting and The Freshman Justice Revisited

Abstract: A NEWLY APPOINTED JUSTICE often comes to the United States Supreme Court with the opportunity to have an immediate impact on decisions involving some of the significant policy questions of the day. Such an opportunity to influence policy is more meaningful when the "freshman justice" joins a closely divided court on which a single vote may tip the balance on a decision, or when a single president has the opportunity to appoint several like-minded justices in a single term. Recognizing the importance of the appointment process as a means of influencing judicial decisions, presidents throughout history have sought to name individuals who would support the president's policy goals once on the Court. 1 Thus, the question of how a newly appointed justice is likely to vote is of interest not only to the president, but to all who recognize the Supreme Court's policy-making function. Of particular interest is the question of whether the voting behavior of new justices differs from that of more senior members of the Court. Is the voting behavior of newcomers immediately

Justice: A Philosophical Review

Abstract: The past decade has seen the bourgeoning of bioethics and the resurgence of theorizing about justice. Yet until now these two developments have not been as mutually enriching as one might have hoped. Bioethicists have tended to concentrate on micro issues (moral problems of individual or small group decision making), ignoring fundamental moral questions about the macro structure within which the micro issues arise. Theorists of justice have advanced very general principles but have typically neglected to show how they can illuminate the particular problems we face in health care and other urgent areas.

Magistrates' courts and the ideology of justice

Abstract: Magistrates' courts have frequently attracted comment for their role as a conveyor belt for the guilty pleas which constitute 95% of their caseload. Far less attention has been paid to their contested trials, even though, as a recent research study for the Royal Commission on Criminal Procedure notes, by far the majority of contested trials are heard before magistrates.[2] This article draws on observational research into contested trials in magistrates' courts,[3] to consider two very different levels of sociological problem. First there is the plight of the unrepresented defendant, the focal point of most sociological and social policy studies of the courts. This article tries to offer a fresh approach by locating the problem not just in the social class of the defendant or the informal games played by courtroom personnel, but in the structure of magistrates' justice. Second, there are the ideological problems posed by the departure of the magistrates' courts from central tenets of the rhetoric of justice. This article seeks to locate this departure not just in the practice of magistrates but in the institutional basis of magistrates' justice. It tries to demonstrate the problems posed for the ideology of justice and the legitimations by which they are resolved. The research on which the article draws was done in Scotland. Legal institutions in Scotland and England do vary and any problems of generalisability are discussed where they arise.[4]

Prosecutor Constrained by His Environment: A New Look at Discretionary Justice in the United States

Abstract: The broad discretionary power of the American prosecutor subjects the office to criticism and enshrouds the prosecutorial function in controversy. However, the criticism usually is overbroad and lacks factual support. Is a first offender convicted of aggravated assault treated differently in Brooklyn, New York, than in New Orleans, Louisiana? Is a shoplifting suspect found with a gun in her purse treated the same in Boulder, Colorado, as in Detroit, Michigan? Such questions have gone unanswered and, indeed, unasked, by any comprehensive survey of prosecutorial discretion in America. This study examines the spectrum of state prosecutorial styles in America's urban areas. Our purpose is to identify those differences which affect the uniformity, the quality, and the equality of justice administered by local prosecutors. In order to examine and analyze policy and the dimensions of uniformity and consistency in prosecutorial decisionmaking, ten geographically dispersed and otherwise diverse, large urban prosecutors' offices participated in this study.' This Article outlines some findings and con-

Morality and the Development of Conceptions of Justice

Abstract: Social philosophers from Aristotle to Rawls have argued that justice is the primary value underlying all morality. Nevertheless, our understanding of how the concern with justice guides human behavior is far from complete. The explication of this relationship is made especially difficult because it is not easy to define justice. In fact, it often appears that justice is only definable in contrast with injustice. When we speak of a just act, we generally mean that the act has remedied or prevented an unjustice. From this perspective, the pursuit of justice can best be defined as the active process of remedying or preventing what would arouse the sense of injustice (Cahn, 1949). In this chapter, we attempt to describe how the sense of injustice is aroused and how the pursuit of justice becomes a moral value.