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Economic Justice

About: Economic Justice is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 41600 publications have been published within this topic receiving 661535 citations.


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John Tomasi1
26 Feb 2012
TL;DR: In Free Market Fairness as mentioned in this paper, the authors argue that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy, and encourage egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives.
Abstract: Can libertarians care about social justice? In Free Market Fairness, John Tomasi argues that they can and should. Drawing simultaneously on moral insights from defenders of economic liberty such as F. A. Hayek and advocates of social justice such as John Rawls, Tomasi presents a new theory of liberal justice. This theory, free market fairness, is committed to both limited government and the material betterment of the poor. Unlike traditional libertarians, Tomasi argues that property rights are best defended not in terms of self-ownership or economic efficiency but as requirements of democratic legitimacy. At the same time, he encourages egalitarians concerned about social justice to listen more sympathetically to the claims ordinary citizens make about the importance of private economic liberty in their daily lives. In place of the familiar social democratic interpretations of social justice, Tomasi offers a "market democratic" conception of social justice: free market fairness. Tomasi argues that free market fairness, with its twin commitment to economic liberty and a fair distribution of goods and opportunities, is a morally superior account of liberal justice. Free market fairness is also a distinctively American ideal. It extends the notion, prominent in America's founding period, that protection of property and promotion of real opportunity are indivisible goals. Indeed, according to Tomasi, free market fairness is social justice, American style.

238 citations

Book
01 Jan 2000
TL;DR: Carens as discussed by the authors argues that old standards of neutrality and even justice as fairness tend to generate undesirable outcomes, such as having Sundays as a "common pause day" clearly violates neutrality in a society where Sunday is not a day of worship for many.
Abstract: With Culture, Citizenship and Community: A Contextualist Exploration of Justice as Evenhandedness, Joseph Carens has entered the ranks of those distinguished liberal theorists who seek to rework liberal theory and practice in order to save what is best about liberalism while modifying some of its received doctrines in order better to meet new challenges. Like Isaiah Berlin and other great renegade liberals, Carens puts pressure on liberalism's paradoxes. In certain contexts, in particular in the Canadian context, liberalism must make room for measures that are themelves illiberal, he says (7). Liberals must diversify their conception of citizenship in order to further the goals of liberal citizenship. Sometimes the goals of neutrality, like fairness, are best pursued by way of non-neutral practices and procedures. In particular, Carens argues, liberalism's new multicultural contexts ensure that old standards of neutrality and even justice as fairness tend to generate undesirable outcomes. For example, having Sundays as a "common pause day" clearly violates neutrality in a society where Sunday is not a day of worship for many. Neutrality would require that we abolish the common pause day or choose a day for common pause, like Wednesday, that has no particular significance for anyone. Then all are treated equally and, from the perspective of neutrality, also fairly. But this outcome leaves no one better off. We can do better by aspiring to fairness rather than to formal equality, Carens argues, and fairness in this instance requires "evenhandedness in the form of comparable support" (13). That would mean allowing time off for those who worship on other days and allowing those who close their businesses on another day for religious reasons to be open on Sundays. The requirements of evenhandedness are not always clear. Arguments need to be made, contexts have to be investigated. But the principle of evenhandedness, invoked by many minority communities seeking to make room for themselves in Christian societies, directs us to attend to different sorts of considerations than are privileged by the principle of neutrality (12-13).

238 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors analyze the concept of responsibility and the way it appears in economic theory and in egalitarian theories of justice and identify two general principles (natural reward, and compensation) which inspire many arguments and axioms in theories based on responsibility.

237 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that constraints derived from particular institutional forms and practices should play a crucial role in the application of a theory to the real world, rather than merely its implementation.
Abstract: IT is uncontroversial that the limits imposed by existing institutions and practices are relevant in determining how best to implement a particular conception of justice. The set of precepts, rules, and policies that best realize the demands of justice (whatever one thinks they are) in Corsica will be different from those required in Poland. It is uncontroversial, that is, that information about institutional and political context is needed in coming to a concrete judgment regarding a particular course of action or policy. No one disagrees that constraints derived from particular institutional forms and practices should play a crucial role in the application of a theory to the ‘real world’. Less well understood, by contrast, is whether existing institutions and practices should play any role in the basic justification and formulation of first principles. A common view holds that, in setting out and justifying first principles of justice, one should seek a normative point of view unfettered by the form or structure of existing institutions and practices. To assign any greater role to institutions and practices—to allow them, as I have said, to influence the formulation and justification of first principles of justice—is a fundamental mistake: constraining the content of justice by whatever social and political arrangements we happen to share gives undue normative weight to what is, at best, merely the product of arbitrary historical contingency or, at worst, the result of past injustice itself. This article aims to bring to light, clarify, and defend the opposite view: existing institutions and practices, I shall argue, should play a crucial role in the justification of a conception of justice rather than merely its implementation. Our task is to explain both why and how. What I call the ‘practice-dependence thesis’ in its most general form is as follows:

237 citations

Book
17 Jun 2010
TL;DR: The Treaty of Lisbon as mentioned in this paper provides fundamental rights, security, freedom, security and justice, and financial, economic, social, social and other internal affairs for the first time in history.
Abstract: Introduction 1. Origins and birth of the Treaty of Lisbon 2. General provisions 3. Democracy 4. Fundamental rights 5. Freedom, security and justice 6. Institutions 7. External affairs 8. Financial, economic, social and other internal affairs 9. Conclusion: the Treaty of Lisbon and beyond 10. Annexes.

237 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202414
20233,633
20227,866
20211,595
20201,689
20191,729