Exemptions as a Principle of Social Justice

Abstract

It is practical to look for principles and programs of social justice among the policies that are already established in the law and institutions of the land. The law is influenced by an individualistic conception of equality. Nevertheless the common-sense of men causes the social limitations of individual liberty to be expressed in the law. Among these well-settled remedial or limiting principles the present and potential uses of the idea of exemptions may be examined. If there is found general agreement that a small security of comfort may be guaranteed against the want that naturally results from rapidly working competition, or from centralization of property in the hands of a creditor class, it might be concluded that the quiet extension or equalizing of the terms of these exemptions is a desirable direction for social legislation. The present idea of mn inimum incomes in industry has a somewhat more narrow but well-established forerunner in the principle of protection or favor to minimum properties. Socially it is desirable that protected incomes should be saved as protected properties are. These social protections of property against individual actions were incorporated into the law during the period when the theory, or perhaps better, the instinct, of individualism was most unrestrained. In the present period of co-operative organization, these protective laws may serve in some degree to maintain the equilibrium between the propertyless and the overpropertied classes. Perhaps ultimately the idea of securing a minimum might be given even more radical force. These exemptions or protections of individual properties are of two general kinds. The first is the exemption of fixed minimum holdings of property from taxation. The same favor to the poorer