Matter Of Distributive Justice Research Articles

Reconciling Algorithmic Fairness Criteria

Reconciling Algorithmic Fairness Criteria

Urban–ruraljustice

<scp>Urban–rural</scp>justice

Contesting disabling conditions of life in the Global South: disability activists’ and service providers’ experiences in Guyana

This article addresses an important gap in our understanding of issues of impairment and disability, namely challenges facing disabled activists and service providers in the majority world context of the developing nation of Guyana. The article argues that developing a southern standpoint on impairment, disability, disability activism and service provision requires a reframing of disability issues as matters of distributive justice and not only human rights. Challenges facing disability activists and service providers in Guyana included trying to combat internalized ableism, financial and cultural barriers to political engagement and visibility, tensions in claiming or rejecting disabled identities and difficulties in accessing foreign aid funding for disability initiatives. The article concludes by stressing the importance of rethinking how we do disability studies so that it allows critical analysis of the dynamics of a global capitalist corporeal class order in the context of the majority world.

Societal preferences for distributive justice in the allocation of health care resources: a latent class discrete choice experiment.

Economic theory suggests that resources should be allocated in a way that produces the greatest outputs, on the grounds that maximizing output allows for a redistribution that could benefit everyone. In health care, this is known as QALY (quality-adjusted life-year) maximization. This justification for QALY maximization may not hold, though, as it is difficult to reallocate health. Therefore, the allocation of health care should be seen as a matter of distributive justice as well as efficiency. A discrete choice experiment was undertaken to test consistency with the principles of QALY maximization and to quantify the willingness to trade life-year gains for distributive justice. An empirical ethics process was used to identify attributes that appeared relevant and ethically justified: patient age, severity (decomposed into initial quality and life expectancy), final health state, duration of benefit, and distributional concerns. Only 3% of respondents maximized QALYs with every choice, but scenarios with larger aggregate QALY gains were chosen more often and a majority of respondents maximized QALYs in a majority of their choices. However, respondents also appeared willing to prioritize smaller gains to preferred groups over larger gains to less preferred groups. Marginal analyses found a statistically significant preference for younger patients and a wider distribution of gains, as well as an aversion to patients with the shortest life expectancy or a poor final health state. These results support the existence of an equity-efficiency tradeoff and suggest that well-being could be enhanced by giving priority to programs that best satisfy societal preferences. Societal preferences could be incorporated through the use of explicit equity weights, although more research is required before such weights can be used in priority setting.

The Problem of Historical Rectification for Rawlsian Theory

In this paper we claim that Rawls’s theory is compatible with the absence of rectification of extremely important historical injustices within a given society. We hold that adding a new principle to justice-as-fairness may amend this problem. There are four possible objections to our claim: First, that historical rectification is not required by justice. Second, that, even when historical rectification is a matter of justice, it is not a matter of distributive justice, so that Rawls’s theory is justified in leaving it unaddressed. Third, that dealing with historical injustice is outside of the scope of ideal theory, so that even when historical rectification is required by justice, Rawls’s theory starts with the assumption that no such historical injustice has occurred. Fourth, that while historical injustice is within the scope of Rawls’s theory, there is no need for further principles of justice to deal with it, so that the correct regulation of the principles of justice-as-fairness would ensure the rectification of all relevant historical injustices of a particular society. While we offer several arguments against the first and second objections, we address the last two at length and show that both fail.

Standard of Care, Professional Obligations, and Distributive Justice

The problem of standard-of-care in clinical research concerns the level of care that investigators ought to provide to research subjects in the control arm of their clinical trials. Commentators differ sharply on whether subjects in trials conducted in lower income countries should be provided with the same level of care as subjects in trials conducted in higher income countries. I consider an argument that commentators have employed on both sides of this debate: professional role arguments. These arguments claim to justify a conclusion to the standard-of-care problem solely by appeal to the professional obligations that investigators possess. I argue that prominent versions of professional role arguments cannot justify a solution to the problem of standard-of-care that is both determinate and reasonable simply by appeal to the professional obligations of investigators. Instead, to do so, one must also (1) determine the level of care or types of treatment that individuals are entitled to as a matter of distributive justice, and (2) identify which agents possess the duties that correspond to these entitlements. The level of care that investigators owe to subjects in the control arm of their clinical trials is thus in part dependent on the level of care that these subjects are entitled to as a matter of distributive justice, and whether it is the investigators who possess the corresponding distributive obligation to provide them with the care that they are entitled to.

Original Acquisition and Unilateralism: Kant, Hegel, and Corrective Justice

Contemporary Kantians suggest that the original acquisition of property is problematic for Kant’s theory of private law. Kant requires that private law obligations be consistent with the equal freedom of everyone. However, a rule of original acquisition seems to favor the acquirer’s freedom over others’: the acquirer originally obtains property in an unowned object simply by taking control of it, and thus seems to impose obligations on everyone else (to respect the property right) through her own “unilateral” action or choice. This article first addresses proposed Kantian solutions to the supposed “unilateralism” problem, which involve the creation of a “civil condition” of public legal institutions to determine property rights. Such solutions make property rights a matter of distributive justice rather than corrective justice. Moreover, they cannot actually solve the unilateralism problem. But in any event, the supposed “unilateralism” problem is in fact no problem at all for Kant. This is because one person’s original acquisition does not limit others’ “freedom” in the Kantian sense of that term. In this respect Kant’s account of property is equivalent to Hegel’s, which contemporary Kantians have criticized for denying any problem of unilateralism. And both Kant and Hegel’s accounts are fully consistent with a theory that explains property as a matter of corrective, rather than distributive, justice.

Luck, Genes, and Equality

This essay considers principles of distributive justice for access to reproductive biotechnologies which make it possible to enhance the traits of human offspring. The author provides prima facie reason to think that redistributive principles apply to genetic goods and proceed to evaluate the way in which four distributive patterns--egalitarianism, luck egalitarianism, prioritarianism, and suffcientarianism--would implement a just distribution of genetic goods. He argues that the currency of genetic redistribution consists in natural primary goods like health, vision, and rationality as these goods contribute to the biological component of basic capabilities, like being healthy, seeing properly, and being able to reason. The author develops a mixed sufficiency/priority approach to genetic enhancement, and defends this approach against objections.

Equality as a Foucaultian Value

It has long been noted that there is a certain normative tension in the work of Michel Foucault. On the one hand, he was always reticent to offer a normative framework for his writings. Aside from the cryptic comment about "bodies and pleasures" in the first volume of his history of sexuality, one would seek in vain for positive political or ethical suggestions or claims. On the other hand, his work is undoubtedly normatively driven. The genealogical works have a strong undercurrent of critique and the ethical works of alternative frameworks of living. There can be no doubt that he means these works to intervene upon our current situation in a normative way. One way around this tension is to refer to Foucault's idea that what he provides are tools for those who seek to struggle. This approach displaces the normative weight of his works to the side of the readers. What he provides are genealogies that tell us how we have come to be where we are; the outrage and the will to change, if there is to be any, must come from those who encounter these works and through them find our situation, in Foucault's word, "intolerable." There is something to this idea, particularly when it is coupled with Foucault's reticence to speak in the name of the oppressed, to succumb to the common temptation to be a "universal intellectual." However, there is also something unsatisfying about this response. To be engaged, for instance, with Discipline and Punish, is not only to read a history upon which one can place one's own normative framework. It is also to encounter one in the text. In essence, Discipline and Punish offers a critique of the practice of penal rehabilitation and the entire disciplinary apparatus in which it arises. This critique does not stand outside a normative space; it is deeply normative. But to see things this way seems to invite another dilemma. How are we to trace a normative framework in Foucault's writings without betraying his idea that intellectuals should not dictate the terms to those who resist? It is at this point that Jacques Ranciere's work on equality becomes relevant. Ranciere offers a politically charged normative framework that allows us to embrace, at the same time, a normative framework for critique and a recognition that the terms of struggle are in the hands of those who are engaged in struggle. I would like briefly to trace that response, and then to consider how it might fare in the folds of Foucault's thought. For Ranciere, the core concept of politics is equality, an equality that is presupposed among those who act. In other words, politics has nothing to do with what is given to people; it is not a matter of distributive justice. "Politics is generally seen as the set of procedures whereby the aggregation and consent of collectivities is achieved, the organization of powers, the distribution of places and roles, and the systems for legitimizing this distribution. I propose to give this system of distribution and legitimization another name. I propose to call it the police,.'" In contrast, he says, "I propose to reserve the term politics for an extremely determined activity antagonistic to policing: whatever breaks with the tangible configuration and parts or lack of them are defined by a presupposition that, by definition, has no place in that configuration-that of the part that has no part."2 The presupposition of the part that has no part, the part that has been left out of the political and social order, is the presupposition of equality, of the equality of everyone with everyone else. To act according to the presupposition of equality is to act in accordance with a particular norm: that everyone is capable of constructing a meaningful life for himself or herself alongside others, and that communities should be arranged to ensure recognition of that capability. Moreover, what goes under the name of politics is an effort by those who have not been covered by that norm to make it apply. …

Corporate and public responsibility, stakeholder theory and the developing world

It is often argued that multinational companies and other foreign developers have a responsibility to improve the material conditions of the people in whose territories they operate. As a matter of distributive justice it is thought that these companies should be sharing the acquired wealth with these people through the creation of ‘collective goods’ (like schools and aid posts), infrastructure development and compensation disbursements aimed at their benefit. Recently “stakeholder theory” and even legislative changes in the first world (especially in the US) have sought to impress on the corporate world the necessity to share the profits with affected “non‐shareholder” groups. Many see these developments as possible advancements for indigenous peoples, indigenous rights and the cause of distributive justice for aboriginal groups. However, it can be shown that the attribution of such ‘imperfect’ duties to corporations results in the generation of excessive costs and of unrealistic expectations on the part of stakeholders. Distributive justice is more efficiently achieved by public sector involvement at the level of policy and project management.

Hans Morgenthau's Principles of Political Realism: A Feminist Reformulation

International politics is a man’s world, a world of power and conflict in which warfare is a privileged activity. Traditionally, diplomacy, military service, and the science of international politics have been largely male domains. In the past, women have rarely been included in the ranks of professional diplomats or the military: of the relatively few women who specialize in the academic discipline of international relations, few are security specialists. Women political scientists who do international relations tend to focus on areas such as international political economy, North-South relations and matters of distributive justice.

Efficiency, Distribution, and the Role of Government in a Market Economy

To evaluate government programs, it is necessary to say what individuals are entitled to in regard to wealth distribution. This paper explores the normative implications for government action of the presumption that factors areentitled to their marginal product. The conclusions are that imperfections in knowledge, mobility, and competition should be removed by court action as a matter of distributive justice, and that collective goods, including income redistribution, should be paid for by those who demand the goods. Compensation is appropriate when government changes the rules it has itself imposed or when it recognizes new property rights where they did not formerly exist.