Paradoxes Of Justice Research Articles

The Rule-of-Law as a Problem Space: Wāsṭa and the Paradox of Justice in Jordan

AbstractThis article explores structural entanglements between the rule-of-law, as a globalized aspirational horizon in post-Cold War politics, and corruption, as a highly salient malaise, by way of an ethnography of wāsṭa, an institutionalized practice of patronage in Jordan, and a salient object of corruption discourse in recent years. The article follows wāsṭa and anti-corruption practices in various sites where wāsṭa is most salient and most problematized and situates the contemporary practice in relation to historical transformations in Jordan’s political economy and global discourses on justice and development. While globalized anti-corruption discourses pit practices of patronage and brokerage like wāsṭa against the rule-of-law, an ethnographic and historical view illustrates how the latter is the condition of possibility of the former, the framework by which it is diagnosed, and its presumed cure. Thus, I argue that the rule-of-law should be understood as a historically specific “problem space” that posits corruption as a prime diagnostic of the ills of state and society while generating practical paradoxes and a perpetual sense of temporal out-of-jointedness for “developing” countries.

The Paradox of Justice: From Transitional to Everyday Justice

Transitional justice lacks a coherent framework for articulating the relationship between distributive and corrective justice. Academic debates remain largely normative, focused on whether and how transitional justice should distinguish itself from the realm of the social, economic, and cultural. Where there is a bridge between legal logics and lived realities, it generally happens through victims’ consultation, but these are often thinly designed processes, revolving around questions like “what do victims want” or failing to turn expectations into action. Taking inspiration from Sally Engle Merry’s “paradox of measurement,” in which measurements produce the realities they assess, we pose a “paradox of justice” in which victims’ lived experiences are filtered and reproduced through the technology of consultation. While important, the question of “what do victims want” ultimately oversimplifies the complexities of how injustice is experienced. Drawing on a unique dataset of everyday indicators of justice from Colombia, this article establishes a framework for articulating the experiential dimensions of post-conflict justice. Ultimately, this framework highlights that justice is a process—whether in the courtroom or in a village reckoning with a massacre—and that the kinds of relationships that justice institutions build with victims are of equal relevance to what these institutions ultimately deliver.

Understanding the Role of the Exodus in the Institutionalization and Dismantling of Apartheid: Considering the Paradox of Justice and Injustice in the Exodus

The Exodus played an explicit and implicit role in sustaining the policy and practice of apartheid in South Africa and in various other places that went through the pains of colonization. Interestingly, the same Exodus also played a central part in the resistance to and the subsequent dismantling of the apartheid policy and practice in South Africa. That readers on both sides of the divide found solace in the Exodus was put down to the common assumption that guided both parties. The assumption of historicity caused the Exodus to be read as if it were a photographic record of what happened and the experience of oppression and discrimination by the readers assigned the Exodus a historical status for speaking to a historical situation. The assumption of historicity was central in the destructive uses of the Exodus thereby creating a cycle of oppressed–oppressors across the African continent, as groups took turns to seek out their own advantage. An assumption of justice was proposed as an alternative guiding principle through which justice for all, in line with pivotal events of the Old Testament, can be realized in the world.

The game and the logical paradoxes of justice: from king Solomon to the present day

In the article, the inevitability of logical paradoxes and unsolvable incidents in justice is justified by the incompleteness of formal systems, including such as law and law. The conclusions are illustrated by references to biblical and literary stories, as well as real situations that arise in judicial activity. Elements of game theory and the Gries code of communication are proposed as methods for optimizing judicial decision-making in complex cases, and specific situations of their application are modeled. It is concluded that there is a special type of thinking that a judge should have, and conditions that can block or stimulate its manifestation

Toward a postapocalyptic environmentalism? Responses to loss and visions of the future in climate activism

The environmental movement has stood out compared to other movements through its future-oriented pessimism: dreams of a better or utopian future have been less important as a mobilizing tool than fear of future catastrophes. Apocalyptic images of future catastrophes still dominate much of environmentalist discourse. Melting polar caps, draughts, hurricanes, floods, and growing chaos are regularly invoked by activists as well as establishment figures. This apocalyptic discourse has, however, also been challenged—not only by a future-oriented optimism gaining ground among established environmental organizations, but also by the rise of what we call a postapocalyptic environmentalism based on the experience of irreversible or unavoidable loss. This discourse, often referring to the Global South, where communities are destroyed and populations displaced because of environmental destruction, is neither nourished by a strong sense of hope, nor of a future disaster, but a sense that the catastrophe is already ongoing. Taking our point of departure in the “environmentalist classics” by Rachel Carson and Barry Commoner, we delineate the contours of apocalyptic discourses in environmentalism and discuss how disillusionment with the institutions of climate governance has fed into increasing criticism of the apocalyptic imagery. We then turn to exploring the notion of postapocalyptic politics by focusing on how postapocalyptic narratives—including the utopias they bring into play, their relation to time–space, and how they construct collective identity—are deployed in political mobilizations. We focus on two cases of climate activism—the Dark Mountain project and the International Tribunal for the Rights of Nature—and argue that mobilizations based on accepting loss are possible through what we call the paradox of hope and the paradox of justice.

Notes in the margin to a recent collection of essays by Luigi Einaudi

In this note, attention is focused on two essays, namely Myths and paradoxes of justice in taxation and Abstract hypotheses and historical hypotheses and on value judgements in Economic science, which are included in Luigi Einaudi’s Selected Economic Essays, recently published in English. The two essays are the most significant among the epistemological opus of Einaudi; thus, this note is devoted to discuss Einaudi’s problem of knowledge in economics.

“You Will Always Have the Poor”: A Reflection on the Paradox of Justice as Law

Calls for, and arguments around, fairness and justice are an essential element of international law; more so in certain areas – environment and natural resources, development – than in others, namely, the structural design of the discipline, State responsibility, formation of custom and acquisition of territory. The article thus considers the question whether there is an obligation of fair entitlement in international law, with particular reference to various matters of territory. With reflections on the discrete questions of territorial loss through sea-level rise and the role of equity in maritime delimitation, the article considers the role of fairness and justice in international law. The article concludes nevertheless that though fairness is an important and emotive value to strive for within legal and political discourse, it can become a dangerous entitlement when it trumps or usurps established rules of international law.

O paradoxo da justiça em Epicuro

Em busca da felicidade do indivíduo, Epicuro aborda os diversos aspectos que considera contribuírem para ela: prazer, quietude, conhecimento, segurança, amizade, justiça. Neste texto pretendemos, de forma sucinta, mostrar de que modo estes vários elementos se relacionam entre si e, sobretudo, de que modo o conceito de justiça deste filósofo contribui para a felicidade humana, não sendo um conceito tradicional.

A Topography of Shards: Peter Weiss and the Paradoxes of Justice

We read Die Aesthetik des Widerstands as instantiating a novel form of justice through its own aesthetics. By putting on display emancipatory justice claims, which are both a corrective to and a real source of totalitarianism, Weiss has us consider using the aesthetic domain as a kind of quarantine for them, where they can work on our imaginations without producing contagion and pathology. The aesthetic domain cannot stand alone, but rather works in tandem with discredited emancipatory claims to produce an ethos that we suggest is a necessary prerequisite for the emergence of a holistic post-Marxist conception of justice. Weiss's consideration of emancipatory justice shuns affirming anything. At the same time it does not deny our need for affirmation, and guides this impulse through a matrix, permitting us to identify at moments with the position taken by various characters in the novel while denying any uncritical or uncontextualized legitimacy. A prominent example of this is Weiss's nameless narrator, who takes a perspective from which the events unfold, but who has no authority, not even that of a single voice or identity. He provides an aesthetic expression to the maxim: in propri causa nemo iudex. This article begins with an account of the justice matrix within which to situate Weiss's work. Just as Weiss's text is not a conventional narrative in novel form, our commentary does not purport to trace the story of Die Aesthetik des Widerstands. Rather, we go on to explore a selection of key sections from the first volume that reveal a few of the largest and sharpest shards.

You Are Born with Your Genes: Justice and Protection against Discrimination in the Use of Genetic Information

Genetic information poses an apparent paradox for justice in health care. On the one hand, genetic information seems to be exactly the kind of information that it is unjust to take into account in the distribution of important goods. On the other hand, genetic information may increasingly become useful in individual patient care as evidence for personalized medicine increases. Although it is important to emphasize the difference between genetic information and the social construct of race, nonetheless, the historical interplay between discrimination based on assumptions about heritability and discrimination based on race are significant. Thus, this article defends the importance of paying very close attention to protections in the use of genetic information. Three current examples of inadequate protection are cited. First, informed consent to genetic testing should incorporate potential confidentiality risks raised by this information. Second, the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act is too porous to protect employees from their employers' possession of genetic information; if such information is used in discriminatory ways, burdens of seeking protection then fall on the employees. More stringent strategies for protecting information are thus desirable. Finally, current designs of interoperable health records fail to allow for the sequestration of genetic information. Efforts to develop such sequestration techniques should be encouraged; among other benefits, they would be helpful in shielding genetic information from employers.

Toward a New Feminist Theory of Rape

Toward a New Feminist Theory of Rape