Academic

Sadurski on Commutative, Distributive & Procedural Justice

By Lawrence Solum

Wojciech Sadurski (University of Sydney-Faculty of Law) has posted Commutative, Distributive and Procedural Justice ? What Does it Mean, What Does it Matter? on SSRN. Here is the abstract:

In this paper, I revisit an argument that two distinctions, traditionally drawn in a theory of justice, between commutative and distributive, and between procedural and substantive justice, are misleading, and that properly understood, "commutative justice" derives from, or is reducible to, "distributive justice", while "procedural justice" derives from, or is reducible to, "substantive justice". In reviewing these two dichotomies I consider the arguments from a duty of promise-keeping, from voluntariness, and from moral pluralism, and I contend that they are incapable of undermining the position I had originally put forward.

And from the paper:

More specifically, the case of ?fairness?, or of pure procedural justice in gambling (i.e., the context used by Rawls to describe this form of procedural justice), seems to be a matter of combining two principles: (1) that of abiding by the publicly announced rules which determine the entitlements of the participants of the game as regards its outcomes,19 and (2) that of the freedom of individuals to engage in lawful practices, even though they may be harmful or detrimental to them. Neither of these two principles strikes me as pertaining to justice, in a substantive sense of the word. The first is reducible to a purely formal principle of ?playing by the rules?, which derives from the principle of a strict adherence to rules as they are, or even more fundamentally, of applying an equal treatment to similar cases. The second principle is that of non-paternalism: people are allowed to decide freely the degree of risk they are willing to take, and their own good is not a sufficient reason to restrict their liberty.

For my take on the question whether procedural justice is reducible to substantive justice, see Procedural Justice.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on September 14, 2009 (boomark / email).