Academic

Arvan on a Nonideal Theory of justice

By Lawrence Solum

Marcus Arvan has posted Foundations of a Nonideal Theory of Justice on the Internet. Here is the abstract:

This paper systematically extends John Rawls? original position to nonideal theory, showing how it is both reasonable and rational for the parties to a nonideal-theoretic stage of the original position to prioritize a class of ?nonideal-theoretic primary goods? over the satisfaction of Rawls? principles and priority relations (contrary to Rawlsian orthodoxy). I show that there are at least three nonideal-theoretic primary goods, and that the parties to the original position have sufficient reason to agree to certain priority relations among them. Next, I show that the parties rationally ought to agree to a general principle for distributing these goods, and by extension, to three lexically ordered corollary principles for distributing each of the three specific goods discussed. Finally, I argue that these principles fare well in reflective equilibrium.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 13, 2010 (boomark / email).