Philosophy Department

Theories of Justice
(PHLU 3135)

Charles Kelbley

This course examines competing understandings of distributive justice -- the way in which a society’s justice system allocates the benefits and burdens of social cooperation as well as the rights and duties of citizenship.  In this part of the course we will consider John Rawls’s views on distributive justice and a short history of other such conceptions.  We will also look at Rawls’s later views on justice in his long essay on “Public Reason Revisited,” which looks at justice in the context of a pluralism of religious and moral views.  The second major focus of the course concerns the ways in which citizens, lawyers, and judges make decisions about what is just.  Here we will examine the ways in which our Constitution itself is said to be undemocratic and in need of major changes and amendments; similarly, proposals for reforming the ways in which new Supreme Court Justices are picked will be examined, particularly in light of the crucial importance these days of the difference one or two votes can have on the outcome of decisions.  Finally, we will explore the justice of criticisms of court decisions that allegedly exhibit “judicial activism” and whether and how such criticism may be founded on misunderstandings of the judicial process.

John Rawls, Harvard Philosopher.