Rawlsian Affirmative Action: Compensatory Justice as Seen from the Original Position *
ABSTRACT: In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls presents a method of determining how a just society would allocate its "primary goods"-that is, those things any rational person would desire, such as opportunities, liberties, rights, wealth, and the bases of self-respect. (1) Rawls' method of adopting the "original position" is supposed to yield a "fair" way of distributing such goods. A just society would also have the need (unmet in the above work) to determine how the victims of injustice ought to be compensated, since history suggests that social contracts are likely to be violated. This paper is an attempt to determine the remedial measures that would be selected using Rawls' method. I contend that only two of the three most widely used "affirmative action" policies would be selected from the original position. I also sketch another compensatory policy that would pass Rawls' fairness test.
I.
Affirmative action is public policy designed to compensate the victims of injustice. (2) To be thus disadvantaged, in Rawls' scheme of things, is to have suffered in some way from having had less than one's fair share of the primary goods (62). This measure, according to Rawls, ought to be determined by the two principles that would be selected in the original position (17-22). The "first principle," which is "lexically prior" to the second, dictates that each member of society be granted every shareable personal liberty, a liberty being shareable just in case one's exercising of it would not prevent others from doing so (60-1, 250). The "second principle" states that the other primary goods are to be distributed in an egalitarian fashion unless...
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...with compensating the victims of injustice.
(3) Having done my best here to defend what follows as a reasonable extension of Rawls' system, I would add that I am not wed to the idea that it be taken as such. If the connection between ideal and nonideal theory is not as I have portrayed it, if the latter is not to be circumscribed by the former, then the ensuing views on affirmative action may simply be understood as those that would follow if one were apply Rawl's method, against his own stricture, to the issue of compensatory justice.
(4) In correspondence and in "A Puzzle About Economic Justice In Rawls' Theory," Social Theory and Practice, vol. 4 #1, pp. 1-27.
(5) "A Puzzle About ..., " p. 3.
(6) Ibid., p. 7.
(7) Ibid., pp. 12-13.
(8) Thomas Nagel, "The Policy of Preference," in Mortal Questions (London: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979) pp.91-105.
After long years of suffering, degradation, and different sorts of discrimination which the disadvantaged group of people had experienced, the “Affirmative Action Law” was finally passed and enforced for the very first time on September 24, 1965. The central purpose of the Affirmative Action Law is to combat racial inequality and to give equal civil rights for each citizen of the United States, most especially for the minorities. However, what does true equality mean? Is opportunity for everyone? In an article entitled, “None of this is fair”, the author, Mr. Richard Rodriguez explains how his ethnicity did not become a hindrance but instead, the law became beneficial. However, Mr. Richard Rodriguez realized the unfairness of the “Affirmative Action” to people who are more deserving of all the opportunities that were being offered to him. Through Mr. Rodriguez’s article, it will demonstrates to the reader both favorable, and adverse reaction of the people to the Affirmative Action, that even though the program was created with the intention to provide equality for each and every citizen, not everyone will be pleased, contented, and benefit from the law.
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Gentry, Kenneth L. "Problems With Public Welfare." Chalcedon Podcast RSS Synergema, n.d. Web. 19 Feb. 2014.
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McIntyre, M. & McDonald, C. (2014). Nursing Philosophies, Theories, Concepts, Frameworks, and Models. In Koizer, B., Erb, G., Breman, A., Snyder, S., Buck, M., Yiu, L., & Stamler, L. (Eds.), Fundamentals of Canadian nursing (3rd ed.). (pp.59-74). Toronto, Canada: Pearson.
Winters, P.A. (Ed.), The death penalty opposing view points (pp. 17-20). San Diego, CA: Greenhaven Press, Inc.
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