Academic

Legal Theory Bookworm

By Lawrence Solum

The Legal Theory Bookworm recommends Intergenerational Justice, Edited by Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer. Here is a description:

Is it fair to leave the next generation a public debt? Is it defensible to impose legal rules on them through constitutional constraints? From combating climate change to ensuring proper funding for future pensions, concerns about ethics between generations are everywhere. In this volume sixteen philosophers explore intergenerational justice. Part One examines the ways in which various theories of justice look at the matter. These include libertarian, Rawlsian, sufficientarian, contractarian, communitarian, Marxian and reciprocity-based approaches. In Part Two, the authors look more specifically at issues relevant to each of these theories, such as motivation to act fairly towards future generations, the population dimension, the formation of preferences through education and how they impact on our intergenerational obligations, and whether it is fair to rely on constitutional devices.

And the table of contents:

Axel Gosseries and Lukas H. Meyer: Introduction: Intergenerational Justice and Its Challenges
Part I : Theories
1: Janna Thompson: Identity and Obligation in a Transgenerational Polity
2: Hillel Steiner & Peter Vallentyne: Libertarian Theories of Intergenerational Justice
3: Stephen M. Gardiner: A Contract on Future Generations?
4: Axel Gosseries: Three Models of Intergenerational Reciprocity
5: Christopher Bertram: Exploitation and Future Generations
6: David Heyd: A Value or an Obligation? Rawls on Justice to Future Generations
7: Daniel Attas: A Trans-Generational Difference Principle
8: Lukas H. Meyer and Dominic Roser: Enough for the Future
Part II : Specific Issues
9: Rahul Kumar: Wronging Future People
10: Dieter Birnbacher: What Motivates Us to Care for the (Distant) Future?
11: Krister Bykvist: Preference Formation and Intergenerational Justice
12: Gustaf Arrhenius: Egalitarianism and Population Change
13: Clark Wolf: Intergenerational Justice, Human Needs, and Climate Policy
14: Víctor M. Muñiz-Fraticelli: The Problem of a Perpetual Constitution

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on June 27, 2009 (boomark / email).