Academic

Download of the Week

By Lawrence Solum

The Download of the Week is Samuel Freeman's review of Amartya Sen's The Idea of Justice (available on the New York Review of Book's website--subscription required)  Here is a taste:

To contend that there is no need for ideal theory suggests that we should be satisfied with the alternatives currently on offer and haven?t any reason to think about long-term or extensive reforms. The Whigs had no need of John Locke?s radical social contract doctrine to justify the English Revolution of 1688. But Locke?s main ideas?the people are sovereign; government originates in their consent; government?s power is fiduciary and exercisable only for the common good; citizens have inalienable rights justifying a right of resistance when violated?supplied the conceptual frame for our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and subsequently for many others. Whether ideal principles of justice are necessary depends upon one?s aims and long-term perspective.

Even in the short term, ideal principles are often called upon to motivate people toward political reform. Consider the galvanizing effects of Martin Luther King?s ?I Have a Dream? speech. The aspirations King appealed to were grounded in political ideals and ideal principles and could not have been conveyed by focusing on practicable alternatives offered up by the status quo. Sen also would support measures that promote the civic equality and capabilities of historically repressed minorities to enjoy and effectively exercise individual freedoms. But in renouncing the reforming and inspirational effects of ?transcendental principles,? Sen sacrifices a historically significant means for achieving justice even as he conceives it.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on October 02, 2010 (boomark / email).