This article is part of a symposium on property-owning democracy. In A Theory of Justice John Rawls argued that people in a just society would have rights to some forms of personal property, whatever the best way to organise the economy. Without being explicit about it, he also seems to have believed that protection for at least some forms of privacy are included in the Basic Liberties, to which all are entitled. Thus, Rawls assumes that people are (...) entitled to form families, as well as personal associations which reflect their tastes as well as their beliefs and interests. He seems also to have assumed that people are entitled to seclude themselves, as well as to associate with others, and to keep some of their beliefs, knowledge, feelings and ideas to themselves, rather than having to share them with others. So, thinking of privacy as an amalgam of claims to seclusion, solitude, anonymity and intimate association, we can say that Rawls appears to include at least some forms of privacy in his account of the liberties protected by the first principle of justice. -/- However, Rawls did not say very much about how he understands people’s claims to privacy, or how those claims relate to his ideas about property-ownership. This is unfortunate, because two familiar objections to privacy seem particularly pertinent to his conception of the basic liberties. The first was articulated with customary panache by Judith Thomson, in a famous article on the moral right to privacy, in which she argued that talk of a moral right to privacy is confused and confusing, because privacy rights are really just property rights in disguise. The second objection has long been a staple of leftist politics, and is that the association of privacy with private property means that privacy rights are just a mask for coercive and exploitative relationships, and therefore at odds with democratic freedom, equality and solidarity. If the first objection implies that Rawls is wrong to think that protection for privacy can be distinguished from protection of personal property, the second objection implies that Rawls cannot hope to protect privacy without thereby committing himself to the grossest forms of capitalist inequality. -/- In this paper I will not discuss Rawls’ views of property-owning democracy. However, by clarifying the relationship between claims to privacy and claims to property-ownership, I hope to illuminate some of the conceptual, moral and political issues raised by Rawls’ ideas, and by work on the concept of a property-owning democracy, which he inspired. As we will see, privacy-based justifications of private ownership are not always unappealing, and privacy is sometimes promoted, rather than threatened, by collective ownership. The conclusion draws out the significance of these claims for the idea of a property-owning democracy. (shrink)

Carol Pateman has said that the public/private distinction is what feminism is all about. I tend to be sceptical about categorical pronouncements of this sort, but this book is a work of feminist political philosophy and the public/private distinction is what it is all about. It is motivated by the belief that we lack a philosophical conception of privacy suitable for a democracy; that feminism has exposed this lack; and that by combining feminist analysis with recent developments in (...) political philosophy, we can meet the philosophical and political need for a distinctively democratic conception of privacy. This book then, is an effort to sketch and defend such a conception of privacy. It aims to show that while some conceptions of privacy are inconsistent with democracy, others are not. Indeed, the book asserts, the belief that privacy can be valuable and that it can justify basic legal rights, is implicit in a democratic conception of persons as free and equal beings, and a democratic conception of politics as the self-governing, or regulating, activity of such individuals. Just as we can and should reject undemocratic conceptions of the suffrage in favour of democratic ones, so the book maintains, we can and must reject undemocratic conceptions of privacy in favour of ones that reflect the moral equality of men and women, and a commitment to democratic forms of government. Democracy is often described as government by and for the people. On such a view, democracy is a political regime which can be contrasted with monarchies or aristocracies on the one hand, or with theocracies and despotisms on the other. By contrast with the former, it is a form of government that views individuals as citizens and as equal members of the agency which authorizes the use of political power. By contrast with the latter, it is a form of government whose purposes and aims are established by the common interests of individuals, conceived as free and equal citizens. It is my contention that there is a plausible and attractive conception of privacy implicit in this view of democracy. Hence, I show that individuals have fundamental interests in privacy because privacy enables them to participate in politics freely and as the equal of others and, beyond that, to lead lives that they can each affirm to be reasonable, valuable and right. As I think that the ideal of democratic government is properly associated with this latter and broader goal, as well as with the former one, I call my account of privacy a democratic conception of privacy to signal its connection to a particular ideal of politics, and to the conception of persons that makes this ideal a convincing and inspiring one. As this is a work of political philosophy, however, no effort is made to address the legal merits of competing accounts of the right to privacy, or to resolve legal dispute about the content and justification of particular constitutional rights in the United States. Thus, while I use Supreme Court decisions and works of legal theory to illustrate and support my arguments, my use of these materials is governed by philosophical concerns and my conclusions, therefore, are strictly of a philosophical, not a legal, nature. The book is divided into four chapters, moving from feminist criticisms of privacy to an engagement with the philosophical literature on privacy and an account of the right to privacy in a democratic society. It proceeds as follows. In Chapter 1, I examine feminist concerns about privacy, through a close reading of the work of Catherine MacKinnon. I argue that MacKinnon persuasively shows that protection for privacy has frequently licensed the coercion and subjection of women, and that her arguments are supported both by feminist scholarship, key Supreme Court decisions, and by familiar conceptions of privacy and equality. However, I argue, these criticisms do not imply that privacy, like slavery, can never be democratic, because wholly inconsistent with the equality of individuals. Rather, feminist criticisms of privacy suggest that privacy, like the suffrage, can be necessary to the equality of women and can have a legitimate and important place in a democratic society. In Chapter 2, I examine the philosophical literature on privacy in light of the need to distinguish democratic from undemocratic accounts of its nature and value. This literature, I show, can help us to provide an account of privacy that is sensitive both to its inegalitarian aspects and to its importance for a democratic commitment to the freedom and equality of women. However, I argue, we cannot embrace current philosophical accounts of privacy uncritically, because to a striking extent they are, themselves, indifferent to the ways that privacy has licensed sexual inequality. Thus, in Chapter 2, I set about interpreting privacy as a moral and political value, in light of the strengths and weaknesses of the philosophical literature on privacy. Their strength is that they show that there are many reasons for caring about privacy, or many ways in which we might define it as a democratic value. Their weakness is that they tend to assume that we must choose amongst these different conceptions of privacy, in order to provide a philosophically cogent account of privacy. This, I show, is a mistake and one that can be remedied by remembering that a commitment to the equality of individuals requires us to acknowledge the reasonable differences in value and interest that may characterize their relations in a democracy. When we do so, I show, it is possible to define privacy in terms of its protection for self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality, without having to choose between the three of them. For individuals may legitimately disagree about the differences between privacy and other values, even while holding that privacy is a distinctive and important democratic good; and they may also disagree about the importance of privacy compared to other goods, such as equality, without denying that self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality can be morally and politically desirable in a democracy. In Chapter 2, therefore, I show that we can provide a philosophically adequate account of what privacy is and why it is valuable without supposing that privacy is always sexually egalitarian, or denying that it has a distinctive place in a democratic conception of value. Chapter 3 then extends this account of privacy, by considering the justification for a legal right to privacy. Just as we cannot provide a democratic conception of privacy without attending to the different, though equally valid, concerns that individuals may have so, I show, we cannot provide a democratic account of privacy rights if we forget that individuals can, quite reasonably, differ in the importance that they attach to privacy. The result, I argue, is that we can distinguish two main reasons for protecting privacy by right in a democracy, the one personal and the other political. Whereas the former emphasizes the importance of self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality to the personal freedom and equality of individuals, the latter emphasizes their importance to their prospects for voluntary and equal participation in the processes of collective choice and deliberation that define a democratic government. These two justifications of privacy rights reflect the fact that in a democracy the personal can be political, as feminists have insisted, but need not be in order to merit protection by right. Indeed, I argue, we can distinguish democratic from undemocratic accounts of the right to privacy in this way: for whilst the former acknowledge the variety of individuals’ interests in personal and collective choice, the latter either collapse the political into the personal, or assume that the legitimate claims of individuals are merely a function of collective needs, interests and values. Neither of these is consistent with familiar assumptions about the nature and justification of democratic institutions and rights, nor can they be reconciled with a commitment to sexual equality. Thus, I conclude, though the fact that there are different justifications for privacy rights in a democracy means that individuals may legitimately disagree over the content and justification of basic rights, it is wrong to confuse democratic debate with moral or conceptual confusion and so, arbitrarily, to truncate our accounts of privacy, equality and democracy. Finally, in Chapter 4, I test and develop these claims by examining the justification for abortion rights in a democracy. I argue that women have legitimate interests in abortion, as well as in bearing children, because they have fundamental, and legitimate, interests in privacy and equality. Although safe and legal abortion is necessary to sexual equality, as feminists claim, I show that we can provide a convincing and democratic account of women’s claims to abortion only if we recognize women’s interests in self-definition, intimacy and confidentiality. This is because women have both personal and political interests in abortion and we will be unable adequately to identify these if we overlook their interests in privacy. Indeed, I show, the difference between democratic and undemocratic solutions to conflict over abortion lies precisely in this: that whereas the former acknowledge the importance of privacy to the personal and political equality of women, the latter overlook or deny this. As a result, the latter license both mandated abortions, although women have legitimate interests in bearing and raising children, and prohibitions on abortion that cannot be reconciled with the freedom and equality of women. That is not to say that abortion is not a politically significant matter, or that we can resolve moral conflict over abortion simply by giving women a legal right to abortion. Neither is the case. However, the chapter shows, in a democracy individuals are entitled to make morally and politically controversial decisions for themselves not simply because this is expedient or useful, but because this is right. To overlook this feature of democracy, I argue, is to make moral and political conflict utterly intractable by democratic means. Thus, while controversy over abortion has been held to show that privacy is an incoherent and undemocratic right, this chapter argues that it shows the reverse: for controversy over abortion makes clear that privacy is essential to democracy, and why this should be so. This overview of the book, I hope, makes clear that its concerns are methodological as well as substantive, and moral as well as political. Thus, its central methodological claim is that we cannot reconcile privacy with the equality of individuals unless we make a deliberate effort to do so. Its central moral and political claims are that privacy is compatible with the equality of individuals, and sufficiently important to the latter that, in a democracy, the privacy of individuals merits legal protection by right. However, this summary of the book also exposes its limitations. Chief amongst these, I fear, is that it provides no sustained discussion of the place of property on a democratic conception of privacy, and that the latter, itself, is rather a broad preliminary sketch than a polished and detailed portrait. I regard these limits on the scope and arguments of the book as limitations, albeit ones that I hope to be able to remedy before too long.However, limited though the book clearly is, I believe that it lays out the essential components of a democratic conception of privacy and that, by analysing and synthesizing several diverse bodies of literature, it may help those who are interested in the relations between privacy, equality and democracy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Property‐Owning Democracy Before Socialism: The Rise of Commercial Republicanism Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (i): Progressive Conservative Origins Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (ii): Liberals and Labour Revisionists Property‐Owning Democracy at the Socialist High Tide (iii): James Meade Property‐Owning Democracy After Socialism? Rawlsian and Neoliberal Lineages References.

This chapter contains sections titled: Analytical Issues The Need for Justification Justificatory Theories References.

James Rule is puzzled by the ‘idiosyncratic’ approach that I take to the philosophical study of privacy. As evidence for this idiosyncracy, he cites my relative indifference to the distinction between consequentialist and deontological perspectives on privacy although these differences are proof of ‘intricate, yet enormously consequential intellectual tensions’. My choice of philosophical topics is ‘unsystematic’ and more a reflection of my own ‘intellectual hobby-horses’ than a ‘well-worked-out view of what students most need to know’. Finally, Rule concludes, because ‘the (...) most important privacy questions are excruciating’, we need ‘more systematic guidance than is provided here’. I am grateful to the editors for the chance to respond to these complaints. (shrink)

Both community and property are, each in its own way, exclusionary concepts. Property — certainly private property — is defined in large part by a right of exclusion. And although "community" sounds like a warm, inclusive word, real-world communities often define themselves by reference to an array of excluded "others" and erect fences and patrol borders to keep these others out. Enthusiasm for these exclusions is made to seem legitimate by the thought that those excluded from (...) my property probably have somewhere else of their own to go to, and those excluded from our community probably also have a community of their own to live in. In fact, neither proposition is entirely justified. We know that in most economically developed countries there are large numbers of people who live as transients and are not welcome or rooted in any community. Their only places of refuge are the substantial patches of public property which society maintains for everyone’s use. But public places are not themselves unregulated, and often they are regulated according to norms of community and in response to communitarian pressures. If these communities are themselves exclusive in character, they tend to reproduce at the public property level the exclusions that manifest themselves at the private property level. This Article attempts to chart and analyze the deadly combination of exclusive community and exclusive property that these modes of regulation represent. (shrink)

Can the right to private property be claimed as one of the `rights of mankind'? This is the central question of this comprehensive and critical examination of the subject of private property. Jeremy Waldron contrasts two types of arguments about rights: those based on historical entitlement, and those based on the importance of property to freedom. He provides a detailed discussion of the theories of property found in Locke's Second Treatise and Hegel's Philosophy (...) of Right to illustrate this contrast. The book contains original analyses of the concept of ownership, the ideas of rights, and the relation between property and equality. The author's overriding determination throughout is to follow through the arguments and values used to justify private ownership. He finds that the traditional arguments about property yield some surprisingly radical conclusions. (shrink)

This paper engages with the recent dignity-based argument against hate speech proposed by Jeremy Waldron. It’s claimed that while Waldron makes progress by conceptualising dignity less as an inherent property and more as a civic status which hate speech undermines, his argument is nonetheless subject to the problem that there are many sources of citizens’ dignitary status besides speech. Moreover, insofar as dignity informs the grounds of individuals’ right to free speech, Waldron’s argument leaves us balancing hate speakers’ (...) dignity against the dignity of those whom they attack. I suggest instead that a central part of the harm of hate speech is that it assaults our self-respect. The reasons to respect oneself are moral reasons which can be shared with others, and individuals have moral reasons to respect themselves for their agency, and their entitlements. Free speech is interpreted not as an individual liberty, but as a collective enterprise which serves the interests of speakers and the receivers of speech. I argue that hate speech undermines the self-respect of its targets in both the agency and entitlement dimensions, and claim, moreover, that this is a direct harm which cannot be compensated for by other sources of self-respect. I further argue that hate speakers have no basis to respect themselves qua their hate speech, as self-respect is based on moral reasons. I conclude that self-respect, unlike dignity, is sufficient to explain the harm of hate speech, even though it may not be necessary to explain its wrongness. (shrink)

An exploration of the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism today. What does it mean to be a liberal in neoliberal times? This collection of short essays attempts to show how liberals and the wider concept of liberalism remain relevant in what many perceive to be a highly illiberal age. Liberalism in the broader sense revolves around tolerance, progress, humanitarianism, objectivity, reason, democracy, and human rights. Liberalism's emphasis on individual rights opened a theoretical pathway to neoliberalism, through private (...) property, a classically minimal liberal state, and the efficiency of “free markets.” In practice, neoliberalism is associated less with the economic deregulation championed by its advocates than the re-regulation of the economy to protect financial capital. Liberalism in Neoliberal Times engages with the theories, histories, practices, and contradictions of liberalism, viewing it in relation to four central areas of public life: human rights, ethnicity and gender, education, and the media. The contributors explore the transformations in as well as the transformative aspects of liberalism and highlight both its liberating and limiting capacities. The book contends that liberalism—in all its forms—continues to underpin specific institutions such as the university, the free press, the courts, and, of course, parliamentary democracy. Liberal ideas are regularly mobilized in areas such as counterterrorism, minority rights, privacy, and the pursuit of knowledge. This book contends that while we may not agree on much, we can certainly agree that an understanding of liberalism and its emancipatory capacity is simply too important to be left to the liberals Contributors Alejandro Abraham-Hamanoiel, Patrick Ainley, Abdullahi An-Na'im, Michael Bailey, Haim Bresheeth, Başak Çalı, David Chandler, William Davies, Costas Douzinas, Natalie Fenton, Des Freedman, Roberto Gargarella, Priyamvada Gopal, Jonathan Hardy, John Holmwood, Ratna Kapur, Gholam Khiabany, Ray Kiely, Monika Krause, Deepa Kumar, Arun Kundnani, Colin Leys, Howard Littler, Kathleen Lynch, Robert W. McChesney, Nivedita Menon, Toby Miller, Kate Nash, Joan Pedro-Carañana, Julian Petley, Anne Phillips, Jonathan Rosenhead, Annabelle Sreberny, John Steel, Michael Wayne, Milly Williamson. (shrink)

In his travels, and in his accompanying readings, he had come to the conclusion that the essential secret of life was harmony. . . . And he proceeded to put his philosophy into practice by forcing order into the established world, translating the mystic word harmony into the practical word organisation.1 Harmony becomes organization. And Gerald dedicates himself to work, to feverish, totally absorbing work, inspired with an almost religious exaltation in his fight with matter. The world is split in (...) two: on one side matter , on the other side his own isolated will. He wants to create on earth a perfect machine, "an activity of pure order, pure mechanical repetition"; a man of the twentieth century with no nostalgia for the superannuated ideals of Christianity or democracy, he wishes to found his eternity, his infinity, in the machine. So inchoate and mysterious is the imaginative world Lawrence creates for Women in Love that we find no difficulty in reading Gerald Crich as an allegorical figure in certain chapters and as a quite human, even fluid personality in others. As Gudrun's frenzied lover, as Birkin's elusive beloved, he seems a substantially different person from the Gerald Crich who is a ruthless god of the machine; yet as his cultural role demands extinction , so does his private emotional life, his confusion of the individual will with that of the cosmos, demand death—death by perfect cold. He is Lawrence's only tragic figure, a remarkable creation on a remarkable novel, and though it is a commonplace thing to say that Birkin represents Lawrence, it seems equally likely that Gerald Crich represents Lawrence—in his deepest, most aggrieved, most nihilist soul. · 1. All quotations from Women in Love are taken from the Modern Library edition. Joyce Carol Oates' works include the novels Childhood, Son of the Morning, and a collection of short stories, Night-Side. “Lawrence’s Götterdämmerung” is part of a larger work exploring tragedy and comedy. Her contributions to Critical Inquiry include "Jocoserious Joyce" , and "The Picture of Dorian Gray: Wilde's Parable about the Fall". (shrink)

At some point in the future – perhaps within the next few decades – it will be possible for foetuses to develop completely outside the womb. Ectogenesis, as this technology is called, raises substantial issues for the abortion debate. One such issue is that it will become possible for a woman to have an abortion, in the sense of having the foetus removed from her body, but for the foetus to be kept alive. We argue that while there is a (...) right to an abortion, there are reasons to doubt that there is a right to the death of the foetus. Our strategy in this essay is to consider and reject three arguments in favour of this latter right. The first claims that women have a right not to be biological mothers, the second that women have a right to genetic privacy, and the third that a foetus is one's property. Furthermore, we argue that it follows from rejecting the third claim that genetic parents also lack a right to the destruction of cryopreserved embryos used for in vitro fertilization. The conclusion that a woman possesses no right to the death of the foetus builds upon the claims that other pro-choice advocates, such as Judith Jarvis Thomson, have made. (shrink)

When property rights and environmental legislation clash, what side should the Rule of Law weigh in on? It is from this point that Jeremy Waldron explores the Rule of Law both from an historical perspective - considering the property theory of John Locke - and from the perspective of modern legal controversies. This critical and direct account of the relation between the Rule of Law and the protection of private property criticizes the view - associated (...) with the 'World Bank model' of investor expectations - that a society which fails to protect property rights against legislative restriction is failing to support the Rule of Law. In this book, developed from the 2011 Hamlyn Lectures, Waldron rejects the idea that the Rule of Law privileges property rights over other forms of law and argues instead that the Rule of Law should endorse and applaud the use of legislation to achieve valid social objectives. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Ideas 67.3 (2006) 523-545 [Access article in PDF] Enlightenment! Which Enlightenment? Jonathan Israel Institute for Advanced Study Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment, 4 vols., editor in chief Alan Charles Kors; eds. Roger L.Emerson, Lynn Hunt, Anthony J. La Vopa, Jacques Le Brun, Jeremy D. Popkin, C. Bradley Thomson, Ruth Whelan, and Gordon S. Wood (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). On the surface (...) it might well seem that during the last fifteen or twenty years the Enlightenment understood as a new way of thinking about reality and society has receded more and more from its former privileged status as a pivotal turning-point in the making of the modern world, and especially as any kind of leap forward in the making of a freer, more rational, and better humanity. Under the combined assaults of Post-Structuralism, Postmodernism, Postcolonialism, the rise of the new social history (and not least Robert Darnton's critique of the old intellectual history), the Enlightenment conceived as a movement of ideas appears to be not just firmly in retreat and increasingly under siege but also fragmenting into disparate remnants with no coherent overall profile.Yet, paradoxically, there are grounds for conjecturing that the Enlightenment despite all this, has actually been becoming, under the surface, an even more crucial and robust force than it was before, much like a powerfully compressed spring being pushed back but ready to rebound with greater impetus than ever. One reason for thinking this is the extensive new material unearthed in the last few years, mostly by colleagues in continental Europe, about the origins of "radical," in the sense of egalitarian, secularist, Spinozist, and anti-colonial, thought. A second and possibly more important [End Page 523] reason is that the terrible events of the last several years have provided thoughtful readers with more than just a glimpse of the nightmare world apt to result from enshrining as a new set of privileged and prevailing values "difference," a thoroughgoing relativism, and the doctrine that all sets of values, even the most questionable kinds of theology, are ultimately equivalent.The inevitable recoil from Postmodernist "relativism" will presumably strengthen the appeal, at least in some quarters, of the Radical Enlightenment's claim that the improvement of human life inescapably involves emancipating men from the collective force of autocracy, intolerance, and prejudiced thinking, and establishing a predominantly secular morality, no less than it involves promoting the ideals of equality (sexual and racial), democracy, individual liberty, and a comprehensive toleration. Indeed, recent developments on all continents seem likely to lend new weight to the radical philosophes' argument that the moral basis of their theorized egalitarianism, democracy, toleration, and individual freedom, despite the arguments of the Postmodernists (which by no means lack weight in certain contexts), is after all concretely superior in terms of reason and moral equity not just to what one faith or traditional system or another contends, in opposition to its claims, but absolutely—that is in ethical and political as well as social terms. One may confidently predict that such a development will render the Enlightenment both more compelling and much harder to disparage than it has appeared to be in the wake of the Postmodernist upsurge in recent years.The prestige and status of the Enlightenment Western and Eastern, still conspicuously low for the present, may powerfully rebound, then, and in all parts of the world; and this for the simple reason that "Enlightenment thinking," as one scholar recently expressed it, "remains the best foundation for any genuinely progressive politics not simply in the West but in those states that suffered most at its [i.e. the West's] hands."1 To anyone authentically committed to democracy, toleration, and personal liberty this seems undeniable and, what is more, as we see in Bayle, Diderot, the Abbé Raynal, Lahontan, Van den Enden, and other radical writers of the Enlightenment, the roots of anti-colonialism itself, as well as the modern idea of racial, ethnic, and sexual equality, are undoubtedly to be found precisely in the "philosophical" thought-world of the Enlightenment—and especially the... (shrink)

The political theory of the property-owning democracy can be seen as a way of overcoming the ideological conflict between individualism and collectivism. Rawls offers the contemporary reference-point for this theory. Rawls contrasted the ideal-type of the property-owning democracy with the ideal-type of a capitalist welfare state. However, the terms of that contrast are not well drawn and raise a number of questions, in particular regarding Rawls’s a priori specification of the welfare state. An inductively derived specification (...) of ideal-typical welfare states suggests that horizontal redistribution, in line with the principle of social savings, is more important than vertical redistribution. Rawls’s preference for a social dividend or negative income tax scheme can be contrasted with the use of social insurance, but the latter has a claim to instantiate Rawlsian ideals better than a social dividend. There is a potential problem with the pre-emption of private savings in the welfare state, but this turns out not to be troublesome empirically or conceptually. The irony of the discussion is that those who have interpreted Rawlsian theory as justifying the welfare state have the better of the argument, despite Rawls’s own views. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: From Liberalism to Republican Liberalism Cohen's Critique of Rawls A Liberal Republican Political Economy Liberal and Republican Approaches to Effective Political Agency The Republican Alternative Conclusion References.

The term ‘predistribution’ draws attention to the need for policies and institutions that are designed to improve the position of the least advantaged members of society by generating a fairer distribution of opportunities and benefits from the operation of the free market system, with less reliance on redistributive tax-and-transfer mechanisms. Although the idea of progressive predistribution has only recently begun to attract the attention of politicians and commentators in the mainstream media, there is an older and more philosophically grounded predistributive (...) approach that goes back to the idea of the property-owning democracy proposed by Economist James Meade and further developed by liberal political philosopher John Rawls. In this article, I argue that neither the Meadeian/Rawlsian POD model, nor the more recent analysis of the idea of progressive predistribution, provide a clear and convincing account of the distinction between predistributive and redistributive mechanisms. I then argue that a more promising account of this distinction is provided by the idea of the socialization of economic rent through taxation of the rental value of land, and that there are good reasons to think that a shift in the burden of taxation away from production and employment and on to the rental value of land might turn out to be both more genuinely predistributive and more effectively progressive than other possible predistributive mechanisms that have recently been proposed, most notably the aggressive taxation of private inheritances as a means to broaden the distribution of privately owned capital and productive property. (shrink)

Since its founding in the nineteenth century, social anthropology has been seen as the study of exotic peoples in faraway places. But today more and more anthropologists are dedicating themselves not just to observing but to understanding and helping solve social problems wherever they occur--in international aid organizations, British TV studios, American hospitals, or racist enclaves in Eastern Europe, for example. In Exotic No More , an initiative of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some of today's most respected anthropologists demonstrate, in (...) clear, unpretentious prose, the tremendous contributions that anthropology can make to contemporary society. They cover issues ranging from fundamentalism to forced migration, child labor to crack dealing, human rights to hunger, ethnicity to environmentalism, intellectual property rights to international capitalisms. But Exotic No More is more than a litany of gloom and doom the essays also explore topics usually associated with leisure or "high" culture, including the media, visual arts, tourism, and music. Each author uses specific examples from their fieldwork to illustrate their discussions, and 62 photographs enliven the text. Throughout the book, the contributors highlight anthropology's commitment to taking people seriously on their own terms, paying close attention to what they are saying and doing, and trying to understand how they see the world and why. Sometimes this bottom-up perspective makes the strange familiar, but it can also make the familiar strange, exposing the cultural basis of seemingly "natural" behaviors and challenging us to rethink some of our most cherished ideas--about gender, "free" markets, "race," and "refugees," among many others. Contributors: William O. Beeman Philippe Bourgois John Chernoff E. Valentine Daniel Alex de Waal Judith Ennew James Fairhead Sarah Franklin Michael Gilsenan Faye Ginsburg Alma Gottlieb Christopher Hann Faye V. Harrison Richard Jenkins Melissa Leach Margaret Lock Jeremy MacClancy Jonathan Mazower Ellen Messer A. David Napier Nancy Scheper-Hughes Jane Schneider Parker Shipton Christopher B. Steiner. (shrink)

This paper discusses what type of sociological context is appropriate for Rawls’ ‘property-owning democracy’. Following certain suggestions offered by Rawls and in the work of Joshua Cohen, it explores, in particular, the kind of fraternity and social interaction suitable for citizens in Rawlsian society and the role of the state in engineering these bonds. Utilising a normative framework based on Rawls’ discussion of a property-owning democracy and various data sets, the paper argues that bonds of social (...) trust, active participation in trade unions and enrolment in public schools, and the use of state policy to organise a mixture of public, cooperative, and private economic institutions would be suitable for a Rawlsian society to adopt because it appears that these structures are favourably connected to the ends of Rawlsian justice. (shrink)

this paper argues that people are entitled to keep some true facts about themselves to themselves, should they so wish, as a sign of respect for their moral and political status, and in order to protect themselves from being used as a public example in order to educate or to entertain other people. The “outing” - or non-consensual public disclosure - of people’s health records or status, or their sexual behaviour or orientation is usually unjustified, even when its consequences seem (...) to be beneficial. Indeed, the paper claims, the reasons to reject outing, as inconsistent with democratic commitments to freedom and equality, are reasons to insist on the importance of privacy to freedom of expression. While a free press is of the utmost importance to democratic government, it is not identical with the free expression of individuals and, on occasion, the former may have to be constrained in order to protect the latter. [Barendt, 2007, 231]. Hence, the paper concludes, we should distinguish the claims of individuals to publish reports about their lives – even if this necessarily involves revealing the private lives of others – from journalistic claims to publish information about the sex lives of consenting adults. I will start by briefly situating my argument within a democratic approach to privacy, before using the “outing” of Oliver Sipple to examine people’s claims to privacy and their implications for freedom of expression and of the press. I will be assuming that some forms of privacy are legitimate, in order to focus more closely on the question of what information, if any, people may keep to themselves. (shrink)

There are all sorts of ways in which one can dirty one’s hands in politics. The classic problem is that of the political leader who finds he has to act immorally for the sake of the greater good. But some dirty-hands problems are more mundane. They arise out of the fact that one acts in politics alongside others, particularly in a democracy, and so one is not always in control of the values and principles that are being put into play. (...) This happens sometimes because of the need for compromise; or through procedures like majority decision. Some of these cases have an interesting historical dimension. They reflect the fact that politicians have to act against the background of decisions made by their predecessors. Laws routinely remain in force, for example, despite the demise of the political factions that enacted them: so a politician may have to keep faith with and faithfully administer a legal decision he condemns. I argue that this is best understood not as the balancing of disparate personal convictions, but of his having to act in the name of the whole society. The sense of “dirty hands” arises from the juxtaposition of the politician’s own convictions with the requirements of his particular role as speaking for an entity larger than himself. (shrink)

This book explores the Janus-faced features of privacy, and looks at their implications for the control of personal information, for sexual and reproductive freedom, and for democratic politics. It asks what, if anything, is wrong with asking women to get licenses in order to have children, given that pregnancy and childbirth can seriously damage your health. It considers whether employers should be able to monitor the friendships and financial affairs of employees, and whether we are entitled to know whenever someone (...) rich, famous or powerful has cancer, or an adulterous affair. It considers whether we are entitled to privacy in public and, if so, what this might mean for the use of CCTV cameras, the treatment of the homeless and the provision of public facilities such as parks, libraries and lavatories. Above all, the book seeks to understand whether and, if so, why privacy is valuable in a democratic society, and what implications privacy has for the ways we see and treat each other. The ideas about privacy we have inherited from the past are marked by beliefs about what is desirable, realistic and possible which predate democratic government and, in some cases, predate constitutional government as well. Hence, this book argues, although privacy is an important democratic value, we can only realise that value if we use democratic ideas about the freedom, equality, security and rights of individuals to guide our understanding of privacy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Weakest Meaning of “Constitutionalism” Constitutionalism as a Theory Particular and General Constitutionalism Explicit and Implicit Constitutions Constitutionalism and Written Constitutions Constitutionalism and Constraint Empowerment and Authority Democracy: Constraint or Empowerment? Constitutionalism versus Democracy Popular Sovereignty Judicial Review of Legislation Concluding Remark Notes.

Richard Cartwright's impact on other philosophers has been as much a product of his own personal contact with students and colleagues as the result of his written work. The essays in this book demonstrate the deep influence he has had, not only by his thinking but equally by his style and manner and, above all, by his clarity and purity of intention. All of the essays are concerned with the questions of logic, language, and metaphysics that have been at the (...) core of Cartwright's own work. The chapters and their authors are: The Consistency of Frege's Foundations of Arithmetic, George Boolos. Russell's "No-Classes" Theory of Classes, Leonard Linsky. Quine's Indeterminacy, Charles S. Chihara. Justifying Symbolizations, Harold Levin. Substitutivity, Scott Soames. Moore-Paradox, Sincerity Conditions, and Epistemic Qualification, Charles E. Caton. Matching Illocutionary Act Types, William P. Alston. Scattered Objects, Roderick M. Chisholm. Parts and Places, Helen Morris Cartwright. Ruminations on an Account of Personal Identity, Judith Jarvis Thomson. G_del's Ontological Proof, Jordan Howard Sobel. "The Concept of the Subject Contains the Concept of the Predicate," David Wiggins. Judith Jarvis Thomson is Professor of Philosophy at MIT. Philosophical Essays, the first collection of Richard Cartwright's work, is being published simultaneously by The MIT Press. (shrink)

On April 2, 1987, Professor of Philosophy, Judith Jarvis Thomson of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, delivered the Georgetown Law Center’s seventh Annual Philip A. Hart Memorial Lecture: "The Decline of Cause." Judith Jarvis Thomson works in ethics and metaphysics. Her book, The Realm of Rights (Harvard University Press, 1990) is a study of the questions what it is to have a right, and which ones we have. An article entitled "Self-Defense" appeared in Philosophy and Public Affairs (Fall 1991); (...) another entitled "On some ways in which a thing can be good" appeared in Social Philosophy and Policy (Spring 1992). Her work in metaphysics has largely been on the ontology of events, and the identity across time of people and other physical objects. An article entitled "People and their bodies," which takes issue with views expressed by Derek Parfit in Part III of his Reasons and Persons, has recently appeared in a collection of essays (edited by Jonathan Dancy) written on topics dealt with in that book. She is currently working on the question what it is for one event to cause another. (shrink)

Political institutions are or ought to be the main subject of political theory. The essays in this collection are works of political theory devoted specifically to the institutions and institutional principles of modern democracy. They illustrate the author's contention in the opening chapter that the theory of politics needs to reorient itself so that it is not just the study of social justice. Institutions need to be taken seriously, by normative political theorists as much as by empirical political scientists. The (...) collection includes studies of constitutionalism, the separation of powers, bicameralism, loyal opposition, representation, legislative due process, democratic accountability, and judicial review. It also includes critical essays on the political philosophies of Hannah Arendt and Isaiah Berlin"--Publisher's information. (shrink)

This NEW reader provides a more diverse selection of philosophers and ethical issues than any other book of its kind. Used on its own or as a companion to Jonathan Wolff’s An Introduction to Moral Philosophy, it offers an ideal collection of important readings in moral theory and compelling issues in applied ethics. Smart pedagogy and an affordable price make it an outstanding value for students.

This article extends property-owning democracy to the digital realm and introduces “data-owning democracy,” a new political economic regime characterized by the wide distribution of data as capital among citizens. Drawing on republican theory and acknowledging data's unique role in the digital economy, it proposes a two-tier model that combines different modes of data ownership and corresponding rights. The first layer of “data-owning democracy” is characterized by a digital public infrastructure that enables citizens to collectively generate data (...) and have a say in how their citizen data are used. In the second layer, individuals automatically receive machine-readable copies of their data whenever they are generated—a slightly more advanced form of the European Union's existing right to data portability (Art. 20). With its focus on empowerment, data-owning democracy is designed to be complementary to existing data protection regulations. It also illustrates how political theory more broadly, and republican theory specifically, can be instructive for specifying the normative components of a new political economy dealing with questions of empowerment and digital rights. (shrink)

In this article I argue that the proper subjects of intangible property claims include medical records, genetic profiles, and gene enhancement techniques. Coupled with a right to privacy these intangible property rights allow individuals a zone of control that will, in most cases, justifiably exclude governmental or societal invasions into private domains. I argue that the threshold for overriding privacy rights and intangible property rights is higher, in relation to genetic enhancement techniques and sensitive personal information, (...) than is commonly suggested. Once the bar is raised, so‐to‐speak, the burden of overriding it is formidable. Thus many policy decisions that have been recently proposed or enacted – citywide audio and video surveillance, law enforcement DNA sweeps, genetic profiling, national bans on genetic testing and enhancement of humans, to name a few – will have to be backed by very strong arguments. (shrink)

A private property right is a collection of particular rights that relate to the control of an object. The ground for such moral rights rests on the value of project pursuit. It does so because the individual ownership of particular objects is intimately related to the formation and application of a coherent set of projects that are the major parts of a self-shaped life. Problems arise in explaining how unowned property is appropriated. Unilateral acts with regard to (...) an object, e.g., mixing in one’s labor into it, probably don’t ground particular rights to private property. Nor do bilateral contracts since a stable pre-institutional contract with regard to appropriation is not likely to form. However, a conventional method of appropriation can allow for such appropriation while at the same time preserving the pre-institutional nature of such rights. This theory can also account for a person’s property rights in her own body. However, the value of project formation requires that persons have at least some private property that is to serve as the object of their projects. These positive rights to property undermine the libertarian claim that all non-commitment-based rights are negative. However, a further empirical argument is needed in order to justify protecting these positive moral rights to private property by positive legal rights. (shrink)

In this paper I want to do two things. One concerns Mill’s attitude to public indecency. In On Liberty Mill expresses the conventional view that certain actions, if conducted in public, are an affront to good manners, and can properly be prohibited. I want to come to an understanding of Mill’s position so that it allows him to defend this part of conventional morality, but does not disrupt certain of his liberal convictions: principally the conviction that what consenting adults do (...) in private is no-one ‘s concern but their own. The difficulty is to find an argument that Mill could have used to defend the position that some things which, though acceptable in private, can rightly be stopped if attempted in public. The other thing I want to do is consider the impact of Mill’s view of indecency on the interpretation of the Liberty Principle. There remain difficulties here which, to my knowledge, have not been adequately explored. So I want to look at a range of interpretative alternatives. In the first part of the paper I shall raise and explore the issue of the interpretative problems. In the second part I shall look at some ways of trying to justify Mill’s view of indecency on characteristically Millian grounds. And in the final part I shall explore the somewhat surprising consequences of the discussion of the second part for the interpretative questions raised in the first. (shrink)

In discussions of state surveillance, the values of privacy and security are often set against one another, and people often ask whether privacy is more important than national security.2 I will argue that in one sense privacy is more important than national security. Just what more important means is its own question, though, so I will be more precise. I will argue that national security rationales cannot by themselves justify some kinds of encroachments on individual privacy (including some kinds that (...) the United States has conducted). Specifically, I turn my attention to a recent, well publicized, and recently amended statute (section 215 of the USA Patriot Act3), a surveillance program based on that statute (the National Security Agency’s bulk metadata collection program), and a recent change to that statute that addresses some of the public controversy surrounding the surveillance program (the USA Freedom Act).4 That process (a statute enabling surveillance, a program abiding by that statute, a public controversy, and a change in the law) looks like a paradigm case of law working as it should; but I am not so sure. While the program was plausibly legal, I will argue that it was morally and legally unjustifiable. Specifically, I will argue that the interpretations of section 215 that supported the program violate what Jeremy Waldron calls “legal archetypes,”5 and that changes to the law illustrate one of the central features of legal archetypes and violation of legal archetypes. The paper proceeds as follows: I begin in Part 1 by setting out what I call the “basic argument” in favor of surveillance programs. This is strictly a moral argument about the conditions under which surveillance in the service of national security can be justified. In Part 2, I turn to section 215 and the bulk metadata surveillance program based on that section. I will argue that the program was plausibly legal, though based on an aggressive, envelope-pushing interpretation of the statute. I conclude Part 2 by describing the USA Freedom Act, which amends section 215 in important ways. In Part 3, I change tack. Rather than offering an argument for the conditions under which surveillance is justified (as in Part 1), I use the discussion of the legal interpretations underlying the metadata program to describe a key ambiguity in the basic argument, and to explain a distinct concern in the program. Specifically that it undermines a legal archetype. Moreover, while the USA Freedom Act does not violate legal archetypes, and hence meets a condition for justifiability, it helps illustrate why the bulk metadata program did violate archetypes. (shrink)

Suppose we agree to reject the view that privacy has narrow scope and consequently is irrelevant to the constitutional privacy cases. We then have (at least) these two options: (1) We might further emphasize and draw out similarities between tort and constitutional privacy claims in order to develop a notion of privacy fundamental to informational and Fourth Amendment privacy concerns as well as the constitutional cases. We can cite examples indicating this is a promising position. Consider consenting homosexuality conducted in (...) one's home, for instance. We view it as a private matter, whether the state is seeking to regulate the behavior, or if others are attempting to gain or exploit information about it. I believe basic conceptual similarities between tort and constitutional interests can be identified by showing that there is a range of similar reasons for protecting both tort and constitutional privacy concerns. We might worry, however, that a comprehensive concept of privacy may be too general to be very useful, given that privacy violations can be so diverse, and can arise, for example, from misuse of confidential information, from conduct that is intrusive even if no information is gained or disclosed, from disturbance of an intimate relationship, or from disruption of various other important aspects of one's life.(2) We could concede that whatever “privacy” means in the tort and Fourth Amendment cases, it means something different in the constitutional cases. Nevertheless, we might take that “something else” seriously as a distinct but legitimate use of the term which is not “spurious” but is reflected in our ordinary language. This appears to me to be a fruitful alternative. After all, contrary to Henkin's view that tort privacy is “what most people mean by privacy,” the term is often used in contexts beyond informational privacy and clearly related to the interests at stake in the constitutional cases. Thus, for example, in a pamphlet explaining how to protect children by teaching them how to say “No!” to strangers without making them paranoid or antisocial, parents and teachers are told, Children have a right to privacy. Teach it. Reinforce it. One of the ways to help children prevent sexual assault is to encourage them to develop a sense of physical integrity. A sense that they have a right to their own body space and privacy. Just as we allow them to close the door when they use the bathroom, we must allow them to say no to any unwanted physical affection and touch. Flora Calao and Tamar Hosansky, “The Key to Having Fun is Being Safe: Teaching Personal Safety to Children,” The Safety and Fitness Exchange, 1123 Broadway, N.Y., N.Y. 10010. Unfortunately, the most obvious starting point for identifying the sense of private relevant to the constitutional cases is extremely worrisome. The Court itself has said ... only personal rights that can be deemed “fundamental”...are included in this guarantee of personal privacy...the right has some extension to activities relating to marriage...procreation...contraception...family relationships... and child rearing and education.Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).The difficulty, of course, is that little more is offered by way of explanation of which rights are “personal” or “fundamental” or both. Focusing on marriage makes Roe v. Wade difficult to understand given that Ms. Roe was unmarried, and attending only to family issues does not help us make sense of the Stanley case protecting one's right to view pornography in one's home. It is perhaps more problematic that decisions such as what color shoes to wear are reasonably viewed as personal, yet are far from fundamental enough to warrant protection. And regulations governing the draft and employment, for example, are not viewed as privacy invasions although they might be said to interfere with matters of one's life that are both fundamental and personal in the vague sense described.Before we give up in frustration, however, I would urge that we recall that even in tort law the notion of privacy has been evolving through a constellation of judgments. Although there is no fixed way of using the term which we then proceed to analyze, the concept of privacy has not in those cases been taken to be meaningless or empty. Similarly, there is reason to believe that the scope of a “personal and fundamental” notion of privacy relevant to the constitutional cases can be further delineated through a consideration of cases, especially since it seems to me that in many cases application of the term is clear and unproblematic. A decision to have a vasectomy, for example, can uncontroversially be said to be a personal and fundamental one, and it is in that sense private. We fail to acknowledge the personal significance in an individual's life of forcing or refusing him the operation if we deny that this important sense of privacy is relevant to such a decision merely because an interest in determining for oneself what one ought to do is also at risk.Of course, once it is settled that something is a private matter, it is a separate issue to decide whether or not, in some social context, an invasion of it can be justified. Thus, I would claim, a mandatory sterilization program for male recidivists or for those in a country suffering grave poverty and overpopulation does invade privacy, and the social or legal question is whether or not the invasion can, in the particular circumstances, be justified. Although all will agree that both individual and social interests must be balanced by moral philosophers as well as the courts, in conflicts we will not always agree on the weight to be accorded individual claims.I have not provided a constitutional defense for citing privacy as one right at stake in the constitutional privacy cases. Nor have I attempted to enter the debate about how strictly to interpret the Constitution. But if I am correct, then we can agree there is an important interest in privacy at issue in those cases without merely conflating privacy and autonomy or liberty, and can continue the process of marking out its boundaries. If we reach such agreement, we will have made considerable progress. Moreover, the implications of this view are significant. Current constitutional standards, controversial though they may be, require “strict scrutiny” for cases concerning “fundamental values,” and privacy has been judged to be one such value. Thus these privacy claims have a greater chance of being protected when they conflict with other rights or general interests than they would have if only liberty, or freedom from governmental interference, were involved. (shrink)

Open access. This open-access book discusses vulnerability and the protection-inclusion dilemma of including those who suffer from serious poverty, severe stigma, and structural violence in research. Co-written with representatives from indigenous peoples in South Africa and sex workers in Nairobi, the authors come down firmly on the side of inclusion. In the spirit of leaving no one behind in research, the team experimented with data collection methods that prioritize research participant needs over researcher needs. This involved foregoing the collection of (...) personal data and community researchers being involved in all stages of the research. In the process, the term ‘vulnerability’ was illuminated across significant language barriers as it was defined by indigenous peoples and sex workers themselves. The book describes a potential alternative to exclusion from research that moves away from traditional research methods. By ensuring that the research is led by vulnerable groups for vulnerable groups, it offers an approach that fosters trust and collaboration with benefits for the community researchers, the wider community as well as research academics. Those living in low-income settings, in dire situations that are summarized with the term ‘vulnerability’ know best what their problems are and which priorities they have. To exclude them from research for their own protection is a patronizing approach which insinuates that researchers and research ethics committees know best. The team from this book have shown that minimally risky and minimally burdensome research tailored towards the needs of highly marginalized and stigmatized communities can be scientifically valuable as well as inclusive and equitable. I congratulate them. Prof. Klaus Leisinger, President Global Values Alliance, Former personal advisor to Kofi Annan on corporate responsibility. (shrink)

A research biobank is a collection of personal health and lifestyle information, including genetic samples of yet unknown but possibly large information potential about the participant. For the participants, the risk of taking part is not bodily harm but infringements of their privacy and the harmful consequences such infringements might have. But what do we mean by privacy? Which harms are we talking about? To address such questions we need to get a grip on what privacy is all about and (...) aim for a fruitful perspective on the issues of property and privacy rights in the context of biobanking. This paper argues that the limits and handling of private matters is determined in specific social relations. The crucial point is thus to determine which information and activities are or are not the legitimate concern of others. Privacy and property rights should be seen as balanced by duties, that is as inherently relational interests extending into the public sphere, rather than to see these rights as the control of an object—for instance the participant’s biobank material. (shrink)

This collection seeks to ground political theory in the study of institutions, particularly the constitutional relationship between different branches of government. It makes the case that ‘constitutionalism’ has become a thin doctrine of political restraint. Waldron wants to identify a fuller conceptual understanding of how the functions of government can be empowered and articulated. In doing so, he sets out a position that is distinct from both moralism and realism in contemporary political theory. I explore how well the later distinction (...) holds up: how successfully does Waldron’s approach marry realist concerns with the rigour of analytical political theory? I also discuss the role it leaves for the history of political thought and whether it can deal with the populist strain in contemporary politics. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Two Forms of Property‐Owning Democracy What Is Stability? Why Does It Matter? The Sense of Justice Participation in Public Life Three Distinctive Features of Rawls's View Democratic Corporatism and Participation Objections Conclusion References.

I try in this essay to accomplish two things. First I offer some first thoughts toward a clarification of the ethical foundations of private property rights that avoids pitfalls common to more strictly Lockean theories, and is thus better prepared to address arguments posed by critics of standard private property arrangements. Second, I'll address one critical argument that has become pretty common over the years. While versions of the argument can be traced back at least to (...) Pierre Joseph Proudhon, I'll focus on a formulation given it by Jeremy Waldron. The basic idea is that the only sound arguments for private property rights lead to the conclusion that society has an obligation to insure that every citizen possess private property. In Waldron's formulation, what is justifiable is a general, rather than a special, right to private property. I shall try to suggest that this conclusion is unwarranted. (shrink)

The cluster of concerns usually identified asmatters of privacy can be adequately accountedfor by unpacking our natural rights to life,liberty, and property. Privacy as derived fromfundamental natural rights to life, liberty,and property encompasses the advantages of thecontrol and restricted access theories withouttheir attendant difficulties.

The new frontiers in the philosophy of intellectual property lie squarely in territories belonging to moral and political philosophy, as well as legal philosophy and philosophy of economics – or so this collection suggests. Those who wish to understand the nature and justification of intellectual property may now find themselves immersed in philosophical debates on the structure and relative merits of consequentialist and deontological moral theories, or disputes about the nature and value of privacy, or the relationship between (...) national and global justice. Conversely, the theoretical and practical problems posed by intellectual property are increasingly relevant to bioethics and philosophy and public policy, as well as to more established areas of moral and political philosophy. Perhaps this is just to say that the philosophy of intellectual property is coming into its own as a distinct field of intellectual endeavour, providing a place where legal theorists and philosophers can have the sorts of discussions - neither reducible to questions about what the law is, nor wholly divorced from contemporary legal problems - which typify debates about freedom of expression, discrimination and human rights. These are all areas in which legal and philosophical ideas influence each other at the level of method as well as of substance. My hope is that this collection of essays will appeal to those who, whatever their professional specialty or training, share an interest in the philosophy of intellectual property, and that it will build upon and advance existing interdisciplinary dialogue and research in this complex, fascinating, and important area. Authors include John Christman, Stephen Munzer, Alex Rosenberg, Geert Demunijck, Laura Biron, James Wilson . (shrink)

This article develops a liberal theory of cultural rights that must be guaranteed by just legal and political institutions. People form their own individual conceptions of the good in the cultural space constructed by the political societies they inhabit. This article argues that only rarely do individuals develop views of what is valuable that diverge more than slightly from the conceptions of the good widely circulating in their societies. In order for everyone to have an equal opportunity to autonomously form (...) their own independent conception of the good, rather than merely following others, culture must be democratically controlled. Equal respect for members of a liberal democracy requires that all citizens have roughly equal opportunities to do things like make movies, publish novels, and exhibit paintings. This article contends that the contemporary American legal order fails to guarantee that all cititizens have roughly equal opportunities to shape and influence their shared culture. Guaranteeing the liberty to do so would require reforms to many areas of law, including applying anti-discrimination law more broadly to the conduct of cultural organizations, expanding fair use protections in copyright law, limiting the ability of businesses to arbitrarily refuse service to customers, and restricting private control of capital in order to democratize the means of cultural production. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Why Asset Ownership? The Content of Work: Meaningful Work The Governance of Work: Protection against Arbitrary Interference The Status of Work: Workers as Property Owners Conclusion References.