Torts, Egalitarianism and Distributive Justice by Taschi Keren‐Paz
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2230.2009.00780_2.x |
| Published date | 01 November 2009 |
| Date | 01 November 2009 |
book is an impressive and welcome contribution which should generate more in-
formed political and legal debate.
Colin Harvey
n
Ta s c h i K e re n - P a z, Torts, Egalitarianism and Distributive Justice,Aldershot:
Ashgate Publishing, 2007,187 pp, hb d55.00.
What is it, as a matter of moral and political philosophy, to be an egalitarian? At
the veryleast it surelyentails a belief that some or other‘thing’^ such as inter multos
alia welfare, resources, happiness, status, sponge cake ^ should be distributed
among a particular group equally: all get the same amount. Egalitarianism is
often mistaken for a concern to alleviate the position of those judged worst-o¡
(according to some or other measure) in society, but the two do not entail one
another. One can quite consistently hold the latter ‘prioritarian’position without
also accepting that any particular ‘thing’ ^ such as welfare, resources, sponge-cake
etc ^ mustbe distributed equallyamong a particular group(see D. Par¢t,‘Equality
and Priority’ in A. Mason (ed), Ideals of Equ ality, Blackwell,1998).
What, as a matter of moral and politicalphilosophy, is distributive justice? The
modern understanding of distributive justice regards it as thetask of constructing
principlesby which social burdens and bene¢ts are divided amonga group bound
by cooperative and other ties.These principle s ‘provide a way of assigning rights
and duties in the basic institutions of societyand they de¢ne the appropriate dis-
tribution of the bene¢ts and burdens of social cooperation’ (J. Rawls, ATheoryof
Justice, Oxford, revised ed 1999, 4). One of the key dimensions along which var-
ious accounts of dist ributive justice di¡er is how these rights a nd duties, bene¢ ts
and burdens, should be distributed. Another dimension along which competing
accounts of distributive justice di¡er is the range of those principles. For John
Rawls, the jurisdiction of principles of distributive justice is limited to the basic
structureof society. For some contemporaryluck-egalitarians, bycontrast, princi-
ples of distributive justice are seemingly unlimited in their range, covering not
just the basic structure of society, but all things, such as life partners and tempera-
ment, which may determine the quality of one’s l ife.
How, if at all, does tort law relate to egalitarianism, on the one hand, and dis-
tributive justice, on the other? Part of one’s answer to this question depends, of
course, on the relationship one sees between egalitarianism and distributive jus-
tice.It is perfectly possible for one’s account of distributive justice to be egalitarian
in either weak or strong senses. The weakest of weak egalitarian conceptions of
distributive justice would insist that their constitutive principles apply to all
members of a particular group and in the same way. The egalitarianism of such
conceptions i s exhausted by this requirement, the di stributio ns of rights and
duties, bene¢ts and burdens they license being quite possibly far from equal.
Stronger egalitarian conceptions of distributive justice cleave not just to the ega-
n
School of Law,Queen’sUniversity Belfast
Reviews
1048 r2009The Authors. Journal Compilation r2009 The Modern Law ReviewLimited.
(2009) 72(6) 1035^1056
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