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Justice as Fairness: For Groups?*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Vernon Van Dyke
Vernon Van Dyke*
Affiliation:
University of Iowa
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Abstract

In A Theory of Justice, John Rawls assumes that the principles of justice are for individuals in a society, and in general he assumes that the society is an ethnically homogeneous state. He thus follows the tradition associated with the dominant form of the social contract theory, which focuses on the individual and the state. His assumptions neglect the fact that almost all states are ethnically plural or heterogeneous, and that many of them confer special status and rights on ethnic groups as collective entities; for example, many of them confer special status and rights on indigenous groups, on groups disadvantaged by prior discrimination, and on minorities and other groups conceded a right to survive as distinct cultural entities. Status and rights for groups necessarily mean differentiation among individuals depending on their membership; and this in turn means that a theory of justice that focuses on the individual and neglects the group both fails to account for existing practices and fails to give guidance where the practices are at issue.

Type
Book Reviews and Essays
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 1975 , pp. 607 - 614
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1975

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Footnotes

*

Work leading to this study was facilitated by fellowships granted by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and by a “research assignment” awarded by the Graduate College of the University of Iowa. Edward Lane Davis and Glenn Tinder made valuable suggestions that led to the improvement of the manuscript.

References

1 Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 11Google Scholar.

2 Van Dyke, Vernon, Human Rights, the United States, and World Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), pp. 79–91Google Scholar.

3 Nisbet, Robert A., The Quest for Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 121Google Scholar.

4 Rousseau, J.-J., “The Social Contract,” in Social Contract. Essays by Locke, Hume, and Rousseau, ed. Barker, Ernest (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), p. 194Google Scholar.

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6 Gierke, Otto, Natural Law and the Theory of Society, 1500 to 1800, Tr. with an Introduction by Barker, Ernest (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1934), I, 77, 138, 164Google Scholar.

7 Figgis, John Neville, Churches in the Modern State (London: Longmans, Green, 1913), p. 47Google Scholar.

8 Ibid., pp. 42, 64.

9 Ibid., pp. 68, 80, 87.

10 Ibid., 90, 91, 51–52.

11 See Dyke, Vernon Van, “Human Rights and the Rights of Groups,” American Journal of Political Science, 18 (11, 1974), 725–741CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and see statements by Rothchild, Donald, Racial Bargaining in Independent Kenya. A Study of Minorities and Decolonization (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), p. 3Google Scholar.

12 United States v. Jefferson County Board of Education, 372 F. 2d 836 (1966) at 866.

13 United States v. State of Texas, 342 F. Supp. 24 (1971), at 24; affirmed 466 F. 2d 519 (1972). Howard v. Adams County Board of Supervisors, 453 F. 2d 455 (1972) at 457.

14 Graves v. Barnes, 343 F. Supp. 704 (1972), at 734. Cousins v. City Council of City of Chicago, 466 F. 2d 830 (1972) at 843. Cf. Clinton, Robert N., “Further Explorations in the Political Thicket: The Gerrymander and the Constitution,” Iowa Law Review, 59 (10, 1973), 35–40Google Scholar.

15 United Jewish Org. of Williamsburgh, Inc. v. Wilson, 377 F. Supp. 1164 (1974); 500 F. 2d 434 (1974). The brief filed in this case by the plaintiffs declared, “As the result of meetings with attorneys of the Department of Justice, acting under the direction of the Attorney-General, agents of the New York legislature concluded that it was their obligation, in the view of federal officials, to create more districts that contained at least 65 percent black population.”

16 Consultative Assembly of the Council of Europe, 16th Ordinary Session, 4th Part, Resolution 290 (1965), p. 2.

17 Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 218 (1971).

18 Rothchild, Donald, “Kenya's Africanization Program: Priorities of Development and Equity,” American Political Science Review, 64 (09, 1970), 737–753CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 E/CN.4/641, Annex 1.

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