Chapter 7 Exercises: Justice

Comprehension Checks

1. Explain the "veil of ignorance" in your own words. What is it supposed to achieve? What would you know and not know if you were reasoning from behind it?

2. The difference principle says inequalities are permissible only if they benefit the least advantaged. Give an example of an inequality that seems to satisfy the difference principle, and one that seems to violate it.

3. Nozick argues that justice is "historical, not patterned." What does this mean? Why does the distinction between historical and patterned theories matter?

4. What is the Confucian doctrine of "graded love," and why does it challenge the demand for impartiality in both Rawlsian and utilitarian ethics?

5. How does Ubuntu justice differ from both retributive and distributive justice? Give a concrete example of what Ubuntu justice would look like in practice.

Thought Experiment: Behind the Veil

Part A: You are behind Rawls's veil of ignorance. You know everything about how societies work — economics, history, politics, psychology — but you know nothing about your own position: not your income, race, sex, natural talent, family background, or values.

You must choose between two societies:

Society A: A market economy with very high inequality. The top 10% of earners make 50× the income of the bottom 10%. The legal system provides equal basic rights for all. The least advantaged have a minimum standard of living, but it is modest. Total average income is $80,000.

Society B: A regulated market economy with moderate inequality. The top 10% make 8× the bottom 10%. The legal system provides equal basic rights for all. The least advantaged live significantly better than in Society A. Total average income is $55,000.

Which society do you choose? Why? Does your answer change depending on whether you are thinking from behind the veil or from your actual current position?

Part B: Nozick would say the veil of ignorance is illegitimate because it artificially strips away your identity and commitments. Write two sentences presenting the strongest version of this objection, then two sentences responding on Rawls's behalf.

The Wilt Chamberlain Argument: Analysis

Read the following summary carefully and then answer the questions.

Nozick begins with a just distribution — call it D1. From D1, one million people voluntarily pay twenty-five cents each to watch Wilt Chamberlain play basketball. After these transactions, Chamberlain has $250,000 more; everyone else has twenty-five cents less. Call this new distribution D2. Is D2 unjust?

Nozick says it cannot be: each transaction was voluntary, arising from D1, which we stipulated was just. To say D2 is unjust, you must say there is something wrong with those individual voluntary choices — which means you must restrict individual freedom to maintain whatever pattern you preferred.

Questions:

  1. Does the Wilt Chamberlain argument work against the difference principle? Does the argument work against utilitarian redistribution? Does it work equally well against both?

  2. Here is a possible objection: the argument works only if the underlying distribution D1 was genuinely just — but in the real world, no distribution arose from purely just historical processes. How does Nozick respond to this? Is the response adequate?

  3. Suppose the transactions were not between individuals and a basketball player, but between a company and its shareholders, funded by laying off workers. The shareholders' gains are "voluntary" in the formal sense. Does the Wilt Chamberlain logic apply? Why or why not?

Dialogue Exercise: The Factory Closure

Return to the scenario at the opening of the chapter. Eight hundred workers will lose their jobs when a factory closes. You have the ear of someone making the transition policy.

Write a short advisory memo (250–350 words) that draws on at least three of the five frameworks covered in the chapter. Your memo should:

  1. Identify what each framework says the company owes the workers and community
  2. Identify where the frameworks agree and where they conflict
  3. Make a recommendation that takes all three seriously, with honest acknowledgment of the trade-offs

You are not required to endorse any single framework. You are required to show you understand all of them.

Case Analysis: Criminal Sentencing

A judge is sentencing a twenty-three-year-old first-time offender convicted of nonviolent drug possession with intent to distribute. The offender grew up in poverty, had limited educational opportunities, and became involved in drug dealing as a teenager. There is a mandatory minimum sentence of five years for the offense.

Apply each framework:

  1. Retributive justice: What punishment does this person deserve? How do poverty and circumstances of disadvantage affect the retributive calculation, if at all?

  2. Utilitarian justice: What sentence produces the best consequences — for the offender, for the victims (if any), for the community, for society? How does the mandatory minimum affect this?

  3. Rawlsian justice: What sentencing policy would rational persons behind the veil choose, knowing they don't know whether they'll be the offender, a victim of drug crime, or a community member?

  4. Ubuntu restorative justice: What process would an Ubuntu framework prescribe? Who should be involved? What would "repairing harm" look like here?

After analyzing all four: What is your own view of what justice requires in this case? Be specific about which framework(s) inform your view, and where you think the other frameworks miss something important.

Essay: Impartiality vs. Relationship

The chapter presents a tension between frameworks that demand impartiality (Rawls, utilitarianism) and frameworks that ground morality in particular relationships (Confucianism, Ubuntu).

Write a 500–700 word essay addressing the following question:

Is the demand for impartiality in justice compatible with our genuine obligations to particular others?

Consider: Can you truly reason "from behind the veil" in a way that doesn't distort your actual moral situation? Does the utilitarian demand to count distant strangers' interests equally with those of your family reflect moral truth or moral excess? What do Confucian and Ubuntu frameworks offer that liberal impartiality frameworks miss — and what do they miss in turn?

Your essay should not simply summarize the chapter. It should take a position and defend it, using the frameworks as interlocutors rather than as topics to survey.

Progressive Project Checkpoint

In your personal philosophy document, add a section titled "My Theory of Justice."

Work through these questions in writing:

  1. What do you owe people you will never meet? Is Singer right that the drowning child and the distant child dying of preventable disease present the same moral obligation? If not, what is the morally relevant difference?

  2. Looking at your actual behavior — not your ideals, but what you actually do — which theory of justice does it most closely reflect? (This is a harder question than it sounds.)

  3. Is there an inequality in your society — one that affects your daily life — that you believe to be unjust? Which framework best explains why you think so?

  4. The factory closure scenario at the opening of the chapter is a realistic one. Have you ever been in a situation where you benefited from a policy that harmed someone with less power than you? What would each of the frameworks in this chapter say about your obligations in that situation?

Write honestly. The goal is not to display virtue but to understand where you actually stand.

Advanced: The Rawls-Nozick Exchange

Both Rawls and Nozick are working within a broadly liberal framework: both take individual rights seriously, both believe in the importance of liberty, both accept a market economy as the basic economic institution. Their disagreement is about what justice within that framework requires.

A useful exercise: try to identify the single deepest premise on which they disagree. It is not simply "Rawls favors redistribution and Nozick opposes it." Go deeper. What is the fundamental disagreement about persons, freedom, or desert that generates the different conclusions?

(Suggested approach: focus on their disagreement about the moral status of natural talents — Rawls says they are morally arbitrary; Nozick says persons own their talents and cannot be treated as if those talents belong to the collective. What follows from each position?)

Write a paragraph (150–200 words) identifying the deepest disagreement and explaining why it matters.