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Compensatory Justice: Over Time and Between Groups
Author(s) -
Hill Renée A.
Publication year - 2002
Publication title -
journal of political philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.938
H-Index - 66
eISSN - 1467-9760
pISSN - 0963-8016
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9760.00158
Subject(s) - citation , economic justice , state (computer science) , politics , library science , law , sociology , political science , computer science , algorithm
PARADIGMATIC cases of compensatory justice involve someone being injured (the victim), a person committing the injury (the victimizer), and quantifiable damage that can be restored by the victimizer through the paying of compensation or the return of stolen goods. The principal parties are known and alive, the details of the injury are clear, and the solution is obvious. Many cases of injustice, however, do not fit neatly into this model. There are cases of injustice involving hundreds, even thousands of victims; there are cases of injustice where there are also large numbers of victimizers or the identity of the victimizers is unknown or the victimizer is deceased. There are also cases where the stolen goods have been sold or given away to innocent ‘‘bystanders’’ who know nothing of the goods’ tainted heritage and act on the basis of their presumably legitimate ownership. And there are some cases of injury that simply happened a long, long time ago. In many of these ‘‘non-paradigmatic’’ examples of compensatory justice, some writers will claim that the situations are not compensable: the details are too fuzzy, the primary actors are deceased, too much time has elapsed since the injury. Jeremy Waldron, for example, argues in ‘‘Superseding Historic Injustice’’ that once an artifact (A) has been removed from a person, say primary victim (P), that P rearranges her life to accommodate the loss of A and continues with the projects constituting her life plan as much as possible.1 As time passes P, although initially devastated by the loss of A, continues to do without A, until the argument that P is due compensation because of the interruption of her projects caused by the loss of A looks more and more indefensible. Even less, according to Waldron, can the primary victim’s descendants (PN) make the case that the loss of A is affecting their life plans because they never had A or were not able to benefit from its use in any way. After a time, Waldron points out, the injury is successfully accommodated, bystanders may become involved, and there is decreasing motivation to go back and start rearranging circumstances. One should just leave well enough alone and move on.