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Affirmative Action: Well‐Being, Justice, and Qualifications
Author(s) -
Segev Re’em
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
ratio juris
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.344
H-Index - 10
eISSN - 1467-9337
pISSN - 0952-1917
DOI - 10.1111/raju.12240
Subject(s) - affirmative action , sanctions , economic justice , action (physics) , reverse discrimination , promotion (chess) , selection (genetic algorithm) , law and economics , political science , sociology , law , social psychology , psychology , computer science , physics , quantum mechanics , artificial intelligence , politics
A common concern regarding affirmative action is that it sanctions the selection of candidates whose qualifications are not the best overall and that this is inefficient or unjust or both. I argue that this concern is misguided, since there is no independent concern regarding qualifications with respect to the moral status of affirmative action. The only sense in which qualifications are not morally arbitrary—and the only sense in which there is a reason to select the most qualified candidate—is purely instrumental to the promotion of moral values whose fundamental concern is not qualifications.