Abstract Ideal Contractualism views principles of justice as corresponding to what rational, mutually disinterested persons would collectively choose behind a veil of ignorance. It is well-known that Ideal Contractualism faces profound challenges in accounting for justice between generations. We present a unified solution to these problems that involves rejecting the assumption that the parties conceive of their choices as causally efficacious and assumes instead that the parties choose in light of the news value of their decision. And we explore what concrete principles would be chosen by the parties as governing intergenerational justice against the backdrop of this assumption.

Abstract Legal systems often suffer from what may be called legal inflation : an excess of laws that erodes legal compliance. The difficulty lies in identifyng which laws are responsible for this erosion. Democratic deliberation is poorly suited to the task. This paper advances an identification criterion: laws that generate both widespread non-compliance and inconsistent enforcement should be regarded as defective , because they fail to function as laws. I propose a new version of the rule of obsolescence to repeal defective laws. This framework clarifies the mechanisms by which legal inflation undermines institutional stability and offers guidance for legal reform.

Abstract While the idea of predistribution is gaining traction, it may seem inherently elusive. The source of confusion is the prefix ‘pre’, which denotes priority or prevention. This paper proposes a new functional definition of predistribution that is practically useful and unifies different predistributive policies. Through defending predistribution as policies of ex ante distribution, I offer a philosophically robust notion of priority (‘procedural priority’) and different functions of prevention that help make sense of predistribution. I also develop typologies of different predistributive policies and explore justificatory grounds and strengths of predistribution. I emphasize instrumental reasons for supporting predistribution.

Abstract Joseph Raz’s service conception of legitimacy says citizens must obey the state when its directives allow them to comply with reason better than they would by deciding independently. Yet citizens’ capacity to decide for themselves is endogenous to state authority: the more they defer, the less competent they might become. Consequently, a state might secure its legitimacy through a self-fulfilling dynamic whereby citizens need state authority only because they have grown dependent upon it. This article diagnoses the problem and explains how the service conception can guard against it. Besides Raz's account, its argument applies to any theory of legitimacy with a “service” component.

Abstract What gives the benefit principle its moral appeal as an idea of tax justice? And what can count as a benefit for that purpose? My claim is that we can trace the moral force of various versions of the principle to five ideas: individual justification, causal feedback, reciprocity, opposable valuation and non-objectionable baseline. I develop those ideas into an account of the moral permissibility of benefit-based taxation, and explain how that account addresses problems about the quantification and valuation of benefits and the relationship between benefit and the justice of the background distribution.

Abstract According to the model of exchange as mutual assistance, an exchange can be perceived as a joint activity for mutual benefit – and needn’t involve any self-directed motives at all. This essay pushes back against this new defence of market motives. The essay develops an alternative ideal of production as caring solidarity, in which production is a joint activity of caring about one another. Points of overlap and difference are developed in some detail. The essay concludes by discussing the implications for an economics of caring solidarity, with discussion of the limitations of various market socialist strategies.

Abstract Michael Otsuka argues that collective pension schemes are forms of social cooperation on equal terms for mutual advantage and thus, matters of social justice. In this way Otsuka wants to understand collectively funded pensions in Rawlsian terms. I argue that not all forms of social cooperation are the same and that the specific kind of social cooperation Rawls has in mind is, in at least three central respects, different from the kind of social cooperation involved in the collective pension schemes Otsuka describes.

Abstract A common idea, both in ordinary discourse and in the desert literature, is that wages can be deserved. The thought is not only highly intuitive, but it is also often appealed to in order to explain various injustices in employment income – pay gaps, for instance. In this paper, I challenge the idea that income from employment is the kind of thing that can be deserved. I argue that once one gets clear on the metaphysics of jobs and wages within the context of economic exchange more generally, there are natural principles concerning such exchanges which generate puzzles for that view. The puzzles, I argue, are especially acute for meritocrats who conceive of justice in wages in terms of desert. Additionally, I argue that appealing to dignity (rather than desert) offers better hope of explaining the kinds of injustices in wages that motivate the appeal to desert. In that case, no explanatory gap is left by abandoning the idea that wages can be deserved either, and so, I argue, we have good reason to doubt it.

Abstract A rise in the number of moral individuals in a group can hurt the morality of the group’s collective action. In this paper, we characterize strategic environments and models of morality where this is true solely because, after all, individual morals are private information.