Jeff Spinner-Halev
Biographic Data
| ID | 245393 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeff Spinner-Halev |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeff |
| FAMILY NAME | Spinner-Halev |
| SIGNATURE | SPINNER-HALEV J |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6328-7713 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 29 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 101 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
The Politics of Multicultural Integration in the United States
There are lively debates about multiculturalism in Canada and Europe, but the term is used much less frequently in the United States, where instead there are arguments about ‘identity politics’, how history is taught and how the citizenry views their country. I argue for what I call multicultural integration, which accepts the inevitability of group identity and that we live in a world of nation‐states; its aim is for a loosely defined and change…
Why Political Philosophy Should Be Robust
Political philosophers and theorists make arguments about high-stakes problems. This article shows that those theories would be more credible if political philosophers ensured their work was robust: capable of withstanding reasonable changes to their assumptions and to the cases to which their arguments apply. The world is varied and inconstant. As a result, scientists and social scientists recognize the virtue of robustness. This article shows w…
Group agency and the challenges of repairing historical injustice
The corporate account of responsibility argues that incorporated groups are agents, yet begs this question: if states are corporate agents, then why should citizens be liable to pay for its past mistakes and injustices? Several theorists supplement the corporate account to argue that democratic citizens agree to take on the liabilities of the state through authorization or intentionality. I argue that this route is mistaken, that citizens are obl…
Who Gives Credence to Whom? Exploring Status and Relational Equality with Empirical Tests
A prominent view of equality that has arisen in recent years—social or relational equality—argues that whatever the distribution of quantifiable resources in a society, citizens must treat each other as equals: if some citizens are ignored because they are seen as low-status, it is a problem that should be rectified. However, the meaning of relational equality is vague. As an exercise in “middle-range” theorizing, we operationalize several conjec…
The limits of liberal integrity
Nili’s important book presents us with an intriguing idea in chapter five. If we see the liberal state as having integrity then that means certain kinds of policies should be prioritized by the state. I cast doubt on this argument by contending that the priorities of liberal integrity are either no different from liberal egalitarianism or are misguided. I also argue that history has little normative force as Nili suggests
Liberalism, Markets, and Responsibility
The specter of individual responsibility is ever present in many liberal theories of distributive justice, yet these “responsibilitarian” arguments ignore the unpredictability of markets, misunderstand the role of luck that nearly everyone faces in a market economy, and overvalue (while not defining) prudent or responsible behavior. Nearly all economic behavior in market societies is risky—there is no baseline of prudent or responsible behavior. …
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship
By finding a way to incorporate people’s cultural attachment in a liberal framework, Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship changed the way liberal political theorists look at identity. Kymlicka argued that culture, and in particular language, could not be a private matter as liberals assumed, since every state must pick one official language (or a small number of them). Yet official languages were unfair to those who spoke a different languag…
Choosing and Caring: Markets and Their Limits
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Rawls, Mill, and the Puzzle of Political Liberalism
This article examines John Rawls's turn toward a purely political liberalism by comparing and contrasting it with the comprehensive liberalism he imputes to John Stuart Mill. We argue that Mill and Rawls have similar views about individual autonomy, despite Rawls's insistence to the contrary. We contend that Rawls accords a much larger role to the state in enforcing justice than does Mill. Whereas Rawls's view of justice rests ultimately on state…
Historical Injustice
Enduring Injustice
Governments today often apologize for past injustices and scholars increasingly debate the issue, with many calling for apologies and reparations. Others suggest that what matters is victims of injustice today, not injustices in the past. Spinner-Halev argues that the problem facing some peoples is not only the injustice of the past, but that they still suffer from injustice today. They experience what he calls enduring injustices, and it is like…
Discrimination within Religious Schools
Places of contact between religion and the state has increased considerably over time; as this overlap has increased, liberals have increasingly seen fit to call for state intervention in religions that are internally discriminatory in the name of equal citizenship. By looking at the issue of direct and indirect state support for discriminatory schools, I argue for a more pluralistic and tolerant view of religion than that of many liberals. Prese…
A Restrained View of Transformation
In A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom: Promoting the Reasons for Rights, Corey Brettschneider argues that the liberal state has the right to try to certain beliefs: is those beliefs, religious and otherwise, that are openly hostile to or implausibly consistent with the values of equal citizenship that the state should seek to transform (195).1 This is a strong statement that Brettschneider qualifies in important ways, since he does not …
John Stuart Mill's Feminism: On Progress, the State, and the Path to Justice
The relationship between justice and the family is a difficult and often ignored issue in liberal theory. John Stuart Mill is one liberal theorist who tackled the issue, but his arguments about the matter are often misconstrued. Much of the debate about Mill's feminism turns on the role of the state in effecting moral and political change in society. Mill's critics focus on his minimal legal prescriptions, believing them to be insufficient for ac…
The Moral Demands of Memory
Democracy, Solidarity and Post-Nationalism
Nearly all democratizing states are also nationalizing, but this connection has not been adequately explained. A few scholars argue that nationality supplies democracy with a pre-political identity, while others maintain that nationality is often developed and manipulated by elites. I argue that national identity is a political identity, sustained by political institutions for political purposes, though this identity may contain some ethnic or ab…
From Historical to Enduring Injustice
Advocates of remedying historical injustices urge political communities to take responsibility for their past, but their arguments are ambiguous about whether all past injustices need remedy, or just those regarding groups that suffer from current injustice. This ambiguity leaves unanswered the challenge of critics who argue that contemporary injustices matter, not those in the past. I argue instead for a focus on injustices that have roots in th…
Minorities within Minorities: Equality, Rights and Diversity
Most discussions of multiculturalism and group rights focus on the relationship between the minority and the majority. This volume advances our understanding of minority rights by focusing on conflicts that arise within minority groups and by examining the different sorts of responses that the liberal state might have to these conflicts. Groups around the world are increasingly successful in maintaining or winning autonomy. In light of this trend…
Autonomy, association and pluralism
Critics of illiberal groups are right to point out that these groups can too readily undermine the rights and equality of individual group members. Some groups, particularly but not only traditional religious groups, are hierarchical and patriarchal; they often shun liberal democratic values. Some liberals suggest that this opposition to liberal norms and practices is a challenge that necessitates a response. Yet in their attempt to ensure equali…
Teaching Identity and Autonomy
Liberal theorists often link autonomy and identity together, since, these liberals argue, an education that bestows a particular identity on children undermines their autonomy. The charge of schools ought to be to teach children to be open to a variety of identities. Encounters with diversity and cosmopolitanism are good, since they encourage students to think deeply about their own identity, while traditional religions and nationalism seek to im…
Hinduism, Christianity, and Liberal Religious Toleration
The Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of conscience organized into voluntary associations informed early liberalism’s conception of religion and of religious toleration, assumptions that are still present in contemporary liberalism. In many other religions, however, including Hinduism (the main though not only focus of this article), practice has a much larger role than conscience. Hinduism is not a voluntary association, and …
Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship
National Identity and Self-Esteem
Is the self-esteem of individuals tied to their nation? If so, is that a good reason to strive for a world of safe, secure nations? Many liberal nationalists answer yes to these questions, but they do so without looking at the large social-psychology literature on groups and self-esteem. We examine the claims of liberal nationalists in light of this literature. The good news is that self-respectWe use the terms self-respect and self-esteem interc…
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory
Feminism, Multiculturalism, Oppression, and the State
Some feminists have recently charged multicultural theorists of ignoring the rights of women in their arguments to secure group rights.Too often, these feminists charge, group rights are used to subordinate women.Group rights may appear fair in the abstract but in fact they often mean giving rights to the particular leaders of these groups; when these leaders are men with a traditional view of the world, as they often are, then it is hardly surpr…
National Identity and Self-Esteem
Is the self-esteem of individuals tied to their nation? If so, is that a good reason to strive for a world of safe, secure nations? Many liberal nationalists answer yes to these questions, but they do so without looking at the large social-psychology literature on groups and self-esteem. We examine the claims of liberal nationalists in light of this literature. The good news is that self-respectWe use the terms self-respect and self-esteem interc…
From Historical to Enduring Injustice
Advocates of remedying historical injustices urge political communities to take responsibility for their past, but their arguments are ambiguous about whether all past injustices need remedy, or just those regarding groups that suffer from current injustice. This ambiguity leaves unanswered the challenge of critics who argue that contemporary injustices matter, not those in the past. I argue instead for a focus on injustices that have roots in th…
Democracy, Solidarity and Post-Nationalism
Nearly all democratizing states are also nationalizing, but this connection has not been adequately explained. A few scholars argue that nationality supplies democracy with a pre-political identity, while others maintain that nationality is often developed and manipulated by elites. I argue that national identity is a political identity, sustained by political institutions for political purposes, though this identity may contain some ethnic or ab…
Hinduism, Christianity, and Liberal Religious Toleration
The Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of conscience organized into voluntary associations informed early liberalism’s conception of religion and of religious toleration, assumptions that are still present in contemporary liberalism. In many other religions, however, including Hinduism (the main though not only focus of this article), practice has a much larger role than conscience. Hinduism is not a voluntary association, and …
Why Political Philosophy Should Be Robust
Political philosophers and theorists make arguments about high-stakes problems. This article shows that those theories would be more credible if political philosophers ensured their work was robust: capable of withstanding reasonable changes to their assumptions and to the cases to which their arguments apply. The world is varied and inconstant. As a result, scientists and social scientists recognize the virtue of robustness. This article shows w…
Liberalism, Markets, and Responsibility
The specter of individual responsibility is ever present in many liberal theories of distributive justice, yet these “responsibilitarian” arguments ignore the unpredictability of markets, misunderstand the role of luck that nearly everyone faces in a market economy, and overvalue (while not defining) prudent or responsible behavior. Nearly all economic behavior in market societies is risky—there is no baseline of prudent or responsible behavior. …
Land, Culture and Justice: A Framework for Group Rights and Recognition
Meet the Sorbs. They are a Slavic people in Germany who number around sixty thousand. They are not mistreated or oppressed by the German government. They live in two German states, but they are interspersed with other Germans. Do the Sorbs deserve special, group rights to help maintain their culture? The recent arguments of many theorists suggest that they do. Iris Marion Young has recently argued that all marginalized groups should have group ri…
Difference and Diversity in an Egalitarian Democracy
Who Gives Credence to Whom? Exploring Status and Relational Equality with Empirical Tests
A prominent view of equality that has arisen in recent years—social or relational equality—argues that whatever the distribution of quantifiable resources in a society, citizens must treat each other as equals: if some citizens are ignored because they are seen as low-status, it is a problem that should be rectified. However, the meaning of relational equality is vague. As an exercise in “middle-range” theorizing, we operationalize several conjec…
The limits of liberal integrity
Nili’s important book presents us with an intriguing idea in chapter five. If we see the liberal state as having integrity then that means certain kinds of policies should be prioritized by the state. I cast doubt on this argument by contending that the priorities of liberal integrity are either no different from liberal egalitarianism or are misguided. I also argue that history has little normative force as Nili suggests
Rawls, Mill, and the Puzzle of Political Liberalism
This article examines John Rawls's turn toward a purely political liberalism by comparing and contrasting it with the comprehensive liberalism he imputes to John Stuart Mill. We argue that Mill and Rawls have similar views about individual autonomy, despite Rawls's insistence to the contrary. We contend that Rawls accords a much larger role to the state in enforcing justice than does Mill. Whereas Rawls's view of justice rests ultimately on state…
John Stuart Mill's Feminism: On Progress, the State, and the Path to Justice
The relationship between justice and the family is a difficult and often ignored issue in liberal theory. John Stuart Mill is one liberal theorist who tackled the issue, but his arguments about the matter are often misconstrued. Much of the debate about Mill's feminism turns on the role of the state in effecting moral and political change in society. Mill's critics focus on his minimal legal prescriptions, believing them to be insufficient for ac…
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory
The Boundaries of Citizenship: Race, Ethnicity, and Nationality in the Liberal State
Difference and Diversity in an Egalitarian Democracy
Land, Culture and Justice: A Framework for Group Rights and Recognition
Meet the Sorbs. They are a Slavic people in Germany who number around sixty thousand. They are not mistreated or oppressed by the German government. They live in two German states, but they are interspersed with other Germans. Do the Sorbs deserve special, group rights to help maintain their culture? The recent arguments of many theorists suggest that they do. Iris Marion Young has recently argued that all marginalized groups should have group ri…
Feminism, Multiculturalism, Oppression, and the State
Some feminists have recently charged multicultural theorists of ignoring the rights of women in their arguments to secure group rights.Too often, these feminists charge, group rights are used to subordinate women.Group rights may appear fair in the abstract but in fact they often mean giving rights to the particular leaders of these groups; when these leaders are men with a traditional view of the world, as they often are, then it is hardly surpr…
The universal pretensions of cultural rights arguments
Many of the most popular liberal arguments for cultural rights all note that the world is formed into groups. But in the attempt to universalise these arguments, it is too often assumed that the nation is the most important of these groups. This focus upon the nation ignores the many and varying bases of self‐respect. It overlooks the fact that self‐respect may be tied to many different kinds of groups. Further, most discussions of cultural right…
Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory
National Identity and Self-Esteem
Is the self-esteem of individuals tied to their nation? If so, is that a good reason to strive for a world of safe, secure nations? Many liberal nationalists answer yes to these questions, but they do so without looking at the large social-psychology literature on groups and self-esteem. We examine the claims of liberal nationalists in light of this literature. The good news is that self-respectWe use the terms self-respect and self-esteem interc…
Minorities within Minorities: Equality, Rights and Diversity
Most discussions of multiculturalism and group rights focus on the relationship between the minority and the majority. This volume advances our understanding of minority rights by focusing on conflicts that arise within minority groups and by examining the different sorts of responses that the liberal state might have to these conflicts. Groups around the world are increasingly successful in maintaining or winning autonomy. In light of this trend…
Autonomy, association and pluralism
Critics of illiberal groups are right to point out that these groups can too readily undermine the rights and equality of individual group members. Some groups, particularly but not only traditional religious groups, are hierarchical and patriarchal; they often shun liberal democratic values. Some liberals suggest that this opposition to liberal norms and practices is a challenge that necessitates a response. Yet in their attempt to ensure equali…
Teaching Identity and Autonomy
Liberal theorists often link autonomy and identity together, since, these liberals argue, an education that bestows a particular identity on children undermines their autonomy. The charge of schools ought to be to teach children to be open to a variety of identities. Encounters with diversity and cosmopolitanism are good, since they encourage students to think deeply about their own identity, while traditional religions and nationalism seek to im…
Hinduism, Christianity, and Liberal Religious Toleration
The Protestant conception of religion as a private matter of conscience organized into voluntary associations informed early liberalism’s conception of religion and of religious toleration, assumptions that are still present in contemporary liberalism. In many other religions, however, including Hinduism (the main though not only focus of this article), practice has a much larger role than conscience. Hinduism is not a voluntary association, and …
Surviving Diversity: Religion and Democratic Citizenship
From Historical to Enduring Injustice
Advocates of remedying historical injustices urge political communities to take responsibility for their past, but their arguments are ambiguous about whether all past injustices need remedy, or just those regarding groups that suffer from current injustice. This ambiguity leaves unanswered the challenge of critics who argue that contemporary injustices matter, not those in the past. I argue instead for a focus on injustices that have roots in th…
Democracy, Solidarity and Post-Nationalism
Nearly all democratizing states are also nationalizing, but this connection has not been adequately explained. A few scholars argue that nationality supplies democracy with a pre-political identity, while others maintain that nationality is often developed and manipulated by elites. I argue that national identity is a political identity, sustained by political institutions for political purposes, though this identity may contain some ethnic or ab…
The Moral Demands of Memory
John Stuart Mill's Feminism: On Progress, the State, and the Path to Justice
The relationship between justice and the family is a difficult and often ignored issue in liberal theory. John Stuart Mill is one liberal theorist who tackled the issue, but his arguments about the matter are often misconstrued. Much of the debate about Mill's feminism turns on the role of the state in effecting moral and political change in society. Mill's critics focus on his minimal legal prescriptions, believing them to be insufficient for ac…
A Restrained View of Transformation
In A Transformative Theory of Religious Freedom: Promoting the Reasons for Rights, Corey Brettschneider argues that the liberal state has the right to try to certain beliefs: is those beliefs, religious and otherwise, that are openly hostile to or implausibly consistent with the values of equal citizenship that the state should seek to transform (195).1 This is a strong statement that Brettschneider qualifies in important ways, since he does not …
Historical Injustice
Enduring Injustice
Governments today often apologize for past injustices and scholars increasingly debate the issue, with many calling for apologies and reparations. Others suggest that what matters is victims of injustice today, not injustices in the past. Spinner-Halev argues that the problem facing some peoples is not only the injustice of the past, but that they still suffer from injustice today. They experience what he calls enduring injustices, and it is like…
Discrimination within Religious Schools
Places of contact between religion and the state has increased considerably over time; as this overlap has increased, liberals have increasingly seen fit to call for state intervention in religions that are internally discriminatory in the name of equal citizenship. By looking at the issue of direct and indirect state support for discriminatory schools, I argue for a more pluralistic and tolerant view of religion than that of many liberals. Prese…
Rawls, Mill, and the Puzzle of Political Liberalism
This article examines John Rawls's turn toward a purely political liberalism by comparing and contrasting it with the comprehensive liberalism he imputes to John Stuart Mill. We argue that Mill and Rawls have similar views about individual autonomy, despite Rawls's insistence to the contrary. We contend that Rawls accords a much larger role to the state in enforcing justice than does Mill. Whereas Rawls's view of justice rests ultimately on state…
Choosing and Caring: Markets and Their Limits
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Will Kymlicka, Multicultural Citizenship
By finding a way to incorporate people’s cultural attachment in a liberal framework, Will Kymlicka’s Multicultural Citizenship changed the way liberal political theorists look at identity. Kymlicka argued that culture, and in particular language, could not be a private matter as liberals assumed, since every state must pick one official language (or a small number of them). Yet official languages were unfair to those who spoke a different languag…
Liberalism, Markets, and Responsibility
The specter of individual responsibility is ever present in many liberal theories of distributive justice, yet these “responsibilitarian” arguments ignore the unpredictability of markets, misunderstand the role of luck that nearly everyone faces in a market economy, and overvalue (while not defining) prudent or responsible behavior. Nearly all economic behavior in market societies is risky—there is no baseline of prudent or responsible behavior. …
The limits of liberal integrity
Nili’s important book presents us with an intriguing idea in chapter five. If we see the liberal state as having integrity then that means certain kinds of policies should be prioritized by the state. I cast doubt on this argument by contending that the priorities of liberal integrity are either no different from liberal egalitarianism or are misguided. I also argue that history has little normative force as Nili suggests
Political science (27 works) · Law (26 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Politics (24 works) · Law (17 works) · Political Philosophy and Ethics (17 works) · Philosophy (14 works) · Law and economics (10 works) · Philosophy (9 works) · Democracy (8 works)