Sophia Moreau
Biographic Data
| ID | 3698375 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sophia Moreau |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sophia |
| FAMILY NAME | Moreau |
| SIGNATURE | MOREAU S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1693-8242 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 11 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 36 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 10 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Objectionable Obligations
Many of our moral obligations result partly from other people’s wrongdoing or from broader institutional or structural injustices. The author argues that in some of these cases, the agent is left morally compromised by their own moral obligations. Because of the relationship between these obligations and the wrongs or injustices that gave rise to them, such agents may perpetuate or exacerbate the original wrong; they may, more strongly, become th…
Equality, Subordination, and Methodology in Discrimination Theory
In this Reply to Critics, I respond to essays by Professors Alysia Blackham, Jessica Eisen, Pablo Gilabert, Andrea Sangiovanni, Dale Smith, Iyiola Solanke, and Daniel Viehoff on the theory of wrongful discrimination developed in my book, Faces of Inequality . Among the topics I discuss are: the relationship between equality and discrimination, the role of social subordination in my theory of wrongful discrimination, and methodology in discriminat…
Equality and Discrimination
Ever since the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971, Anglo-American philosophers have discussed the nature of equality and its place in a theory of distributive justice. They have asked whether it is equality per se that is valuable, or priority for those who are worst off, or perhaps sufficiency—that is, ensuring that each person has enough. They have also asked about the ‘currency’ of egalitarian justice: what is it that shoul…
Faces of Inequality
This book defends an original and pluralist theory of when and why discrimination wrongs people. Sophia Moreau argues that although all cases of wrongful discrimination involve a failure to treat some people as the equals of others, these failures are importantly different. The first four chapters of the book explore different ways of failing to treat people as equals: through unfairly subordinating some to others, through violating someone’s rig…
Discrimination and Freedom
There has been a longstanding debate in Anglo-American political philosophy about the relationship between freedom and equality. Isaiah Berlin argued that these two values are always potentially in conflict: full social and political equality can only be achieved by taking certain freedoms away from some people, and even though we may be justified in doing this, we must, according to Berlin, acknowledge the very real loss that this involves and n…
A right to deliberative freedom
In this reply to Campbell and Smith, I argue that my account is quite consistent with our moral intuitions about affirmative action policies. In particular, my theory does not claim that we all have an interest in being ‘completely free’ in a deliberative sense. So it does not commit us to the view that in cases of affirmative action, a lawmaker always has some reason to prevent discrimination against members of the more privileged group. Moreove…
Taking on responsibility and trusting others
My response begins by highlighting two distinctive and particularly helpful features of Shiffrin’s view. First, Shiffrin presents us with a conception of responsibility that is prospective, constitutive, and independent of fault. Second, she focuses on the way in which the rule of strict liability for performance affects the relationship between the promisor and promisee, rather than focusing only on the benefits to each of them, considered separ…
Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law
Exploring the philosophical foundations of discrimination law as it exists in several jurisdictions, this collection of all new essays bridges the gap between abstract philosophical work on justice and fairness and legal work on specific types of discrimination
Discrimination as Negligence
There is a rich philosophical literature on the value of equality: on whether and why it matters, what its “currency” ought to be, and whether it should be balanced against other important values, such as freedom, or conceptualized in terms of equal access to them. Most of this literature is a contribution to debates about distributive justice: it is concerned with how we should understand equality when our aim is to arrive at general principles …
What Is Discrimination
The Wrongs of Unequal Treatment
I Introduction Over the past twenty years, analytic philosophers in the United States and the United Kingdom have devoted extensive thought to the different reasons we have for valuing equality - and, relatedly, to the different ways in which we can conceptualize the wrong or wrongs done to individuals when the state does not treat them as equals.1 However, neither Canadian legal academics nor Canadian courts have made extensive use of this liter…
The Wrongs of Unequal Treatment
I Introduction Over the past twenty years, analytic philosophers in the United States and the United Kingdom have devoted extensive thought to the different reasons we have for valuing equality - and, relatedly, to the different ways in which we can conceptualize the wrong or wrongs done to individuals when the state does not treat them as equals.1 However, neither Canadian legal academics nor Canadian courts have made extensive use of this liter…
Discrimination as Negligence
There is a rich philosophical literature on the value of equality: on whether and why it matters, what its “currency” ought to be, and whether it should be balanced against other important values, such as freedom, or conceptualized in terms of equal access to them. Most of this literature is a contribution to debates about distributive justice: it is concerned with how we should understand equality when our aim is to arrive at general principles …
What Is Discrimination
Philosophical Foundations of Discrimination Law
Exploring the philosophical foundations of discrimination law as it exists in several jurisdictions, this collection of all new essays bridges the gap between abstract philosophical work on justice and fairness and legal work on specific types of discrimination
Taking on responsibility and trusting others
My response begins by highlighting two distinctive and particularly helpful features of Shiffrin’s view. First, Shiffrin presents us with a conception of responsibility that is prospective, constitutive, and independent of fault. Second, she focuses on the way in which the rule of strict liability for performance affects the relationship between the promisor and promisee, rather than focusing only on the benefits to each of them, considered separ…
Discrimination and Freedom
There has been a longstanding debate in Anglo-American political philosophy about the relationship between freedom and equality. Isaiah Berlin argued that these two values are always potentially in conflict: full social and political equality can only be achieved by taking certain freedoms away from some people, and even though we may be justified in doing this, we must, according to Berlin, acknowledge the very real loss that this involves and n…
A right to deliberative freedom
In this reply to Campbell and Smith, I argue that my account is quite consistent with our moral intuitions about affirmative action policies. In particular, my theory does not claim that we all have an interest in being ‘completely free’ in a deliberative sense. So it does not commit us to the view that in cases of affirmative action, a lawmaker always has some reason to prevent discrimination against members of the more privileged group. Moreove…
Equality and Discrimination
Ever since the publication of John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice in 1971, Anglo-American philosophers have discussed the nature of equality and its place in a theory of distributive justice. They have asked whether it is equality per se that is valuable, or priority for those who are worst off, or perhaps sufficiency—that is, ensuring that each person has enough. They have also asked about the ‘currency’ of egalitarian justice: what is it that shoul…
Faces of Inequality
This book defends an original and pluralist theory of when and why discrimination wrongs people. Sophia Moreau argues that although all cases of wrongful discrimination involve a failure to treat some people as the equals of others, these failures are importantly different. The first four chapters of the book explore different ways of failing to treat people as equals: through unfairly subordinating some to others, through violating someone’s rig…
Equality, Subordination, and Methodology in Discrimination Theory
In this Reply to Critics, I respond to essays by Professors Alysia Blackham, Jessica Eisen, Pablo Gilabert, Andrea Sangiovanni, Dale Smith, Iyiola Solanke, and Daniel Viehoff on the theory of wrongful discrimination developed in my book, Faces of Inequality . Among the topics I discuss are: the relationship between equality and discrimination, the role of social subordination in my theory of wrongful discrimination, and methodology in discriminat…
Objectionable Obligations
Many of our moral obligations result partly from other people’s wrongdoing or from broader institutional or structural injustices. The author argues that in some of these cases, the agent is left morally compromised by their own moral obligations. Because of the relationship between these obligations and the wrongs or injustices that gave rise to them, such agents may perpetuate or exacerbate the original wrong; they may, more strongly, become th…
Political Philosophy and Ethics (10 works) · Sociology (8 works) · Law (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Law and economics (6 works) · Economics (4 works) · Free Will and Agency (4 works) · Politics (4 works) · Psychology (4 works) · Law (3 works)