A Reply in Defense of Impartiality

M ELISSA WILLIAMS'S ESSAY ARGUES for a radical thesis, the adoption of a political, rather than juridical, model of justice. The failure of seemingly impartial standards of justice to secure equality for minority and marginal groups leads her to advocate a role for those groups in a political process in which they would determine and not simply apply principles of right and justice. I am skeptical both about the supporting argument she offers and the formulation of her conclusion. I will claim that the strength of her essay leads to a more moderate, and defensible, thesis: justice for disadvantaged and marginalized groups requires a route through the political and, importantly, a change in the political procedures themselves. I believe she is also correct in maintaining that the relationship between the juridical and the political needs to be reconceived, but this is not best understood as abandoning a juridical and adopting a political model of justice. This reply is also a defense of impartiality. Williams uses a contemporary critique of impartiality which fastens on the epistemic defects of impartial judgment and then argues that impartiality is impossible. But this critique fails to appreciate both the general nature of theories as revisable and the character of revision itself. Moreover, I will suggest that one version of the criticism alleging a failure of impartiality threatens to undermine the position it seeks to support. For it competes with an understanding of what legitimates democracy and the proper role in a democracy of citizens' representatives. Williams's strength lies in a careful consideration of the weaknesses and advantages of supplementing ajuridical-theoretical model. But I will suggest that Williams presents us with two dichotomies, the theoretical/juridical versus the political, and definitions versus applications of principles, both of which are arguably inadequate. We should thus be wary of the radically formulated thesis. Recent literature has acknowledged the role legitimately played by political representatives in interpreting the Constitution or in

Environmental ethics · Impartiality · Law and economics · Political science · Sociology · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law · Law in Society and Culture · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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